"2001 Between the Lines" is a series of columns by Magazine writers looking back at small, but significant, moments in sports.

A pickoff at second. A fearless header. A smile as broad as the basket was high. The first faceoff.

At a time of year when we count our blessings, at the end of a year in which blessings seem to count more than usual, I have much too much to be thankful for.

Chief among my blessings are our four wonderful children, each of whom partake in sports. That isn't why they're wonderful. But it is why my family life and career life can sometimes feel seamless.

So the highlights of my sports year aren't necessarily World Series games or the Super Bowl or a night at the Garden. They're more often than not the little vignettes involving my kids, played out on Little League diamonds and school gym floors and fields without bleachers. I store them up, then parcel them out to myself in quiet moments.

I have no time for college football because, well, I have no time for college football. A fall Saturday for me can consist of three soccer games, one of which I coach, and a pair of baseball games.

In the winter, when I give up coaching, all four kids play basketball, while the 15-year-old boy also plays squash and one of the 7-year-old twin girls plays ice hockey.

In the spring ... well, one Saturday last spring, I coached the girls in their co-ed T-Ball game, drove an hour to Bridgeport, Conn., to watch our high school freshman start a varsity baseball game at the minor league ballpark there, then came back home to coach the 11-year-old boy's Little League game.

The timing on Saturday is always tricky, the pace almost always frantic, the mini-van living proof of the chaos theory. But I love every Clark Griswold minute of it.

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The other day, a Saturday naturally, I experienced double delights within minutes of each other, at adjacent athletic facilities. By way of introduction, Elizabeth is a classic tomboy, a dynamo who tends to take over whatever game she is playing. The more feminine Eve usually operates in her twin's athletic shadow, but she has incipient skills of her own.

As it happens, their basketball and hockey clinics overlap at the local middle school. Eve, representing the local stationery emporium, scored two quick baskets in succession to put her game away, beaming after each one. Then it was over to the ice rink, where her sister shoved aside the boys so she could take the first faceoff of her first game. Won it, too.

John, the sixth grader, keeps us very busy with travel baseball (three seasons), soccer (two seasons) and tennis, not to mention his two basketball leagues. He is often the best player on the field and always the most generous. As his soccer coach, I can tell you that I sometimes wish he would keep the ball rather than pass it to a teammate, but that would penalize his vision and his heart.

He is fearless, too. I am right now thinking of a midfield header he took during a game, rising up over a knot of players to deflect the ball to our left wing.

John is also a remarkably smooth infielder in baseball. There was one game last fall, his birthday game, when he went 5-for-5. His team, though, was hanging on for dear life as the sun went down on a strange field, having used up all its pitchers. John, playing third, dug the second out from beneath the dust -- I would tell you more but I couldn't even see the play in the gloaming. The next ground ball was even more difficult, harder hit, to his right. But he found that one too, and threw the ball to first on a line as straight as a surveyor's. He gave himself -- and his team that would go undefeated -- a great birthday gift.

Our oldest, Bo, is a different kind of baseball player, more of a power hitter and pitcher than his brother. Little bit more of a hot dog, too. While his cockiness gets him into trouble sometimes, it sometimes gets him out of a jam. In one varsity game last spring, he pulled off a major league-quality pickoff play with the shortstop, whirling to nail the runner at second.

For all the games I saw last year, my favorite moment happened in the kitchen. Bo had an away baseball game that afternoon; he hadn't seen much varsity action yet. We were out at the premiere of 61*, so we didn't go. When we got home late that night, there was a message waiting for us: SAVE THE NEWSPAPER TOMORROW.

I gave him the unopened local paper at dawn the next morning. He went right to the high school sports page. After a moment, he started smiling. Then laughing. Then he showed it to me.

According to the paper, "Freshman Bob Wolf pitched four innings with five strikeouts for his first career win."

Journalism, albeit sloppy journalism, gave both of us this huge kick. Like I said, seamless.

Steve Wulf is executive editor of ESPN The Magazine.