Passion In The Field

Ever since I was old enough to know right from wrong, my dad told me I need to find something I’m passionate about and stick with it. This 10-12 year old me didn’t understand what he meant, and why it was important. However - even if it sounds cheesy - I didn’t find my passion, it found me. I lived at Malmstrom Air Force Base, and my friend Logan, who lived on the base as well. He had already found his passion, which was baseball. Logan’s older brother played on a Legion team and they always played at the minor league stadium in our city. So he asked me if I wanted to come and watch the game with him. So reluctantly I said yes, because he was my friend and I didn’t want to be stuck in the house anyways. We arrive at the game, and there were a lot of fans coming to watch this game. I don’t know what it was, but it hit me as soon as one of the players on Logan’s brothers team hit a line drive into the left-center gap; and the center fielder chucked the ball back into the field to prevent a triple. At that moment I knew I wanted to

In 8th grade I tried playing 1st base because I couldn’t play the rest of the infield, due to me being left handed. I didn’t play much because it was my first year of playing outside of little league. 9th grade season comes along and someone had told me that left handers have an advantage over right handers that are pitchers. Turns out I was a natural, I had developed 3 different pitches in the course of a month. Just by watching youtube and teaching myself how to pitch. All the way up until my senior year, I didn’t know if I wanted to go to college for baseball or not. Going into the summer after my graduation, I was still uncommitted to a college. Mostly due to lack of exposure to scouts because my high school was a fairly small high school. So my dad took it upon himself to reach out to coaches at colleges he knew I could play