Leadership.

Apologies for being so absent lately.

I’ve seen a whole lot of baseball these last eight days — most of it spectacularly good, with a dose of awful sprinkled in that’s easily washed off — and I should be back now to my semi-normal (that is, predictably erratic) perch at a keyboard, as one of big league baseball’s most meaningful calendar circles approaches.

I want to congratulate the 10 boys who have grown so much in the game of baseball under the guidance of Coach Mike Tovar and Coach Chris “Chilli” Callicutt, learning about technique and about approach, and about character and integrity, all of which persists in different forms, and will continue to pay off between the lines, and in so many other ways whenever it is that each of them is done suiting up, and one day finds himself teaching his own kids.

The Dallas Pelicans just finished going 7-1 in the AAYBA 10U World Series, earning the number one seed in the Platinum Division out of 62 teams coming out of pool play, and ultimately taking third place overall. The team scored 52 runs and allowed 12 in those eight games, but there were other awesome moments this week that happened when the scoreboards were turned off, moments of character-building and understanding what it means to respect the game and how to handle when others don’t, that will endure far longer than any of those numbers.

Hats off to Mike.

And hats off to Jeff Banister.

I don’t know if last night’s ninth inning galvanizes this Rangers team, or if over the next week an unwanted reality settles in further and the club ends up moving veterans for prospects in the kind of deal(s) that are aimed primarily at improving a season other than 2015, but it further galvanized my own certainty that Texas has the right leading man.

I wanted to title this entry “The Spirit of 7 to 6,” after watching Rougie stepping up and Banny stepping in, but I also wanted to explain for a second why I’ve been away.

This is another of those reports that I know will mean more to me in five years or 15 than it does to almost all of you this minute. I know.

But I woke up this morning thinking about baseball — not unusual — and the thing I wanted to say about the two teams I care most about is this:

Give me Mike Tovar.

And give me Jeff Banister.

Photo: Elaine Bell Payne