In our previous baseball league in Florida, snacks seemed to be a requirement--an entitlement, even--after a game. Despite the fact that most games were played during prime dinner hours, when mothers on the bleachers already had crock pots with chicken in them on the counter at home, as soon as the last inning was finished, the players promptly received a variety of snacks and drinks, all supplied by one of the mothers, of course.

This compulsion to feed children after a game surely evolved from the old tradition of providing sliced oranges and paper cups filled with water at soccer games. Over the years, however, what was once a method of hydrating athletes has been distorted into yet another opportunity for mothers like me--mothers who are doing the best they can to have all their children's uniforms clean and their equipment loaded in the car before the game--to fail miserably. After-game snacks are no longer about hydration; they were about one-upping the sorry mother who brought the kids raisins the week before.

In the league in Florida, signing up for snack duty was a mother's first responsibility after filling out order forms for uniforms and her own "I'm [child's name here]'s Mother" t-shirt. (Heaven help you if you don't wear one of those shirts to a game, especially if you are the same mother who brought raisins.) I spent so much time signing up for duty and filling out order forms that I nearly missed all the major plays in Ford's first game. I thought I was there to watch baseball. Apparently I was there to prove what kind of mother I am, which in fact turns out to be the kind of mother who can't leave the field without losing her own son's thermos.

Other mothers, mothers with the "I'm [child's name here]'s Mother" t- shirt, brought an incredible array of after-game snacks, each one outdoing the last, until one parent actually brought fresh waffle cones and ice cream on dry ice. Oh sure, my boys thought things like cupcakes and ice cream after a game were very cool. But even they grew suspicious when one mother brought goodie bags filled with treats and cheap toys for each of the players. Was this a birthday party or a baseball game?

Instead of collecting my boys at the dugout and talking to them about the catch they made at second base, I was searching for them in a mob of kids begging for treats, and then settling fights about who got more and opening plastic straws for drinks in pouches. All of these things -- the drinks and the treats -- would be spilled on the car floor before we got home. And no one would be hungry for the dinner in the crock pot.

When we moved to Maine, Dustin volunteered to coach the boys' Little League team. At the first team meeting, I gathered the other mothers and asked, "Do you guys do after-game snacks here?"

"After-game snacks? What do you mean?"

"Well, in Florida moms sign up to bring snacks for the kids after each game."

The mothers looked confused. They didn't have a clue what I was

talking about. Ah, at last, I thought, there was still a part of the

country where people played baseball without worrying about snacks.

And then a curious thing happened at our first game. Before the second inning, our middle son, Owen, asked me to get him chips and dip and a soda from the concession stand.

"Stay in the game, Owen," I told him. "This isn't eating time. It's baseball time."

"But, Mom, everyone else is eating," he said.

That's when I looked up and for the first time realized that our team was having what amounted to a picnic on the bench. When they went out onto the field, one boy took a ham sandwich with him. Several innings later, I held dripping popsicles while the kids were up at bat.

Forget about after-game snacks; this team wouldn't have any snacks left by the sixth inning.

Coach Dustin, my military-trained husband who loves baseball more than almost anything, was sincerely confused by the baseball-game- turned-picnic-dinner. As more kids came out onto the field with handfuls of food, Dustin grew more flustered. In a moment of frustration, he yelled to me on the stands, "Sarah, could you get out here and coach Third Base, please? And how about First Base? Could you coach that one, too?" (By the look on his face, I knew what Dustin was really saying was, "Come on, there's no eating in baseball!")

Didn't Dustin realize that I was already busy opening pouch drinks, picking up empty chip bags, and making runs to the concession stand?

There was no time to coach bases. I mean, those pizza slices weren't going to cut themselves down the middle, now were they?

But at least we don't have after-game snacks.