Baseball season is here. With the sound of the phrase, “Batter Up!” comes our column about baseball moms.

Quick disclaimer here – I love me some baseball moms. Many of my great friends are baseball moms, and they all know they are crazy. As in capital C crazy, but I love them anyway and they laugh at themselves right along with me because we all know not to take ourselves too seriously.

There are a few types of baseball moms and if you hang around the little league fields long enough, you’re bound to run into all of them (or identify yourself as one of them):

Megaphone Mom — Except she doesn’t have a megaphone, she’s just LOUD. It doesn’t matter if she’s yelling at her kid to slide, telling the outfield to play deep, letting the team know where the play is at, or calling the pitches in tandem with the umpire, she has zero hesitation letting herself be heard.

Snowflake Mom — Always the worrier, she wants to coordinate a snack schedule for eighth graders on practice days, so they aren’t hungry. She texts the coach urging him to include extra water breaks because the forecast calls for 80 degrees. She’ll argue the radar on her phone shows the lightning is now within range (when it is seven counties over) and the game needs to be called.

Fashionista Mom — It’s Little League and unless your life is more exciting than mine, we’re all hitting up the same Sonic drive-thru for dinner to go home and help with the same math homework. The third row of the bleachers does not warrant anything that can’t be purchased at the local spirit wear store and mom dress code requires a messy bun or ponytail.

Busy Bee Mom — Sending work emails, typing up the minutes from last night’s PTO meeting, and scheduling three appointments from the bleachers, Busy Bee Mom tends to make some of us question if we do enough. Oftentimes, she’s multitasking out of necessity; she’s a single mom, has a long commute, has multiple kids, or some other life circumstance that means she has to make the most of each minute. Still, it’s hard not to get down on yourself when you see how much she can accomplish in one practice.

Stop, Drop, and Roll Mom — We assume there is a mom in that SUV, but then again none of us have seen her. Never at a practice or game, but always on time and responds to GroupMe’s from the team, she is a ghost.

Paparazzi Mom — She has an awesome camera that can zoom in to the field six fields to the left, with a shutter speed that can capture the speed of light. She documents every game with the most incredible shots and if you befriend her then she’ll snap a pic of your kid’s home run hit. You’ll thank yourself for taking the time to get to know her.

Smartphone Mom — This is the mom too busy scrolling her social media and responding to texts on her phone to even notice that her kid just hit a wicked triple. She also texts and drives. Friends don’t let friends be the Smartphone Mom.

Grapevine Mom — Always good for the current gossip, but when you get up from the bleachers, your life is going to be part of the gossip she shares with the next mom who sits down. Sometimes a valuable source of information that you may have missed, such as the email update from the school sharing that Field Day has been moved up by two weeks, but always filter what she shares because she isn’t known to verify her information before repeating. Generally worth avoiding.

Hot Mess Mom — She’s my people. She wears a shirt repping the team colors, but it’s wrinkled because she grabbed it off her closet floor, where it’s been laying since the last game two nights ago. The entire family is getting dinner from the concession stand again because on a week with multiple games she believes that pretzels, hotdogs, Gatorade, and Frito-pie make up the food groups.

It’s been said that it takes all kinds and no truer statement can be spoken when talking about the baseball moms of the world. It’s okay to make fun of ourselves and laugh with each other but try not to judge.

It’s a long season and by the time we’re six weeks into a schedule of three games and two practices a week, we’re all praying for the same rain out night … proving that in the bleachers, just like in real life, we are more the same than we are different.