First game

Today marks the opening game of the 2008-09 baseball campaign for Barton baseball.

Seeing as how this is a personal blog, I’ll put my personal spin on things.

Those of you regular readers know how rocky my Barton baseball career has been. The reasons for this number aplenty, but I’ve come to learn that reasons and excuses are equally synonymous, and equally useless if one truly hopes to improve.

This essence of my failure could be summed up in a simple phrase – “fear of others.” Not even fear of failure. A fear of what others thought of my failure.

Baseball has been described, aptly so, as a game of failure. One who succeeds three or four of ten batting attempts in the pros would be a Hall-of-Famer. In this Division II Conference Carolinas league, succeeding even half the time warrants “phenomenal” labels.

And ever since I stepped foot on Barton’s fields, I have been petrified. It was a world in which I didn’t belong, a place I believed was beyond my reach. The root of such fear lies in a particularly rough summer of baseball, my first Legion season.

Heck, I couldn’t throw the ball back to the pitcher without feeling scared to death.

Weird, I know.

But now, the fear is no more. Nerves? Sure. That’s what makes baseball baseball. It’s such a game of graceful explosion, one will be forced to fight anxiety and the over-eager swelling of excitement.

And I know, I’m making this first intersquad scrimage a bigger deal than it really is. But I am just so pumped for the year to come.

The fear is gone. For a multitude of reasons, but mainly because I know this is my senior year, and ever since the failure began, I’ve always said that once things did start going well, they were going to be as great as they have been horrible.

Well, things are going well. I haven’t even had my first at-bat, but I’m just believing that each moment will be my best.

And if I do my part, and everyone else does their part, Barton baseball will have its best season yet. We’ve got the players who have the talent. We just need the right chemistry and the right mentality.

One unit. No limit.