Heeding Dad’s Advice

I played everything when I was young, but baseball and basketball were my two favorites by the time I got to high school. Soccer lasted only a couple of years, and I can tell you why: too much running. In baseball, most of the time you run ninety feet, then take a break. Maybe you’ll leg out a triple and that’s two hundred seventy feet. But soccer? That’s nonstop.

I played third, I pitched, but I always wanted to be a shortstop, because my dad had played shortstop. As a pitcher, I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t made to be a pitcher. I got out on the mound and threw as hard as I could, but I didn’t really have it in me. I mostly played short, aside from the time my dad, who was my coach, wanted to teach me a lesson. He kept telling me to only worry about the things I could control. Apparently I wasn’t getting the message. He made his point by putting me at second. If you have no control of it, don’t worry about it.