The Black Sox is an 18 year-old and younger baseball team. I joined the team last year as the only freshman and I wasn't expecting to play at all because i was the youngest member of team and I was still learning how to be a good an infielder. But surprisingly, my coach (Erik Schuler) had confidence to play me in the games and the best part is that i never failed him. Except my batting was shaky because the pitching was very fast for me at that high level. After the summer, I was ready to go for the high schoolseason.
For the Alameda High baseball team, I made the junior varsity team and was the starting short-stop and batted lead off hitter the whole season. I did excellent that season having a batting average of .403 and a ridiculous on-base average of .864. Our team had a succesful season and tied for the league championship with Berkley High School. Near the end of the season, I got moved up to varsity.
Varsity was an extremely faster and much more intense level of baseball. The practices were a little more intense but they were also longer. After two weeks of practice, we were in the NCS playoffs. Our first game was against, Rancho Cotati and we beat them easily. The next game, the semi-final, was against Cardinal Newman, and we came out with the win. After the two exciting games, we we're in the NCS finals against Clayton Valley at the A's colliseum. We have already faced them earlier in the season and we beat them. We pitched the same person who pitch to them the first game which i thought was a mistake. Their first batter lead off their team with triple. Our team only had two hits the whole game. One from Dan Smith (Spike) and the other from Joe Norton. After Joe's hit, I pinch ran for him. This was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my whole life. The pitcher picked me off. Even though I thought I was safe, I went back into the dug-out and I felt so terrible that i just sat the very end of the bench embarrassed and pissed off. After we lost the game 3-1, I had a very quite car ride home. When I got home, I knew I wasn't going to anything besides lay down, think about what happened and get more pissed off. So I thought of something else to do. Then a very touching thought came to me. I was thinking to my self, why i love baseball so much and the first thought i had was that it was fun. After that, I realized what I was gonna do. So i called some friends if they wanted to go play some stick ball (playing baseball with a wood bat and a tennis ball). We played, laughed, and just had a great time. After I got home from playing stick ball, I realized that it was okay being picked off because baseball is all about having fun and enjoying the game. The most awful thing happened in the best day of my life. After that game/day, whenever something bad happens while I'm playing, i just remember that im out here playing ball with my friends having fun.
One of the things I hoped I would start learning more about when we started out this year was student sports; it's really a whole world that I was never myself involved in and still don't know much about. And I really haven't been disappointed. Lots of student athletes, it turns out, have great stories to tell and things to say about their sport. Your contribution here is a really great one.
ReplyDeleteHere's another story that's kind of similar to yours, and also really well written. You might like it:
http://simonsayslol.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-third-race.html