Summer in the 305
Summer in the 305
When I woke up on the second Tuesday of June, I had no idea I would receive an email that would change the summer ahead. It said I had been invited to play for the USSSA Northwest National team in a showcase tournament in Florida. It was a big deal. In this tournament, national teams from seven regions from all over the country come to play for a crazy week in central Florida.
Our journey would take us to Denver, Denver to Florida, and finally Orlando to Melbourne.
After a long day of connecting flights across the country, my mom and I landed in Orlando, Florida and made our way over causeways, past palm trees to our hotel. We arrived at about eight o’clock and we immediately noticed the hotel’s outdoor hallways and lots of people on their beachfront restaurant, surrounded by lots of empty bottles. Let’s just say they looked like they had a little too much to drink. The scene of the hotel was complete chaos. My mom and I both knew that this was not going to work for us for the entire week. After one long night, woken up by people partying in the halls, my mom and I checked into a nicer, quieter hotel much closer to the baseball complex where I would be playing at for the next five to seven days.
USSSA Space Coast Stadium. When I first saw the complex in the distance I stopped breathing for a second, I was in total awe. I said to my mom and my friend Carter from Davis, California, “Those are the nicest fields we’ve ever been to.” Once we got into the complex, that feeling escalated even more. The complex and facilities were so nice it felt like a college field. Shortly after, I checked in and met my team and the coaches who would be leading us for the week ahead. This was a great experience to meet new kids and play with a higher skill level.The general question when we met our new teammates was, “Where are you from?” These kids were from all over the Pacific Northwest, Denver and Wyoming, and other parts of California. I
was super intimidated because they were all so much taller than me, even though they were just a few months older. But then we had a short practice and I held my own on the field. It was so hot, I was sweating like crazy. It had never experienced such humidity - the kind that makes everything slippery and wet, especially in a polyester baseball uniform.
We geared up and went, as a team, to participate in opening ceremonies. We got to walk through this retired Major League spring training baseball stadium, onto the field where the championship game would play a week later, in front of about seven thousand fans. The ceremonies were streamed online for my father and siblings to watch from California. When I I first stepped onto the beautiful field was in complete awe. It was so hot, I was sweating like crazy. It had never experienced such humidity - the kind that makes everything slippery and wet, especially in a polyester baseball uniform. But there was something about being there with a group of baseball enthusiasts that made the moment special and pumped me up for the week ahead.
The next day, the games began. I was ecstatic to finally start playing. Our first game was against a team from the Southwest Region. When the 4th inning came around, I got the call that I was gonna pitch. It was a terrible outing for me. I gave up one run in one inning of pitching. I felt like I lost my coaches' confidence in me. He was sort of testing everyone out because he had just met us the day before. It turned out I was wrong. He had me pitch the next day, which was a relief because I had a much better outing.
A couple of days later, after torrential rain, good and bad games, and sweating my tail off in the central Florida humidity, our team finally got to quarterfinals. We were playing one of the best teams from the Midwest Region. The game started pretty well. Our pitcher from Denver threw three scoreless innings, putting us in the driver's seat to take the lead early.
At the bottom of the third, following a two-out walk and a wild pitch, we had our best hitter up. He got a fastball right
down the middle and didn’t miss it! He hit a double to right, over the centerfielder’s head scoring the first run of the game and giving a 1-0 lead. From there, it kind of went downhill. Our next two pitchers gave up ten combined runs in two innings. We were going into the last inning and we had a big nine run deficit to overcome. We had the top four, five, and six hitters up and all we needed to do was chip away, produce good at-bats and just prevent them from getting outs. Our team produced seven runs by a pair of bases-loaded doubles and by taking control of this horrible pitcher from the Midwest. During these seven runs, our team managed to only sacrifice two out and both were run-scoring outs.
The bases were loaded and I was up. I took two pitchess that were both called balls I was right in the driver's seat for a good fastball. I swung and hit a chopper right over the pitchers head, it was going to be a tough play. I was running as fast as I could, trying to beat out the throw. I stepped on first base just a split second before the ball was caught by the first baseman. Yes! But no. I was called out. It was such a bad call and our dugout was absolutely furious. We had a great chance to cash in on another run to make our comeback but it was taken away by a bad call by an even worse umpire!
We needed two to tie and three to win. The next have inning we had to pitch. We had our six-foot 13-year-old. Yea, you read that right. Since he was so big and threw so hard, we had a one-two-three inning which was a relief because the last thing we could do was make the deficit bigger, heading into our last inning to hit. At the bottom of the 7th, after a four pitch walk, our second hitter got on by a bloop single to the right fielder. Our only issue was that he was really slow. I was one of the fastest kids on the team but I was stuck on the bench because I pitched the 5th inning. I got the call to pinch run. I was nervous, knowing that I was the tying run and I needed to score to tie it up. The next hitter got hit by a pitch. Our best hitter was up with the bases loaded and nobody out. The first pitch he sees, he smashes the ball way over the left fielder that goes all the way to the wall! One run scores, then I score, and finally the winning run scores! Game over! What an amazing comeback!In the next game we played the Atlantic and sadly lost. We didn’t make it onto that championship game field, I exchanged contact info with my new teammates, took a picture of me in front of the USSSA All American Games banner, and headed to Miami for a few days with my mom. This was such a good life experience - to never give up, even when you’re intimidated or out of your element. This was probably the last time I was ever going to play with these kids. Although we came up short, it was such a good team experience.
