“What! Are you kidding me!?” That is what I thought as soon as the umpire called strike three in the middle of our much anticipated championship celebration. But no, the umpire just had to call me out…after we won the game.
Our team is not the greatest team around, so logically we were very excited when we arrived at the field where we were about to play The Players.
The park that we played at may sound familiar, Fenway Park. Unfortunately, we did not play at the real Fenway Park in Boston, but we played in a replica of it at Big League Dreams in Chandler, Arizona. On Fenway, everything was perfect: it was dirty and grassy like a real park, and this park had a brilliant replica of the one and only Fenway favorite, the Green Monster.
If I were speaking to you before the game actually happened, I would have said that we were going to play our hearts out, and that we were going to win. Technically, what I said would have been true. We did play our hearts out. We did go for it all… and we did almost win the game.
This game was very close throughout it all. Going into the bottom of the last inning, the score was 7-7. The inning started off with my friend Jake hitting a double. Next up was my other friend Josh who struck out. Rudy, the next batter, sacrificed Jake over to third base. Two outs. Now, I was up. I had worked the count to 2-2. A hit would bring Jake in and win the game. I did not get a hit. Instead, my coach had Jake attempt to steal home because he was a very fast runner. I saw Jake take off after the pitch was thrown out of the corner of my eye. The pitch was coming in at me fast, and I couldn’t kill Jake with a swing. I held still backed up and watched the action. The umpire called Jake safe at home, and my dugout full of joy, cleared. While we were in the dog pile, the umpire looked us straight in the eye and said those miserable words, “strike three…”
My team suddenly stopped cheering and started moping. Me, I started bawling. I thought it was all my fault for not swinging, or at least bunting, but now I know that there was enough blame to go around.
The all important virtue that I learned from this was that things don’t always work out the way I want them to. This means that if I play sports, I shouldn’t get crabby over a bad call and that I should just let it go. I believe that that to be a good person in life, one has to have many virtues, and one of these virtues is that things will not always work out the way that one wants them to, but sometimes good things will happen.