Crack! Most times when you hear a cracking noise after hitting a baseball you figure it was the bat, in my case I wasn’t so lucky. It all started freshman year of high school, I was living my childhood dream and playing a lot of baseball. For my high school team, I pitched and played second base. I played every game which meant I pitched a lot. I love playing 2nd base, but my passion for baseball was always pitching. The problem with pitching though is that it puts a lot of stress on your body, especially your pitching arm. My arm always felt great throughout my pitching career in high school so I figured that I was ready for summer baseball. Summer baseball is a lot of fun and a great way to get better, but in my case, it just made me worse.

Over that summer, I played on a team called the Niles Braves. The Niles park district  organization was known for being cheap, so my dad and I thought we would give it a try. Although there were positives of playing in a cheap league, there also came negatives. One of the negatives was that none of the players were that good. At the first practice I knew we were doomed, no one could even make a play in the field. I had a lot of friends on that team so I knew that it would be fun regardless, but still no one likes to lose. I was our team’s starting 2nd baseman and also our best pitcher, so one could say I played a lot. In my first game, I pitched and I was doing really well, I pitched 5 innings with 6 strikeouts, but that wasn’t enough for this team. They had 6 errors and let up 7 runs and looked more like clueless kindergarteners playing t-ball for the first time than freshmen in high school who had played baseball their whole lives. I clearly remember glancing up at my coach. His face turned a deep red, his eyes showed disappointment and his veins looked as if they were going to burst. Let’s just say he didn’t look too happy.  His mouth opened and I knew what was about to come out wasn’t going to be pretty. “Are you guys f***ing kidding me,” he took a deep breath and screamed out again, “Get in front of it!”  It never really affected me when coaches yelled, I kind of look at it as a way to get better. There was two coaches on this team their names were Coach Pueller and Coach Spiesy. Coach Pueller loved me because I always did what he said and I would always put my best effort on the field. Coach Spiesy didn’t really talk much mainly because when he did talk, we just made of him because of his lisp. I remember before some games when he would try to hype the team up, but  instead of the team jumping around and getting ready for the game, we were all laughing our asses off because of his lisp.  He would say things like “Are you guys ready to beat these suckers” and “ These guys suck compared to you guys.” He meant well but the lisp made everyone break out in tears and fall onto the ground in laughter.

Not to toot my own horn but I thought I was the best player on the team because I batted second, struck out the most batters, and was the best fielder so my arm started to take a toll. My coach also coached this team in Canada where you get looked at by college scouts and he asked me if I would like to play on his team. The words, “of course,” rolled off my tongue sooner than my brain could process what this all meant. It meant that I was going to play harder, try more and really dedicate a lot of my time. To play for a team, meant one thing, but to play for a team outside of the country was a childhood dream I never knew was possible. Every game and practice after was taken 100 percent seriously, Canada wasn’t ready for me.  I was practicing everyday for three hours, doing bullpens, fielding ground balls, and going to a personal trainer for batting practice.

To those who have never played baseball, some think it’s a low contact sport and the biggest injury one could get is being cleated when sliding into a base. To those who live, sweat and breath baseball, when elbows start to hurt, they know what’s coming for them. Arm and elbow injuries are a death wish from hell in baseball, not only are they common, but when they come there’s no knowing if you’ll ever play the same again. Halfway through the season my right elbow started to kill me whenever I played. For the most part, I ignored it, I wanted to get better and I wanted to show off my skills. I told myself that I was no wimp, well maybe I should have listened to my elbow more than my brain. It was one of the last games before playoffs and we were playing a year older team, competition like that only adds gas to my internal fire, I wanted to beat them more than anything. My coach put me as the starting pitcher and I was very ecstatic, but something told me it was not going to end well. I got out on the pitching mound, and threw like my sister, horrible. My arm felt as if needles were poking in and out of it, and after a bunch of pitches and no strikes not only was I in pain but I was hopeless. When you hear the ump say ball over and over again it gets pretty aggravating, especially when you’re trying to show off to the opposing team. It was finally our turn to bat and on the other team was an old friend who I played baseball with for 3 years, so when I say I wanted to kill the ball when I went up there, I’m not exaggerating. I clearly remember walking up to the batter's box, I was more ready than ever. Playing on a team with the pitcher gave me background knowledge, he was going to throw a fastball for his first pitch, and trust me I was going to be ready for it. He wound up and threw that fastball directly to my bat and as I swung my bat I made direct contact and the ball soared through the air. Something else happened when I hit that ball though, something that everyone in the stands could hear. The bone in my arm cracked the second the ball hit the bat and I ran to first base with arm dangling and bent to the side. I could tell I hit the ball really far because everyone on the team was cheering really loud, but when they saw me standing on first, holding my arm in pain, everything just went quiet.  I went to the dugout and tried to move my arm around, but I couldn’t, I knew that it was broken and so were my dreams of playing on the Canadian baseball team. I tightly closed my eyes, not wanting to believe what just happened and also because I was not about to cry like a baby in front of a bunch of sophomores. Something happens the day that your dreams are crushed. It’s kind of like a broken bone in the sense that you probably weren’t expecting it, you now have to deal with it and once you get back on track your never really the same. Of course bones heal and new dreams and goals arise, but there are days when you feel that sharp pain in your arm, or thoughts arise of memories of what could have been or what happened. I took breaking my arm as an experience to listen to myself more, to continue to push myself to my strongest potential but not to the breaking point.