It was my third year playing with my travel baseball team. We were not all that good, we were always losing, mostly being mercied by the other team. Everyone on our team was different from the other, which I believe made us such great friends. We had tall and wide kids, tall and skinny kids, we had short skinny kids, we had older and younger kids, and some of us went to different schools. I fit into the category of short skinny kids, I was the smallest of the kids, but also one of the best. It was always a ton of fun with them, we all were really good friends and we were always laughing when we were with each other no matter what. Which was our problem. It was the reason we were not successful the first two seasons with each other. We were all really good players and we all put in the work at practice to get better, but we did not take it seriously enough to make those many off season practices actually count. Our first two seasons together, we had two different coaches that were both in their middle to late twenties. This was another part of our problem, our coaches were always having fun with us, which sometimes was a good thing, but there were not enough times when they were serious. We needed to improve our state of mind and really work our butt’s off if we really wanted to get better for our third season together. By this time, most of our teammates had left our team due to the fact that our team did not win many games. And the year after this one I had left as well because I thought in order for me to improve more and more was for me to move on and find a team that was more serious than this one, but sometimes I wonder how it would be different if I did not leave. Today, I wish I could go back to that first year with this team because it made baseball so much fun. My coach, who I found to be an intimidating person, even though he was the same height as me at the time, that I did not ever want to disappoint, was always grilling us to get on the tee at home and work on our swing every single day if we really wanted to improve and be the best that we can be. He would ask everybody on the team whether or not we have been hitting off the tee, and everyone would try not to make eye contact because none of us took our coaches advice and when we told him we had not it felt like we were letting him down. It was not that we did not want to get better or we just thought our coach was crazy, none of us really thought it was a big deal. My coach had told me and my team this every year since I had been part of this team, but I never took this advice until the last season playing on his team because I thought that going to every practice that we had was all I needed to do in order to get better. That christmas I asked for a baseball net that I could hit baseballs off of the tee into. Christmas morning came and santa had brought me my baseball net that I had asked for, and the closer summer got, the more excited I was to use my new present. Once summer had finally arrived and the baseball season had begun, I was hitting off of my tee everyday, ball after ball, swing after swing, working my butt off so that I would improve. The years before, I was always told what a great defensive player I was. I am the kid on the team that can be put anywhere on the field and be great at it, but I was never a very good hitter. I was always grounding out, hitting pop ups, or striking out. I was so bad that my first year playing with this team I had the most amount of strikeouts. But when the season started I was doing really well overall, Defensively I was playing very well, and offensively, on the bright side, I was not striking out. While I was at home enjoying my summer, everyday I found time for me to go outside and hit off the tee because I was very determined to get better and be the best player on our team, which was pretty much just being able to play the field and able to hit. But hitting a baseball is said to be the most difficult thing to do in sports, and I was determined to get great at doing this. Eventually I was hitting very  well, every at bat I was hitting line drives and getting on base. It did not hit me that I had made this huge improvement that i had been working so hard for until it came to the doubleheader we played against the oxford travel baseball team. Those two games combined, I went 5 for 6 at bats, and the only reason I did not go 6 for 6 that day was because I had made a sacrifice bunt to advance one of our base runners. This was a huge accomplishment for me, to go from having the most amount of strikeouts on my travel baseball team to having the least amount was the absolute best feeling that I had ever had at that time of my life. What I remember most about that last season with my team was when my coach, who had always intimidated me, told me, “You are one of my best and most improved players that I have had, and I am proud to have been able to go through this improvement with you”. To hear this from my coach was a huge confidence booster for me. That season, I realized that in order to improve, I needed to work hard on my own. Just going to every baseball practice during the off season, November to May, was not enough in order to get to the skill level that I want to be at. What I was doing on the field was a reflection of the hard work I was doing at home, and I have to keep this work ethic in order to get better and better. In order to be successful in life, you must work hard because doing nothing to improve will not help you get you to be able to do the best of your ability.