Personal Narrative: Babe Ruth

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

“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run”(Babe Ruth). I was wondering how much baseball really affected my life and the choices I make. The answer is a lot, and it still continues to leave a mark on this life I love. Over the many years of my involvement in the game I have learned that life is full of ups and downs. Baseball teaches people to bounce back from negatives, this I believe.

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.

I have been playing baseball my whole life, ever since I was three. I admire this game with all of my heart, and I will never give it up.

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.

Clouds mugged the sun of light as the day progressed. Dusk filled the air on the baseball diamond where I would leave my legacy. Forth, was the championship game to be played, and the pressure of the starting pitcher, was not fazing me. In the zone, we said the Little League pledge. Jolts of excitement filled my muscles as I recited the piece that I know all too well. Warming up, I was controlled, and was ready to bring it. The game began with a bang. Strikeout after strikeout I fired, giving my all every single pitch. ‘BOOM’ went the glove after every pitch, whizzed right by the petrified batter. However, this was not much different for our team. Just two hits filled the board, I and my teammate Ian Keth. Scoring off of this was efficient,

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.

It was the last games of the baseball season. We had are worse pitcher pitching for our team. And they had an ok pitcher pitching. We got to the semi finals and our coach was going nuts. I was in the locker room getting ready for the game and my teammates Austin and Tevan were right next to me also getting ready they were one of the best players on the team.

I am currently a senior at Weslaco East High School I was a third grader when baseball had caught my interest, baseball will always have a gigantic impact on my life, because I have met most of my friends through the game ,and I consider them family and my friends fathers, including mine all use to play when they were our age so it basically brought us closer, because we all had something in common. I was originally born in Orlando, Florida, but both my parents decided to come to a very small city called Weslaco, which is in the Rio Grande Valley which can be located in Texas. Weslaco isn’t the biggest City in the world, but this city has made me who I am today and because of this city I have met so many of my friends and family. I have made powerful memories here with the

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.

The best thing that ever happened to me is when my baseball team beat Brandon Valley for the first place position in regionals. Brandon Valley was our rivals and we hated each other for not really any reason. We knew at the start of the game that winning this would put us in first place. We had lost to Brandon Valley twice before but they were beatable. It was a home game near the end of July and sunny. The conditions were great for baseball. Our nerves were high and waiting for the game to start seemed like an eternity.

In 1927, Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees changed the face of baseball by setting numerous records and being arguably one of the greatest baseball teams of all-time. Behind the outstanding play of Babe Ruth, teammate Lou Gehrig was also performing at an amazingly high level but was shadowed by Ruth’s legendary season. Lou Gehrig’s play that season started to declined though due to his concern for his mother while she was in surgery. “His heart wasn’t in the game. All he could think about was his beloved momma” (Bryson 778). And with Lou Gehrig’s decline that season, the spotlight was on Babe Ruth and his legendary season that players today cannot even match.

What a year for Babe Ruth, he had 60 home runs in one season! He had 540 attempts and hit 192 of them. That is a little bit better than his season before where he had 47 home runs and 184 hits. Also this year he had 164 RBI’s compared to his 146 the year before. Which clearly shows improvement in his game. And on the defensive side of the field he is also a pitcher and an outfielder. In 1927 he had 89 strikeouts. He also led them to the World Series and won it. Which makes the Boston Redsoxs even more frustrated since Harry Fraze (Agent for the Red Sox) sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $425,000 in the year 1919 and was soon fired in 1922.

I always consider myself to play Major League baseball; as I grew up; I realized that I would need a backup plan. By the seventh grade I noticed that I liked to do hands on activities and problem solve difficult tasks. I displayed all the interests of an electrical engineer. I believe that the interest really may have started at an even younger age. My father has been a maintenance technician for almost 25 years. In say that, I enjoyed watching my dad fix things which sparked my interest in fixing things, or at least look into the engineering field.