When I was a little boy, the game of baseball was my life. Well, not exactly,
but I sure wanted it to be. Even before I was old enough to play
Little
League Baseball myself I would stand behind the fence right behind home plate
and watch in awe as pitchers threw that tiny white ball at what seemed like
blinding speeds...and as the batters swung and knocked it right back through
the infield. There was a certain magic about the game that simply took my breath
away, and I couldn't wait until I reached the coveted age of 8 at which I could
finally put on one of those cool, crisp uniforms of my own.
After what seemed like an eternity, I did indeed turn 8, and in April
mom drove me to the ball
park in Damascus for Little League tryouts. All the way down there I said a
constant prayer, hoping that God would allow me to do well enough to make it
onto one of the teams. And He must have answered because by the end of the day I
had been assigned a spot on the team sponsored by the "Bank of Damascus"!
That cool and cloudy April day became one of the happiest days of my life when
coaches Don Cullop and Ron Adams handed out the uniforms and schedules, then
told us to be back at the park the following Saturday at 10:00am for our first
practice. I had more fun that summer than I had ever had before in my life!
I went on to play organized baseball for several years, all the while looking
forward to what I hoped would turn out to be a career playing the game as a pro.
But as time went on, I began to realize that being a good ballplayer isn't good
enough to land a fellow a spot on a Major League roster...or the Minors either
for that matter. No, in order to play baseball in the big leagues you have to be
better than good - a lot better than good - and I wasn't.
But although my dreams of making it big playing the American Pastime were
eclipsed by the clouds of reality, I never lost my love for baseball. Some of my
most treasured childhood memories are of the times when I walked onto that red
clay Little League baseball diamond in
Damascus, Virginia and played the game of
my dreams. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost...but every single game took my
breath away. Even the bad days were great.
About the photo: After Cheria and I moved into our new home, I wanted to
place a relevant piece of baseball memorabilia on my office wall. After deciding
on a well-used catcher's mitt, I finally found one at a local flea market and
hung it on the wall right beside my desk.
Little did I know that at the same time I was looking, so was mom. She found a
beautiful print of a little boy and his dog lamenting the fact that there would
be no admittance to the ball park today. It was such a fitting image that
I hung it on the wall too, right underneath the catcher's mitt! Thanks mom!
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