Reading, Writing and Baseball

My 8 1/2 year old son is a baseball nut. Loves the game, excels at playing it, watches it whenever it's on TV... he's amazing. He actually began reading and doing math by watching baseball... reading the names of the players and the names of the teams, adding up balls, strikes, outs and runs, etc.

This year in school he's been struggling to maintain an effective interest in the reading and writing aspects of his education. I thought of using his love of baseball as a way to give him a good example. I was going to explain to him how baseball can get him college scholarships and that baseball players do a lot of reading and writing, researching their opponents, etc.

So, I said to him... "if you want to be a baseball player when you grow up, you're going to have to be a good reader and have good handwriting. Do you know why?"

He answered with excitement. "Yeah! So I can sign all of those contracts!"