Why Is Baseball Important To Me Essay

One summer’s day in 2014, I borrowed my neighbor’s lawn mower and met my teammates at the batting cage. I began mowing down the weeds, while they raked. Others restretched the netting back across the top of the cage. By the time the afternoon came we had a batting cage and a real sense of pride. From that day forward, we began practicing every day, year round. We talked baseball, walked baseball, lived and breathed the stuff. We shared our equipment and made do with what we had. We turned ourselves from a rag-tag bunch of misfits into a

We all have specific talents that make us, humans, who we are. My talent is also my idol. If I did not have this piece of my life, then I feel like it could very well make my college application incomplete. I hope to be a successful prospect of my specific interest. Playing baseball is what I do.

Out of all the vast variety of sports there are, baseball is the most challenging and difficult sport to play. No other sport compares to the degree of difficulty that you have to deal with, like you do in playing the game of baseball. There are so many different elements that make this game the most difficult. Three major elements stick out in my mind as to why this wonderful sport is the toughest of all. The three main factors in my mind are the increased physical and hand eye coordination component, the mental aspect of this game, and the human interdependence between umpires, which are a vital part in every play.

All sports in some ways are difficult. No two sports are exactly the same with the same struggles. Playing baseball is the most difficult due to the physical and mental challenges that are performed by the athletes. Baseball is not a sport that any athlete can just pick up and play.

It wasn’t that long ago when I became in love with the game of baseball. I still remember the day that my neighbor met me outside in the front yard just as we always did. It has been approximately two years ever since that Friday after school he asked me if I want to go to a Angel’s baseball game. I decided to go nothing better to do that day, when I got there it was such a rush seeing all the people that came to watch a baseball game. I followed my neighbor down the line, eagerly I waited to try to obtain a baseball players autograph. My friend gave me a baseball to try to get autographed, and later that day I luckily got my first baseball players autograph. His name was Dino Ebel the bench coach for the Angels,

My breakfast started to creep back up my throat as game time got closer and closer. I walked across the patch of grass behind home plate and was towered over by the 30 foot backstop with a huge net suspended from it. My bulging bag of equipment was beginning to make my shoulder hang. I walked down the steps into the cement dugout and placed my bag under the bench that spanned the entire length of the dugout. I sat down, laced up my cleats, and put my warm-up jacket on in preparation for batting practice. I stepped onto the grass surrounding the dugout to get the feeling of how wet the grass was. I dug my cleats into the grass and began my usual routine of taking certain practice swings as I gazed upon the press box in the wake of the backstop. Preceding the burn in my forearms, caused from the practice swings, I marched behind the dugout to the rows of batting cages to wait my turn in line. Pacing back and forth I knew I had to keep my nervousness to a minimum. I popped in a wad of Big League Chew and continued to

The game of baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday, in 1839- 177 years ago from today. Baseball has been, and is still today, known as America’s favorite pastime; additionally, due to its extensive history and partaking it monumental events, it can as well serve as a great topic to use in a story or poem. Poet Dale Ritterbusch, uses the game of baseball along with metaphors in his poem as a vehicle to write about a more substantial subject in poetry, the Vietnam War. His poem, “Behind the Plate”, can be simply over-looked to one as just a poem about an overweight catcher; nonetheless, when closely examined, it has a deeper meaning. Authors Michael Cocchiarale and Scott Emmert, both agree with the statement that baseball is a great outlet for further analysis of a more important subject: “Writers have seen sports, particularly baseball, as a useful vehicle for cultural and epistemological analysis” (Cocchiarale).

Baseball is an immensely popular American game, known as the "national pastime," played between two teams of nine players each. The basic implements used in the game are a leather-covered ball, wooden bats for hitting the ball, and gloves for catching it. Baseball is played on a large scale in Latin America, Japan, and other places besides the United States, but it is in the United States that it thrives both as a participant's and spectator's sport. It is played at its highest level in the United States and two Canadian cities, where 26 teams make up the American and National Leagues (each with two divisions, East and West). Combined, these leagues are called major-league (professional) baseball.

Yogi Berra believed that, “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.” From my tenure as a college softball pitcher at Point Park University, I learned how imperative being mentally sound is to the game of softball. The legal field is a very demanding field. I know my experiences gained on the diamond will allow me to flourish in a field dependent upon mental toughness.

So I have got out of bed and I have eaten breakfast. I was about to get on the bus when Joey stopped me. He wanted to drive me to school. I have said yes because nobody wants to hear a bunch of kids yelling and screaming for thirty minutes.

There is one location that brought me peace and comfort growing up. There is only one of it’s kind and it will always hold precious childhood memories. In fact, I would even go as far and say that this place taught me things that were just hard for me to grasp growing up. Things like patience and social skills are things I learned from playing this sport and visiting a place that houses one of the best teams. That sport is baseball and that place is Dodgers Stadium.

Growing up, my father always pushed me to do sports. First it started off with soccer, then baseball, a little bit of basketball, and ended with football. I did not understand the competitive and physical benefits at the time but I was still very much interested. Soccer was always a fun sport as a child, aimlessly running around with a ball between my feet. On a couple occasions I happened to get hit in the face with a ball, which developed a disinterest for the sport in six-year old me. Baseball became a big sport for me most of my life, until I was struck at the batter’s mound hard, in my side, by a baseball. I was too afraid to ever go up to bat again. Football, the prime jewel of American sports, was the one thing I played from the second grade to freshman year of high school. I was always too chubby, too slow, to pursue a larger role on the team such as quarterback, or wide receiver, even linebacker, so I was stuck to the offensive line.

I looked down onto the dark, smooth surface. Dirt. With each step of my cleats, there had been a jagged trail that followed. I looked up to find a into the face as young as me, with the opposing colors. We shook hands as I felt the tension rising. “Good luck today,” he whispered to me. I quickly nodded, shook his hand again, and then walked back to my dugout. There, I took place at on the cold, solid bench, and observed my playing conditions. It seemed that the diamond shaped field was shorter than usual, as the sign on the outfield fence read 200, instead of 265. Even though I was far within my thoughts, my hearing still caught on to the famous storybook words, of “Play ball!” as our game begun.

Every individual will – at some point in their life – face obstacles that can hinder their growth; however, it is up to each individual to decide whether these obstacles will stop them entirely or carve them into a stronger, more perseverant being. I have faced various obstacles in my life, but I believe that my obstacles – specifically those related to my shoulder health – have developed me into the resilient man I am today. To explain, three days into my freshman year, I tore my labrum in my right shoulder at football practice. Although I had surgery to repair it, I knew my chances of being a three-sport athlete were diminished. I was forced to stop playing football and wrestling, but I was lucky enough to be cleared to play baseball. High school baseball was my dream ever since I was a child, so I knew what it meant to the younger kids in my community. Now, it was my time to show them who I was, and I refused to let that be taken from me. For this reason, I began devoting much of my time to baseball.

The air was beginning to cool as the sun set just behind the trees beyond the left field wall. I dug my cleats into the dirt inside the batters box until I felt grounded and secure. Looking down I touched each corner of the plate with my bat as I had done so many times before. Slowly, I lifted my head and initiated the stare down with the pitcher, focusing on the position of his throwing hand preparing myself for the same sequence I had experienced a thousand times. Over my left shoulder, I could hear my coach voice his last words of encouragement and say, “let it rip” as he stood just off the third base line. I was in my element. Everything felt so familiar, yet the result would be quite different this time and the first game of my senior season would unknowingly shape the next 8 years of my life.