Dear baseball, it’s been a long haul over these past 16 years. From the good times to the times that made me want to quit playing the game that I love. There have been more ups and downs than I can count. From the walk-offs, I’ve hit to the walk-offs I’ve given up. There is nothing else that I want to have devoted so much time and effort to. This has been the one thing that has always been constant in my life. From friends coming and going and people coming in and out of my life, there has always been a way to keep you involved. Just to start off with, I would like to say thank you for kicking my ass over the years because it has turned me into the stubborn, hard-headed individual that I am today, and because of that, I will forever be grateful. There is no other game that will make you feel like the king of the world one night and absolutely nothing the next night. There have been times that I almost hung up the cleats for good, this last year being one of them, but every time I go out to throw or turn on a brewer game I am thankful that I didn’t go through with that because I am not ready for that day to come.
Baseball is a funny game for many reasons, but the main one is how hard it will kick you when you are down. With that being said, it is very similar to life in that way. The game that I grew to love also showed me that I can hate something just as much sometimes. The constant failure that comes with being a baseball player is something that you have to experience to truly understand. To be considered a great hitter you still fail 7/10 times hitting and for a pitcher you will average over a run per game.
Now the difference between the greats and the people that didn’t make it is their minds. I think this is the same for ordinary people too and this is the greatest lesson I have learned from the game that I love so much. This is that you are going to fail in life and things are going to get hard. It doesn’t matter how hard these times get because the most important thing is how you recover from these failures. You only have two options when terrible things happen to you: you can roll over and give up, or you can fight through the hard times and work back to a place where you want to be. It is a beautiful thing because the game of baseball is a direct representation of this. There are thousands of examples of guys having one really good year and then being released from their team, or someone having a terrible year and then breaking out and becoming a future Hall of Famer. This gets into the next lesson that baseball has taught me. This is to never give up, but to also never get comfortable. In my opinion, when someone gets comfortable with where they are it is much easier to fall into the same cycle of daily life. Personally, this idea terrifies me and it is something that I strive to avoid. This is partially why I want to be a teacher since no day will be the same since new lessons will be taught daily. There are many different things from baseball that have shaped who I am today. Learning to work and trust people you are on a team with is another big one for me. I struggle with this, but as the years go on I am always improving on this skill.
I think that the biggest thing I have got from baseball is an out from everyday life. There is nothing that I have hated more than baseball, but I always come back to it. It’s an addiction that will forever be a part of my life. There were plenty of bad days that I can remember, where I would get home and go hit or play catch with my dad and everything would be better. I used baseball throughout growing up as my out, and a way for me to get away from everything that was bothering me in life. I also don’t think I would be here in college without it. Being able to play was always my motivation to do well in school. No matter how angry or frustrated I got in school, especially in math, I always made sure to pull good grades so I could go out and forget about life four days a week in the spring. This is hard for me to explain, but everyone has something like this and I am lucky to have found it at a young age.
By the time I was a senior in high school I had committed to playing baseball at St. Norbert. The dreams of little me were finally coming true. I had secured my starting spot in the varsity rotation, I had a good group of friends, and I was joining the small percentage of people that get to play college baseball. Unfortunately for me, I had taken the last three months of high school baseball for granted because I had gotten comfortable with how I was performing. Our first regional round of playoffs was against a team that we beat twice in the last month so no one was super concerned about it. I had started against them a few weeks before our game and had thrown a complete game shutout, so going in, I was confident about starting and winning this game. I had also hit well against them, so I broke my normal pregame ritual of hitting a few days before the game to rest up instead. Unfortunately, this came back to bite me. We went on to lose this game, and to make it worse I was the last out of the game. Something inside of me changed that day, and the feeling I had walking off the field for the last time is something I never want to experience again, even though I will have to eventually. Everything that I had known came crashing down around me, no more bus rides with the boys or late-night BP sessions under the lights after practice. The core group of us that had played up during youth together had come to an end. I don’t know if this was so hard for me because it was truly the end of my childhood, or because I knew that I would never play the game I love again with my best friends. From that day on I decided not to get comfortable with my performances and to always push myself to be better because I never wanted to feel that way after a game again.
Over the years I have made more friends and memories through this game than anywhere else. The bonds between teammates and coaches are something that I will forever cherish and be thankful for. The other main thing that has come out of this is that I have learned to fail, win, lose, lead, and many other things throughout my career. Not only has it created and shaped me as
a person but also created a very large part of my love for teaching and my work effort. With all this being said I think that a giant thank you is owed to the game that has been around longer than almost everyone in my life. Without it, I would not be the person I am today and I will forever be grateful for the game of Baseball.
