Adventures of the Boy: Volume One

The boy made up his mind when he was 7-yeard old. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a ballplayer,” he told his parents. He spent hours on the diamond, the back of his neck burning under the summer sun and his knees skinned from stretching a single into a double. The boy begged Dad for one more catch and fell asleep each night to the familiar voice of the home team announcer crackling through the radio.

He loved baseball, and he wasn’t alone. Aside from the dozen football players and the handful of astronauts the entire first grade class wanted to go pro. But the puberty hormones the nurse warned about in fifth grade must have done something terrible to the boys. As the kids grew up, their aspirations changed. They started playing Sega instead of stickball and chasing girls rather than fly balls. And it only got worse.

Each year, the class lost a couple right fielders to the real world, as pitchers decided they would be policemen and first basemen switched to firemen. By high school, the boys had turned into young men. The lineup— now filled with doctors and lawyers and teachers— dwindled to one.

The boy tried to fight it and hold onto his childhood dream. “I’ll be the one who makes it,” he told himself between reps in the weight room and between cuts off the tee. “I just have to work harder.” He was constantly refining his swing, calling everyone in his phone book to play. When no one agreed, he cleaned his sister’s room so she would throw him batting practice.

Finally, when he started looking at colleges, the scrappy second baseman had to grow up…but only a little. Sure the boy’s dreams have changed but his passion for sport has not faltered.

With the same zeal, the boy hones his writing as he did his swing. English classes are his new batting practice; the professors are his new coaches. And the boy pushes himself just as hard.

In terms of the big leagues, he may have struck out swinging but it will take more than that to get him out of the game. Today the boy tells his family, “Someday, I’m going to be a sportswriter.”