Now or Never

Junior year. He had finally accepted that some people were made to be baseball players and others were not. A 5 foot 5, 125 pound body wasn’t ideal to be taking hacks at 80 mile-per-hour pitches or throwing a runner out at home from 330 feet out in right field. But just because he had accepted that didn’t mean that it was over. The dream would never die. He was going to play high school baseball. Going through tryouts with a nasty case of the flu, things did not work out like he wanted them to. After the second day of tryouts he confronted the coach. “Coach, I know that I didn’t make this team last year. I want to be a part of it this year. Please let me get the chance to play baseball. Know that I’m out here sick as a dog trying to make this team. Thank you.”

Two days later, he looked at the posted team. It was in alphabetical order by last name. He should be in the middle of the pack. He followed his finger down the lined-yellow paper. His heart sunk. He was down to the bottom, and there it was. The very last name penciled in along the others. He might have been the last person to make the team, but tryouts were over. He was in.