The Life of a Baseball Player
The Life of a Baseball Player Steven Helton University of Kentucky
Composition and Communication 1, Section 001 Professor DeVito September 28, 2011
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The Life of a Baseball Player
Throughout my life I have taken on and will continue to take on many roles. These roles have been roles that I have been forced to take and roles that I have taken voluntarily. For example, I consider myself to be a brother, a musician, a Christian and a friend. However, there is one role that has been prevalent in my life for as long as I can remember, this is the role of a baseball player. Although I would not consider this the most important part I play in life, the lessons I have learned from the sport of baseball have molded me into the person I am today, and will likely continue to be a part of my identity in my future. I have to credit my father for getting me into baseball as a child. The year I turned eight, my dad took on the responsibility of coaching my baseball team so that I could play baseball with my friends from school. There were definitely some down sides to being a coach’s son. My dad was so afraid of being accused of playing favorites that he substituted me out of games more than any of the other kids. In fact, it was a group of other kids’ parents that eventually persuaded my dad that I had earned more playing time with my quality of play. Dad was always a hundred times harder on me than on my teammates. He wanted me to be a good ball player and so he pushed me as hard as he could every time. But there were also some benefits to being the son of a coach. Whenever I needed help with my game, Coach was willing to work with me. I could not even begin to count the hours we spent tossing in the backyard. I often look back on my dad’s decision to coach me as a child, and I know that I would not go back and change it even if I could. Since my dad was the baseball coach, I was expected to take on the role of a baseball player at home as well. I quickly learned that in order to be good at something,
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The Life of a Baseball Player
you had to work at it. This meant that instead of sitting around the house watching television or playing video games, I was outside tossing with my pitch back or hitting off of a tee in my backyard. The work ethic that this instilled in me is still prevalent today in not only athletics, but academics and music as well. The year I turned thirteen, my dad quit coaching my baseball team. He wanted to focus on my little brother, as well as take me out of the security blanket of being a coach’s son. I was offered and accepted a spot on the Northern Kentucky Knights, a travel team that also just happened to have roster spots available for my three best friends. I began to find self-confidence in my ability to play the game. Being an athlete brings an attitude that transfers into everyday life. Nothing spells pressure like pitching in the AA state tournament championship game up by one run as a thirteen year old. I began to develop what my father calls “the gunslinger’s mentality.” In baseball this refers most of the time to a pitcher that challenges the hitter with his best pitch and dares him to hit it. I have needed this frame of mind many times in my life. The gunslinger’s mentality helped get me through two challenging injuries my junior and senior year. Between physical therapy and working through schoolwork or actually playing the game when I got back, I always needed the gunslinger’s mentality. This picture was taken after my first game back on the high school team after my two injuries. Although I did not get a hit, I still loved every second of being on the field. I have learned to apply the gunslinger’s mentality to other areas of life as well. I have learned to give it my best and let whatever happens happen. Worrying about the situation does not ever make it any better.
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The Life of a Baseball Player
Looking back to my sophomore year in high school, I had begun to see all of my hard work really pay off. I was already throwing the baseball eighty-one miles per hour and hitting over three hundred, as a starter on my high school team. I had two colleges sending me letters about playing baseball for them and a few more that were talking to me about coming to see me play my junior year. But it was not meant to be. While playing basketball my junior year, I landed awkwardly on my right leg and heard a pop in my knee. I had just torn my right Anterior Cruciate Ligament. For those of you who do not know, tearing the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) is the injury that all athletes fear. The ACL basically holds the knee to the bottom of the leg; so having to replace it is pretty tough on an athletic career. The surgery cost me my baseball season as well as my basketball season. The letters stopped coming, and to top it all off I developed a blood clot, which affected my metabolism. My weight dropped from a healthy one hundred seventy pounds to a sickly one hundred thirty five. I still held on to my identity as a baseball player though. I was convinced that I would make it all up my senior year. Life hardly ever goes the way it is planned though, and during the second game of my senior basketball season, I tore my left ACL. Here I faced my first identity crisis. I had gone from being an athlete to hardly being able to get up the stairs at my home. Any hope I had of playing college baseball had disappeared in the blink of an eye. Now all that was left was to pick up the pieces. With a lot of hard work and the help of some excellent physical therapists, I did manage to come back for the end of baseball season my senior year, when this picture was taken, but I was completely out of rhythm. I went hitless in six at bats and struggled on the mound. I had always thought of life at college as a way to continue being a baseball player. Now I had no idea what to expect.
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The Life of a Baseball Player
Here at college, life as a former athlete has been much better than I thought it would be. I still see myself as a baseball player, and I am getting a chance to play again thanks to the club baseball team. However, the impacts that baseball has on my life today extend more into my attitude than in the sport itself. I plan to continue to find part of my identity around the sport of baseball as an adult. While majoring in secondary education, I will be minoring in coaching. Hopefully with the minor I can get a job as a baseball coach as well as a high school teacher. One of the main points I hope to teach as a coach is teamwork. Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned as a baseball player is the value of team. This includes sacrifice of self at times for the good of the team. Sometimes a player is asked to bunt a man to third instead of swinging at a pitch he knows he can hit. Real life works the same way. People working together always get the job done better than a group doing their own thing.
This is one aspect I see when I look at this picture. It was taken at the last game before districts my senior year. The team would go on to lose in the second round of the district tournament in extra innings, one run away from advancing to regionals. Although
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The Life of a Baseball Player
I did not get back in time to be a big part of our run, I still feel a sense of accomplishment through what the team has done. By far the most important thing that baseball has done for me is allowing me to have friendships that will last a lifetime. One of these friendships was with our assistant coach, Jerry Kalfrat (shown on the right), who retired the same year we graduated. All of the seniors developed a good relationship with Jerry. He even took a group of us to Atlanta to watch a Braves game during the summer of that year. I still keep in touch with Jerry and my old high school baseball friends. They have helped to shape my identity as much as anything else. Baseball has impacted my life in almost every aspect. Whether it is the way I approach a challenge, or the way I relate to people, I use lessons I learned playing baseball. When someone else looks at my picture, they see a group of high school boys on a baseball field. When I look at it I see so much more. I see an individual, tried, tested, and persevering. I see a team, a group working together toward a common goal and making the necessary sacrifices to achieve it. I see friendships; that group becoming close and forming bonds that will last a lifetime. I see so many things when I look at this picture, but mostly I see me in my comfort zone, the place where everything makes sense, on the baseball diamond.
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