It’s always amazing to see parallels in your life. For me, it seems that my life has been inexplicably connected to Braves outfielder Jeff Francoeur’s batting average.

Francoeur has a special place with our family. A rookie last year, he quickly became James’ (my 4 yr old son) favorite player. It’s either because he swung an amazing bat or simply because James likes to say Francoeur because it sounds funny. So as the season started this year, we were all excited to see this young kid continue to surge.

But then it happened, or shall I say nothing happened. Frenchy (as the fans call him) couldn’t hit anything. He was carrying a .80 average for a while and leading the league in strike outs. Simply put, the guy was struggling.

And for some reason, watching this guy try so hard and always come up empty seemed to get to us. It almost seemed like his slump was mirroring our lives. We had been hit with sickness, frustration, and a loss of focus. My family was struggling too.

We’d come back, ready to watch each game. Ready to have hope that Frenchy could do it. We wanted to see him succeed.

But hey look! Over the last two weeks, he’s been surging. He’s up to .231 and the swing seems to be back. Things seem to be getting better for us as well.

Hope fufilled is a wonderful thing. Go Frenchy, go!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 9:35 am and is filed under Blogroll, MLB, Uncategorized, atlanta, baseball, braves, francouer, general, jeff francouer, sports.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.