On summer mornings, my 7-year-old son slips on his Crocs and shoots out the back door. Seconds later, he returns and breathlessly peels apart the morning newspaper.

As I eat my scrambled eggs, he announces the previous night’s baseball scores with fist pumps or heavy sighs — Braves, Red Sox, Lookouts.

There was a time recently when I worried he would turn bitter about baseball. For a few weeks last month, he practiced with the all-star unit from his 7- and 8-year-old baseball league. Then, on the last day of tryouts, he got cut.

We were driving to Nashville on a family outing when the coach called. As I drove, I watched my son’s eyes in the rearview mirror. I could tell he was listening for clues to the verdict.

“No problem,” I told the coach. “Sure. He understands. Maybe next year. I think he was the youngest kid left in the group, anyway. Thanks for all you do for the boys.”

I holstered my cell phone and delivered the news. “I’m sorry, buddy, but you got cut from the team.”

I saw his shoulders slump. He broke eye contact with me in the mirror and turned to stare out the window, but he never sniffled.

Meanwhile, in the coming days, I noticed a quiet transformation in him. Instead of abandoning baseball for the year, he became obsessed.

One day, when I arrived home from work, there was a commotion in the backyard. TWHACK, TWHACK — It sounded like somebody was playing a base drum with a tennis racket.

My son was walloping baseballs into a blue plastic tarp that he had secured to the swing-set with bungee cords. Somehow, he had taught his 2-year-old brother how to sit behind a net on a five-gallon bucket and toss waist-high practice pitches. With each swing, I watched my son shift his weight and drive the ball into the tarp.

He signed up for two weeks of baseball camp — one at a local prep school and another called Big League Dreams at AT&T Field, home of the Chattanooga Lookouts. Every morning, he packed his gear, filled his water bottles and pulled on his baseball pants. By evening, his pants were grass-stained, and trails of perspiration glistened on his dust-covered neck, yet he was pulling me off the couch for more baseball.

“Come on, Dad, I need to practice more,” he said. “Please.”

He invented an outfielder’s drill and instructed me sternly never to throw the ball directly to him. He wanted to charge the ball, dive left or right and chase down fly balls thrown intentionally over his head. Any time I mentioned being tired, he urged me on until the fly balls were swallowed up by twilight.

On the last day of his camp at AT&T Field, dads were invited to watch the boys practice. The 7-year-old boys gathered in left field for a game called “Web gems.” As the boys took turns front and center, a coach lobbed the ball left and right at increasingly impossible angles. Each time, my son stepped up, gathered his balance, rolled forward on his toes and launched himself to catch the ball.

When the group of 20 boys had been reduced to two, my son stepped up for a toss. Diving to his right, he reached across his body with his gloved hand. Even when he was fully extended, the ball was still a few inches beyond his glove. Just as the collected dads began to groan in appreciation of the near catch, my son extended his right hand and snared he ball bare-handed 2 inches off the outfield grass.

“I can’t believe he caught that,” the coach said.

My son was beaming as he rolled back to his feet, and he looked me dead in the eyes.

In life, adversity is a gift. It teaches courage, passion and persistence. As we walked off the emerald green baseball field, I put my hand on top of his cap and squeezed.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to.

E-mail Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com