I stepped out, looked down to third to get the signs from Coach Phillips. Dusted off my cleats adjusted my helmet and fixed my gloves and stepped back in. Taped the 2 far edges of the plate to make sure I can reach, and I was ready. The count was 3-2, I was fouling off pitches to stay alive the pitcher goes into his wind up.

I’m on my toes which in this case was a good thing. The pitch is coming, it was like slow motion. The ball was the size of a watermelon so I swung as hard as I could which I probably shouldn’t have because if I had missed I would have screwed my self in to the ground. The moment I hit it I knew it was gone. And apparently so did my teammates, they went nuts. It felt like I missed it because I hit the ball on the sweet spot of the bat. It went into the next field on one bounce.

I have the ball in my room now with about 5 others. I didn’t know how fast I was supposed to run because some people run slow and some people run fast, now I know how fast to run because I’ve hit so many. So I run as fast as I could until I got to second base. Then I slowed up a little and I couldn’t hold the smile any longer, then I look at coach Phillips and I thought he was going to explode he was smiling from ear to ear and laughing like crazy.

The really funny part I found out later, My dad who went to like every game and my mom who went to most but missed some; So my dad went to the concession stand for like 2 minutes with my brother and my mom was there when I hit the home run. My dad was so mad but I thought it was hilarious and so did I. Before the game coach Phillips said “anybody who hits my sign (in right center field right where I hit my homerun) or hits a home run over it gets a toll box full of cash”.

What really stinks is I was the lead-off man for the inning so it was a solo home run and we lost that game by 1, So when I got to home plate I was attacked by my teammates slapping me in the helmet, slapping me, jumping on top of me, it was like a mosh pit.

To this day I still don’t have my tool box full of cash and every time I see or hit a home run I think about my first one and how I know coach Phillips owes me big. I told you that story because it meant a lot to me and I’ve met a lot of people form baseball and I still have them and it changed me because I feel special in a way. My advice is go for it, you only live once. And you have to trust your instincts because in my situation it happened to pay off big.