Like sands running through a time glass, it seems like time has run out to write editorials for The Commonwealth Times this semester.
As I sat here and thought about the closing thoughts I’d like to say and topics I have yet to discuss, I continued to return to one persisting thought: the demise of the dream.
We all began our formal education years ago in kindergarten with big thoughts and dreams. Some of us wanted to be astronauts and scientists; others actors and rock stars; and others, like myself, wanted to be professional athletes.
Through time people change and lose focus of their dreams. There is a constant fatality rate as many settle for less than what they first started out wanting. They either lose faith or they don’t want to make the needed sacrifice. Doing either is a grave mistake, because dreams aren’t some abstract concept. They are real and reachable.
As a youngster I always wanted to play professional baseball. Unfortunately, sometime during the seventh grade I realized that while some had the gift of throwing a baseball 90 mph or hitting a ball 400 feet over a fence; my talent was in communicating the written word.
Many would have thrown the dream of professional baseball away. But I didn’t. While I knew then that my chances of ever getting close to a major league team were very slim, I set myself about finding another way. I was looking for a backdoor into the major leagues.
During high school I worked in public relations for the Richmond Braves. In college I worked during the summer in baseball operations for the Atlanta Braves and San Francisco Giants. While I was infinitely close — I was going to the ballpark everyday and getting paid for it — I had not truly achieved my dream.
Then it happened. I was at the Giants spring-training facility in Scottsdale, Arizona and the Giants were on the field for batting practice.
They needed an extra outfielder and I happened to be available, so they called upon me.
It has been said that luck is opportunity meets preparedness. This situation certainly fit that mold. Looking back, if I had given up my dream — or at any time changed the course of my direction — my date with fate would have missed me. Luckily, my dream caught me, as I had my baseball glove and was on the field with the San Francisco Giants, the defending National League Champions. Looking to my left I saw Barry Bonds, the greatest baseball player of all time, and to my right was my childhood hero Marquis Grissom, who I so vividly remember catching the last out to give the Atlanta Braves their only World Championship.
People are shocked when I tell them this. They figure I must have just somehow stumbled into my dream through dumb luck. I always tell them that the only reason I was able to live my dream that day and every other day in the spring of 2003 was because of the 24 years of luck it took to make it happen.
Really though, it was a bittersweet experience. Many of those I had grown up with played baseball, and many of them were better than I.
Yet I was the one who was able to achieve the dream through hard work, sacrifice and luck.
I have moved on since then. I have other dreams to go after and aspirations to fulfill. As summer approaches and we young people have time on our hands — instead of going out to the local bar to get intoxicated or doing a whole lot of nothing — find your dream and go after it like there is no tomorrow. Your destiny awaits you, but only if you can get there to pick it up.
Many of those I grew up with did not want to make the above-mentioned sacrifice, and sold out on their dream. They wanted to settle for the life and security of a regular job. While I did not get financially rich from achieving my dream, I got something even more valuable; the reaffirmation that dreams can come true, but only if you make them.