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Picture of the day - May 23, 2006

A Youngster's Baseball Dreams Remembered

Cather's Mitt and Baseball Poster.

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: I had been looking for a catcher's mitt to hang on my office wall for quite some time, so I picked this one up and asked the vendor how much he wanted for it.

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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