To say I was bad at baseball is an understatement.

When I was in elementary school, playing sports was the cool thing that was expected of us from the social nightmare that was my childhood. Football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring. All the "cool" kids were playing sports all year round. I was never one of those kids, and I was perfectly content with that. While kids were playing sports at recess, I was letting my imagination run wild, creating whole worlds in those 45 minutes on the playground. Looking back, I'm glad that I didn't blend in with the crowd. But I needed friends, and my parents found a way for me to make them.

Baseball. I was excited but nervous at the same time. I was never really known for my athletic abilities. I was short, scrawny, and just socially awkward in general. But I was going to try at least. We went to tryouts, and I couldn't shake the butterflies. We were in the track house of the local high school, and as we sat around waiting to get called up, all I kept saying to myself was "don't mess it up, don't mess it up".

My name got called, and I absolutely bombed. Missed every ball they hit to me, hell I barely clipped the ball when I was batting. When I went home, I went to my room and wouldn't come out for an hour. I was so embarrassed and I couldn't get over it. I was convinced that I was going to be the only kid at school who didn't get to play. That feeling of hopelessness and sadness is something that I will never forget. But the phone rang, and my dad came to my room to tell me that I got picked! I got picked to play for the Indians.

When I went to my first practice, those nerves and fear just kept growing. The other kids were so much better than I was. I was scared that I wasn't going to make any friends and honestly, I was ready to quit before our first practice. But when we got there and we met our coaches, things changed.

There was something different about these guys, they had a presence about them that made you want to listen to what they had to say. Practice after practice, game after game, it began to show. They believed in us, they wanted to see us reach our fullest potential. They treated us like young men, not as little kids, and were always there to discipline us as fast as they were ready to congratulate us. Even though they had sons on the team, they adopted us as their own and defended us as such against other players and even other parents. Our parents became like family, and as they created chants for us and nicknames for the kids, we quickly became "that team" at every game. But we weren't embarrassed, we loved every minute of it.

I'll never forget one of the most important lessons they ever taught me. It was about halfway through the season, and we had won every game. If I'm going to be honest, we had gotten pretty cocky. Well, the next game we played was against the Mets, and they murdered us. When they called the game halfway through to save us the embarrassment, we couldn't do anything but sulk and be frustrated. They sat us down and reminded us that we were a team. We win together, and we lose together. They told us that we have to hold our heads high when we win, and the same when we lose. There have been countless situations like this for me in life, and I've never forgotten what they taught me.

As kids, it's hard to remember that adults are human like the rest of us, but to us, they were more like heroes. They never let us get down on ourselves, they reminded us that we were there to have fun, and as long as we walked away with each game with a smile on our faces, nothing else mattered. I can't tell you how many times I'd be in the dugout, mad at myself over something I messed up, and they were always there to pick me back up again. They would always tell us, "If you think good things, good things will happen", and we carried that with us all season. We won the championship that year, and when our parents were there to lift us up and celebrate on that field, I swear we were invincible.

(Right after we won our first championship)

As the years went on, we saw two more championships, and with each year, some of us would leave, and new people would come in. We may have gone our separate ways in life, we're at different schools and pursuing different careers, but I'll always cherish the memories we have together and the coaches who helped us make them.

Thank You.