7/12 Tuesday Milligan

When I was a kid, I played Little League Baseball...

Problem was...no one ever really taught me the rules of baseball...and I never really watched baseball on television....

...so all I did was do whatever my coaches told me to do...when they told me to "wait for my pitch," I didn't swing....when they told me to "give them a little bingo," I'd swing the bat....when it looked like someone on the other team was going to bunt, they told me to take a few steps onto the grass and I obeyed...

But baseball is a game of knowing the situations and thinking fast.  In the midst of all the boredom (especially when playing the outfield)...there are those brief moments when you'll need to know exactly which base to throw to and how many outs there are...but I didn't know any of that...

I remember when I made it to Double A baseball, things were great...except almost all of my friends from school were in Triple A by then...and when I finally got to Triple A, my friends were in the Majors...

Because I had no idea what I was doing, I feared making a single mistake and costing my team a game...and I sure played that way....scared.

If I could go back in time...I would have bought a baseball video game....learned how to play the video game....and then apply it to real life...

I was fairly decent at hitting...except I had a tendency to be scared to swing at what I guessed would be bad pitches.  I was fairly decent at keeping ground balls in front of me...but didn't really know what to do with the ball once I controlled it.  My lack of understanding led to incompetence...

By the spring of 7th grade, I heard my classmates in math class talking about how tryouts for the Babe Ruth Baseball League were coming up soon...but without even a care in the world...I went back to my math problem and my baseball career was over...

BUT, one day, I hope to redeem myself in an old man softball league...