Analysis Of Community And Growth By Jean Vanier

I have loved baseball for years, but by the time I was a freshman at Laurel High School, I had precious little experience. The chances of me playing baseball in most high schools were slim, but this was Laurel. America’s favorite pastime was treated there as a vestige of years long forgotten. The athletic director ignored us, the students didn’t support us, and the school funded us just enough to say that they had a baseball program. Tucked away in a forgotten corner of the campus in the gloomy shadows of the tower from which football games were announced, the baseball diamond was the school’s disgrace. The dugouts were dismal cinder block bunkers with peeling paint and a propensity to flood. Grass was scarce where it was supposed to be and

In his autobiography Life Lessons from Little League, Vincent Fortanasce says “Winning is never final, and losing is never fatal.” At the end of a game, one team will win and the other will lose. Failure to accept this concept has become detrimental to American youth sports organizations. Our society has become infatuated with winning, and all of the additional perks associated with it. What is considered the “best” for children as young as five years old has grown to an unrealistic extent. Parents want their children to be in a reputable organization, young athletes want to play with highly skilled teammates, and coaches want to recruit talented players all in hopes of being the absolute “best”. The amount of young athletes, ranging from five to fourteen years old, participating in local sports organizations has declined within the last two decades due to the highly competitive and unhealthy environments they are being exposed to.Taking pride in your local community has decreased form an athletic point of view. Representing the place I grew up in was a motivating factor when I put my uniform on for every single softball game I played in high school. I had the privilege to play on the field next to girls I had grown to love the sport with ever since our tee ball days. Today, young athletes are branching out from their homegrown roots to play for club teams who recruit players from a larger region. The popularity of traveling teams has substantially diluted the

Imagine standing on a softball field expected to perform at the age of 5. Even though the butterflies in my stomach were starting a war, nothing was going to stop me from stepping on that field to play my first tee ball game as a Little Tiger. Fans cheered, but what I noticed most was a little boy in the outfield picking his nose. Standing in the box, I was terrified; the field looked huge. I had never seen anything like this before, but I knew that the little boy was the person I needed to hit the ball to, so I hit the ball as hard as I could. The ball went soaring through the air like a bird on fire. Dropping from the air, it rolled to the fence. At that time, I knew I had fallen in love with the game of softball. I was smiling from ear to ear, I couldn’t believe I had hit the ball that far! Both sides screamed, yelled, and shouted with excitement. Was all this commotion for me? I rounded first, but I couldn’t go to second because my teammate, Kylie Leach, didn’t run. I didn’t know what she was doing. Sadly, the batter after me hit a ground ball to the pitcher, and the other team threw him out at first.

With each throw to home plate he felt a little bit more pain. Instead of resting him Mark Hyman sent his son out to pitch the very next game. Stories like these are not uncommon with anyone who child has played on any team. Over the last few years, adults have taken over kid’s sports. Many children under the age fifteen required medical treatment for sports injuries and nearly half of them are only the result of simple overuse. The quest to turn children into superstar’s are taken a toll on their

My personal experience gives me emotional strength and purpose to serve the vulnerable sections of society through pediatric health care. Growing up in a remote town in

​I’ve been playing baseball since I let out my first cries. For me baseball is a battleground. The side that is better prepared and executes well is the one who usually wins. Just like how you don’t go out to war without any training, the same goes for baseball you don’t go and just play baseball. Practice in general is important for anything that you do; it allows you to experience a situation during a time where it’s not important. I can’t recall a time where I didn’t practice and performed during a game. Baseball has taught me that if I want to succeed you have to prepare yourself. It doesn’t just happen. In terms of school, imagine going to take an exam without sort of studying you won’t do so well. Apart from practice, which prepares you physically, if you’re not mentally right, you won’t do so well.

The experience taught me to work hard to achieve my goal of becoming a doctor and helping as many people as I can. It taught me not to waste my time. All of my dedication has pushed me to be the best person I can be so in the future I can feel confident about all of my choices. Volunteering at Children’s Hospital offered me an experience that pushed me to strive for no less than excellence. By volunteering, I watched my dreams and ambitions get closer, and although the process is a slow and difficult one, every second of it was worth it because I was able to watch everything I value become

Major League baseball players have an impact on the youth of today. They are role models, both good and bad, for young people who look up to them and want to be just like them. In the articles reviewed, there are examples of how baseball players have inspired people, showed and received respect for their actions, put their team before themselves, gave back through charities, and made mistakes but overcame them.

Lights blaring into my eyes, the crack of the bat, the shouting of the overly-devoted parents, the salty aroma arising off of the freshly roasted peanuts, all came together to create the overwhelming presence of a little league baseball game. This was a place where I spent most of my time on week day afternoons, in the spring, watching my brother succeed at America’s pastime. He was really quite good at this sport called baseball; he had just been granted the position of starting pitcher for the team. Sometimes things that have occurred in my life, and stuff I have received, that I may not have necessarily deserve, can be taken for granted. However, after what was about to take place my eyes are given a new perspective.

In today’s society, there are many ways in which people communicate within their individual community. One community in which many people do not fully understand is the game of baseball. Baseball is one of the most popular sports in the U.S. and has been deemed America’s pastime. For me, sports are my life, especially when it comes to this particular game. I started playing baseball around the age of 4 and continue to play here at the university for the UC Club Baseball Team.

In addition, Ortiz’s home country, The Dominican Republic, is known to deliver more talent to the major leagues than any other country besides the United States. As a matter of fact, kids there are four times more likely than their American counterparts to reach the major leagues. Dominicans make up between 25 and 40 percent of minor leaguers. The reason why kids choose to dropout out and play baseball instead is to one day get in opportunity to escape poverty and their horrible conditions by playing in the major leagues (Hopkins, 2015). Despite Ortiz’s father being a professional baseball player for the Dominican

The sun has risen and a young boy jumps out of bed with excitement, as he knows today he gets to go to his first professional baseball game. His father had bought him the tickets for his birthday months ago, and the boy had been counting down the days ever since. He put on his favorite ‘Cleveland Indians’ shirt, and ran downstairs to eat his yogurt and waffles for breakfast. As he ate, his mother saw him happily drawing Jacob’s Field, using his brown crayon to put the finishing touches on the base paths. The boy had a penchant attitude for baseball, as it was the first game his father ever taught him to play, and because of that, he would play whenever he could; with rocks and a stick, with his friends in the yard, and in his head when he

These young men sent overseas to live the rough military life didn’t have much to keep them going. One thing they all shared a passion for was baseball, the infantrymen, airmen, and sailors all loved to play baseball. They would create a makeshift baseball diamond where a picked lineup would play the game that let them forget about the troubles they’d faced and the troubles that lie ahead. From London to Berlin they played impressing all whom watched. And even with the war going on baseball was

I knew my transition from an ordinary visitor to a volunteer would be a new and exciting experience. My task in the Summer Reading Program was to register patrons, explain how the program works, and give out prizes at the end of each week. The number of children who registered for the program impressed me. I enjoyed working with these children, since I knew exactly where they got their excitement from. I would look forward to seeing the smiling faces of the children as they received their prizes. Their faces made me reminisce about the joyful moments I had as a child when I couldn't wait for the grand prize week of the Summer Reading Program.

Realising this experience, through self-funding, took hard work and organisation as I worked doing odd jobs, sold cakes in a wide variety of venues, appealed to businesses for support and ran community quizzes. Achieving this goal took determination, but I have always been profoundly interested in how foreign cultures and societies operate, so I persevered. Being the youngest person in the team, I had to be independent and this helped me to work on my communication skills. Whilst there, I experienced many aspects of life from talking to the children and staff at the orphanage to helping at the hospital, it has also been interesting to me to find out about the political and economic situation of the country and the impact at a local level. This trip drastically changed my view of the world and inspired me to want to find out more about how life can be improved for people living in developing