Shopping for clothes ranks at the top of that list. That includes shopping for athletic wear.

To my great delight, Kelley Connolley recruited my daughter, Pitt, to play softball this year. We went out before the first practice and purchased a batting helmet. We skipped, for the moment, cleats and all the other gear she needed and with a borrowed glove and tennis shoes, she set off for her first practice.

Prior to her second practice last Saturday, my wife sent me out with Pitt to buy some sweats and cleats.

We were late setting off on our appointed rounds Saturday afternoon and I was pushing to get everything purchased before practice started at 2:30 p.m.

We stopped at Mortex for sweatpants and, in fairly short order, we found a pair that fit.

While Pitt was in the dressing room, I found a pair of N.C. State shorts that I thought she might like.

The look she shot me when I held them up told me very clearly we were not buying those shorts.

Nevertheless, we had met the minimum requirement for sweatpants and we quickly paid for them and headed to Sportsworld to buy cleats.

Chris Wiley apologized when we walked in and told me he has been reducing his shoe stock in recent years. He didn’t have any shoes in Pitt’s size, so I rushed out the door to Dick’s Sporting Goods. We got there and found a pair of cleats that fit, threw them back in the box and paid for them.

As we got back to the truck, I realized there wasn’t time to go home and change into all our new gear. So Pitt crawled into the back seat and slid the sweatpants on, then climbed back into the front seat. A few minutes later I heard the grumbling.

“What’s wrong,” I asked.

“These shoes don’t match anything I’m wearing,” she announced.

“Don’t match!” I thought to myself. What ball player outside the major leagues ever thought about making sure his cleats matched his pants?

I rolled my eyes and struggled to hold in a sarcastic harummph.

I told her I thought black and white matched anything. Apparently, I learned, they don’t.

So my mismatched daughter practiced Saturday afternoon through the indignity of it all.

And I declared to myself that this was the last time I’ll ever go shopping for clothes with any member of the female persuasion in my family.

Despite the wardrobe malfunction, I’m looking forward to spring baseball and softball.

For years as a teenager and a college student, I coached T-ball teams in Wendell. It was a wonderful way to spend a summer. One day last week, I ran into Tom Norris, whose son Timmy was on the first T-ball team I ever coached.

We shared several laughs over some of the antics of T-ball players. It was wonderful to remember some of those incidents. More than once I remember chasing after a base runner after they passed first base and continued running straight into right field.

Softball and baseball are great fun and I know our family will enjoy time at the ballfield this summer watching Pitt.

But I’m not sure anything beats T-ball for the fun and entertainment.

Be sure you catch a game at some point this year.