And now it's for real
For five or more years your young ball player has worked for this moment. All the long hot summers and cool fall nights of Travel Baseball have finally paid off.
Now the hard work begins, if your son is good enough to play middle school and high school ball it's now up to him to put the work in to make sure he can excel. Up until this point hopefully he was playing all those years for fun and had a good time doing it but now that he's reached this level it gets serious and if he truly wants to succeed and stand out he has to out work his peers and when I say out work I mean going the extra mile every night. It's going to be tough no doubt. School has to come first and if it doesn't it's going to be a short lived career anyway. He's going to get the same reps in practice that everybody else on the team gets but it's how serious he takes those reps is what can help him improve. Every swing off the tee, every ground ball and every fly ball off the bat needs to be done at game speed, he can't take any reps off. Talent has gotten him here so far but that speaks for every other ball player on the field. I can't stress enough how important it is for your son to find ways to improve his game.
I can testify to this point from my own playing days. I haven't told my story to many of you and I'm kinda hesitant to tell it but I feel it's worth mentioning because it proves what hard work can do.
Like many of your sons I played baseball my whole life and always made my All Star teams in Rec ball (We didn't have travel ball back in the stone ages) but at the end of my 8th grade year my family moved to Clearwater Florida from the middle of the state so I was totally starting over and playing in a new league where nobody knew who I was. Back Then we didn't have JV baseball it was strictly Varsity so you had to be pretty good to make it as a freshman or a sophomore. Long story short I tried out for the team but I was cut. I was devastated because I knew I was good enough but was just passed by. I asked the coach if I could be the team manager and that's what I did until my Junior year. The whole time I was working on my game and going to the batting cages 3 or 4 times a week. My Junior year I finally made the team but only got two at bats the whole year but I kept working and played everyday through the summer. My Senior year I was the Starting DH and the first pitch I saw that year I hit out and hit a couple more off the gate that day. I had a pretty decent Senior year but never got to play the field until our last game of the year. At this point 99% of high school baseball players would have probably played their last organized game of their carrier, I kept working and in my Freshman year in college I walked on and made the team as an outfielder. Things where really starting to look up and then the worst thing that could happen to a college ballplayer happened. I dropped below my credit hours and was ruled ineligible for the year. I was crushed to say the least but it was my own fault and had nobody else to blame but myself. I played Legion ball that summer and kept working. The game meant everything to me and their was no way I was going to give up now knowing I had the ability to play college ball. The following year as a belated freshman I walked on again and made the team and earned a Scholarship. I became the starting Center Fielder and became the first freshman in school history to ever hit over .400 and I had to go 4 for 4 in the last game to do it and I did. I finished my freshman year batting .401 and lead the conference in batting avg, and stolen bases as well as outfield assist. I made all conference and was a 2nd team All American. I continued to work and work and work I was now at the point that pro scouts where coming to my games to watch me play. Fast forward to the MLB January Draft in 1985. I'll never forget that day when my dad woke me up at 5:00 in the morning and said I hope you like playing out West Because the San Francisco Giants selected you as their 1st pick in the second round. It was surreal and all I could think of was that every late night taking swings in the garage, running sprints in the yard and throwing a baseball and a football into a net had gotten me to the point of having the chance to play professional baseball. The moral to this story.............Make them rip the uniform off you , DON'T LET ANYBODY tell you you're not good enough to play at a higher level because if you put in the work and have the desire and drive you have a chance to excel.
