After Baseball Personal Narrative

About three weeks ago, the Packer Varsity baseball team beat Berkeley Carroll school for the first time in twelve years and in glorious fashion. Tears streamed down my face as our winning run crossed the plate in extra innings, dust flying up as my teammates and I mobbed each other at the plate. Yet a few short days later, our team was blindsided by the news that St. Ann’s had pulled off back to back upsets to squeak their way into the playoffs ahead of us - just as our season seemed to be looking up, it was over.

Softball isn’t all smiles and winning. Sometimes things could almost get sweet. For instance, we were the first team to ever beat Gladstone. I remember it was the second game of the season and we were playing at the dome. I remember Zeke punching the air, “Hell yeah! That’s what I want to see!” and telling us we didn’t have to clean up the equipment because we had won. We went home on a high, so incredibly proud to be on that team.

Ever since I could remember, I have always had a great interest and love for the game of baseball. As a kid, I would spend countless hours in the backyard with my grandfather, or even by myself, tossing, hitting and fielding a baseball. When I wasn't in the yard pretending to be Nomar Garciaparra I would watch the Boston Red Sox games on TV with my Grandfather.  Even in my early adolescence, as impatient as most are, I had the patience to sit there and watch the Sox.With my eyes glued to the screen with a look of anticipation fixed on my face ready to mimic my grandfather with the excitement of a home run hit or the frustration of Mo-Vaughn striking out. Call me crazy, but I was addicted, even as a young boy, to Boston Red Sox baseball.

As soon as I made my very first varsity baseball appearance, I knew that I had to be the very best I could be or there was never going to be a chance of ever putting on that white and maroon crisp cleaned dri-fit Russel number 18 jersey. My heart was beating beyond faster than it should be at my first at bat because I had always heard “Just wait you haven't seen nothing yet, wait till you face them varsity pitchers.” Players older than me had constantly been saying that throughout my freshman season and it kept repeating over and over in my head like a broken record. Although I had studied the pitcher and had seen with my very own eyes, he wasn’t as good as everyone talked him up to be. I was still overawed and very nervous about messing up.

I step up to the plate. The hot lights of the Mets stadium hit my face. Clayton Kershaw was pitching. He is the best pitcher in the MLB. The pitch comes. It was a slow hanging curveball right over the middle. I swing will all my might. I hear the crack of the bat and I see the ball fly over the fence. I trot around the bases and I am approaching home plate. I step on home then I wake up.

I am a baseball player who loves to play baseball and very good at it,

Nothing beat the overwhelming emotion of stepping up on the pitcher’s mound and hearing the chant of my name, my heart clawing its way out of my chest. Before throwing the first warmup pitch, my mind raced through the entire season. How, as a team, we have made history winning all three major tournaments in the high school level. We had beaten many top competitors and lost plenty crushing defeats as well. My mind pondered, which situation will I be in today, glorious victory or destructive loss. This is the feeling I lived for during high school, it was my sole purpose. However, this was merely one minute of that fateful day in which I played prodigiously trying to win a baseball game.

I love the smell of fresh cut grass on a beautiful baseball field. The look of it is amazing, but the smell brings back so many past memories. All through my life I've played baseball for travel teams and such. Playing on the best fields in the nation, and the fields always getting looked after. So whenever I step on a Baseball field now, I'm taken back to my times as a kid playing baseball with my friends over the summer going to all types of places.

We were in the streets of the neighborhood, Ann Elizabeth to be exact. We had just began to play a game of baseball with my brothers new metal bat. Mom had already left for work and my dad was getting ready to leave as well. He was running sort of late. My brother and I were about to start the game, we check around us to make sure no one was near us to play a safe game. We saw our little sister and brother at the front doors neighbor's house playing with their daughter last time we checked. As my brother threw the baseball, I was getting ready to swing then bam! Before I knew it the bat had already crashed into my little brother's head. Let me remind you that this was a metal bat. A metal bat had ran cross my little brother's head. I was so terrified. My little brother was only 4 at that time. I did not know what to do. I held him in my arms. He was still conscious. I was holding my hand over his open wound. He bled a lot. My other brother had ran to let my dad know. My dad came rushing outside,

I was walking off of the field with my teammates after two blowouts. In Steamboat on the second day. All of us were so excited to get to the pool and have some fun! Me and my baseball teammate that I was staying with meet each other there. We hurried downstairs put on our swimsuits and before you can blink we were in the water. When everybody was in the pool and before you knew it we were playing 500 with the football. After we did that for a couple of hours we went to got to the hot tub and that's when everything went bad. We had our older teammates brother which was 16. We saw some other kids in the hot tub. Then we went in and then Kelin the 16 year old said,” What are you guys here for?”

did things people asked me to, but nothing more than what was expected. I faced very few setbacks. School was great and I put little effort into it, and still earned decent grades. Within softball I was working at an acceptable pace. Every now and then I wondered what I could achieve with a little effort. I had a pretty good attitude towards life and was proud of who I was. I lived up until 7th grade with thinking I was doing fine. It became an issue when I would want to be better at things, but I did not want to try hard.

A suicide squeeze is a desperate play in baseball that I have seen a lot playing catcher - and I’ve lived through the same kind of desperate effort to come back from deep losses to solid wins. I started playing at age four and never stopped. I am currently the captain of my high school team and co-captain of a competitive summer team. I am obsessed with this game, because I find it to be a perfect combination of athleticism and intellectual strategy. It is also a terrific environment to develop leadership skills.

Six years ago I played my very first baseball game and I was the pitcher. Now you may think that when I was four I couldn't pitch. Well you were right I just played next to the pitching machine. Getting any baseball that came my way. Popfly, grounder, line drive, you name it I caught it. I was very good at baseball and I loved to play baseball.

My two closest friends in the baseball community have known about a struggle I've had for some time now. I've been wondering for sometime now, what would life be like without baseball. So, baseball and I are ending our 25 year relationship so I can spend more time with my daughter and traveling a lot more. I was blessed to coach Chris Tomkins, Mitchell David Crimmins, Brady Breitbach, John Thill, Jeremy Vaassen, Brett Bortscheller, Dan Millius, and Nickolas Kutsch for their entire high school career and wanted to go along an incredible ride with them. When they were sophomores we set a goal to make it to the state tournament when they played varsity. Not only did we make it to state, but we started off the season 19-0, ranked number 1 the

In the spring of seventh grade at Ridgefield Academy all the boys would go outside and play baseball at the end of school. Every day after playing outside we came inside to get changed to leave. There was always a bit of tension from the games and the chirps that were dealt out. On this particular day I walked into the locker room and grabbed Nick Lange’s wooden baseball and began messing around with it; banging it up against things and using it as a hockey stick. When he asked for the bat I must have said no and he lunged at me and went for the bat. He grabbed the bat and while we both had a grip on it, knocked me in the head a bit, not even hard enough to leave a mark. I stammered a bit and got very mad. I looked up at him and swung right