A travel of over 3000 miles for some, a 210 mile drive for me, just to arrive at the biggest gathering of over 1,500 twelve year olds; all just to play baseball. The only place that would be suitable for such an event is Cooperstown Dream Parks, every baseball players heaven. Cars have come to Cooperstown from everywhere for this week long tournament. I met children my age from all over the United states. I became friends with kids from Ohio, Illinois, California, I even met a player from Puerto Rico who barely spoke any english. The windows of everyone 's car decorated with the names and numbers of teams and players. Excited baseball teams spill from their Barracks and hustle toward the already crowded seating area. Festive music played over …show more content…
Than we marched through the complex until we reached the most famous park in the whole complex. Double-Day field, one of the nine fields that make up cooperstown dream parks. It only hosts one game on it per tournament, the championship game. As I walked in along side my team I get a strong gust of the fresh cut grass, I feel the energy in the stands, and I can clearly hear the cheers from every individual player in the crowd. Everyone eventually settled in and before we knew it skydivers bearing flags parachute into the stadium. Photographers ran cross the field as fighter planes shot across the sky. It was our first look at what being a professional athlete would be like. The complex had a set dress code and expected much more from us than we have ever been expected to do. The parents weren 't even allowed by the barracks; we were living on our own for the first time. To me Cooperstown was my first real step in becoming a grown adult, as it was for everyone else …show more content…
With seconds to spare I arrived at batting practice and began to prepare for my game. I hear coach call out my name and as I he acknowledged that I was there he told me I was pitching. My brain shifted and went into a whole new mode, I was more focused and more determined than I have ever been. This was the biggest baseball game of my career and I 'm starting on the mound. Honestly it couldn 't have turned out any better, the fate of the pin and my team lied in my hands and I loved the pressure. The pressure made me thrive and before I knew it our team was marching onto the field for the national anthem. During the singing of the national anthem I peeked into the crowd and first row down the first base side was the little boy I met on the cart and his dad sitting right next to him. This game was for that little boy, I needed to impress him. I pitched six strong innings and my team ended up winning the game. It was the most exciting game of my career and the best part was being greeted with the best pin in the tournament after such a spectacular win. The little boy ran out into the middle of the field where we shook our opponents hands and in front of everyone in the stadium handed me the only thing I cared about besides winning. I was in the best mood for the rest of the day and I rewarded myself with a nice long sleep. I could only image what the next day had to
The first team I ever played for was Tobers Party Store. For some kids growing up, baseball was just another way to pass time during the summer, away from the grind of public school. For me it was everything. From the moment my eyes snapped open in the morning, until the time I slipped away to sleep, I had baseball on my mind. I loved to play baseball, watch baseball, and talk baseball. Nothing else mattered. Eating and sleeping were just "necessary evils" that took precious time away from my hobby. I anxiously awaited the day when I would be drafted into the professional ranks after a successful college career. Bubbling with excitement, I would explain my inevitable career path to anyone who would listen. Of course, the responses were less than empowering. "Do you know how good you have to be?", and the tried and true " Go to college and get a real job", were two of the more popular sentiments that the "opposition" hurled at me. Naturally, in my 10 year old mind, I knew they were delusional and I would prove them wrong.
" Baseball Parks 1 (1996): 1. Dortch, Shannon. "The Future of Baseball. " American Demographics 18 (1996) 25-30. Jerry Maguire. Dir.
Baseball, America’s pastime, is embedded in the fabric of society. The players and teams have come and gone, but the thing that remains constant is baseball’s ability to unite people as well as families. My own personal experience of this came right after September 11th, 2001. Following the tragedy that was 9/11, the country needed something to help everyone return to normalcy. In our moment of weakness and uncertainty, baseball helped calm my nerves. Fifty three thousand three hundred and twelve brothers stood up in unison and took back their lives. The electricity of that game, the sense of regularity in my life, and the knowledge that millions of people were finding comfort together with me during such a hard time, helped me feel a sense of closure that the worst was behind us.
As a faithful follower and player of American Baseball, this topic was of extreme interest to me. The origins and history of a lifestyle that I have dedicated the overwhelming majority of my life to has always caught my attention. Baseball, being America’s national sport, is a crucial illustration to understand when discussing the overall societal circumstances at that time. One of baseball’s most important tasks was integrating the sport and allowing people of every ethnicity to have a chance to play the sport at an equal playing field. Although we now know that the efforts to desegregate baseball were ultimately a success, to what extent were the efforts a direct success during that time period? Did the unification of different ethnicities in America’s national sport have an effect on the amount of time desegregat...
As a kid, I was born and raised to love the great game of baseball. Many young kids have had dreams to become professional athletes, and achieve prestigious awards/ titles. Like many kids I’ve always dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. As a younger kid with my head in the clouds, I never really knew what it was like to put my actual blood, sweat, and tears into something I loved, until my worst season I had ever played. This whole story starts in the beginning of my ninth grade baseball season. It started out different from every other year because, of course I was a freshman. This was the first year I had ever practiced with the varsity squad, it was much more difficult, but I still figured I was going to do great. After weeks
Americans began playing baseball on informal teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s, the sport, unrivaled in popularity, was being described as America's "national pastime." Alexander Joy Cartwright of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. Alexander Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club devised the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball.
Student’s Name Professor’s Name Discipline Date Baseball or Sports Cultures in Comparative Perspective When trying to compare the development of sports in the USA and in other countries, one can find a striking feature is striking - the USA has repudiated soccer almost completely, whereas in Europe, as well as in many other countries, people are massively obsessed over the game. Markovits and Hellerman explained this phenomenon in their book Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism through the path-dependence theory (47). They stated that Americans never chose soccer because it was too foreign, was not “imported” in the right time period, and the niche for the most followed sports was already occupied.
Deeply embedded in the folklore of American sports is the story of baseball's supposed invention by a young West Point cadet, Abner Doubleday, in the summer of 1839 at the village of Cooperstown, New York. Because of the numerous types of baseball, or rather games similar to it, the origin of the game has been disputed for decades by sports historians all over the world. In 1839, in Cooperstown, New York, Doubleday supposedly started the great game of baseball. Doubleday, also a famous Union general in the Civil War, was said to be the inventor of baseball by Abner Graves, an elderly miner from New York. In response to the question of where baseball first originated, major league owners summoned a committee in 1907. Abner Graves stepped before the committee and gave his testimony. In Graves' account of "the first game," the Otsego Academy and Cooperstown's Green's Select School played against one another in 1839. Committeeman Albert G. Spalding, the founder of Spalding's Sporting Goods, favored Graves' declaration and convinced the other committeemen that Graves' account was true. As a result, in 1939, the committee and the State of New York named Cooperstown and Abner Doubleday as the birthplace and inventor of baseball, respectively. Today, many baseball historians still doubt the testimony of Abner Graves. Historians say the story came from the creative memory of one very old man and was spread by a superpatriotic sporting goods manufacturer, determined to prove that baseball was a wholly American invention. According to Doubleday's diary, he was not playing baseball in Cooperstown, but attending school at West Point on that day in 1839. Also, historians have found that nowhere in Doubleday's diar...
All throughout high school I played on the softball team. Proceeding the season before where we went undefeated with a district championship, my senior year we were supposed to be unstoppable. We received a few new players to add on to our army and the entire school was counting on our run to state. I was so excited to have an amazing end to my high school softball career, but unfortunately my dream was cut short when we lost in the first round of districts. I did not know that loss would change me the way it did.
Everybody values and views sports in different ways. Most athletes believe that the sport they excel in is the easiest and the best to play. Most baseball players believe that baseball is not the easiest sport to play, even if they excel in baseball. Baseball has a 282 page rule book, but other sports like football only have 82 pages of rules to follow. Baseball is unique because it is the only sport where the defense controls the ball, and where doing good on offense thirty percent of the time is considered good.
This game of a stick and ball has captivated the United States during good and bad times. In either time most of us today can remember stories of players from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. These are legendary figures in the sport of baseball that have are celebrated as hero’s and in scandal, i...
‘Field of Dreams’ is a diversified script that constantly evolves, but mainly revolves around the game of baseball, ‘the greatest game ever invented’. The game that according to some avid spectators, completely and thoroughly transcends and binds the country to past, present, and future--generation to generation. In this movie this national pastime represents an avenue that finds the connection to the soul of a great audience; somehow insinuating that baseball acts as a means of fulfilling individual spiritual needs. These needs are that of a ‘sense of belonging’, a need to participate in sport, either vicariously as a spectator or directly as a participant. Moreover the desire to engage in distraction and play may be intrinsic to the human psyche. The theme throughout the movie was based on the legendary story of the Chicago White Sox of 1919, where the question was raised on the issue of the team’s “sportsmanship” and the ethical behavior of several teammates during the World Series. This left the image of America’s most idolized team tarnished and lead up to a ban of eight players from the sport; for an ‘unsportsmanlike’ like conduct in the series. The public view of the game up until then was that of perfection, it was clean and straight; but afterwards, the lack of fair play especially coming from such highly ranked players, ended up affecting fans’ enthusiasm for the entire sport. As the movie nears its ending, Robinson evolved on the concept of having utterly devoted fans and as if in a mystified manner drew them in to this already mystical place, just to have them see the most idolized team of ‘the golden age’ play once again.
From the sandlot to stadiums seating over fifty thousand people, the game of baseball has provided people of all ages with a
Several summers ago, I made my first All-Star baseball team for a local little league. When I heard that I was picked, I was overwhelmed with happiness. A lot of my friends and teammates in years past had made the team, but never me. I was finally selected by the head coach of the All-Star team, and considered it quite an honor.
The announcer began announcing our team to start the introduction for the game. Since I was the lead-off batter, my name was echoed over the park first. It was at this time that the feeling elevated; the feeling that makes every baseball field so special. As my teammates yelled for me, while I ran to the nearest baseline and faced the crowd, the feeling gave me goose bumps and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The feeling is so amazing that it will keep me playing baseball for as long as possible because it makes my love for the sport that much more. I can't even begin to explain the complex feeling I get when I walk on a baseball field, but that feeling will always be cherished and hopefully when I pass on my love of baseball to others, they will too understand what that special diamond makes me feel like.