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Personal Statement / Would appreciate PS critiques
« on: October 04, 2006, 05:32:52 PM »
Ever since I was a child, I was always fascinated by the sport of baseball. I spent my childhood dreaming of spending my adult life driving to the ballpark in my Mercedes Benz and suiting up for the San Francisco Giants. I remember vividly, at age five, rooting on the Giants as they faced their cross town rivals the Oakland A’s in the World Series and imagining what it would be like to run out onto the field knowing millions of people worldwide were going to be watching your every move. I had drawers full of baseball cards and idolized local baseball heroes such as Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco, only recently realizing that I could not have picked worse childhood role models. As I grew up on the local playgrounds and realized that I had plenty of raw athleticism, I figured that my dream of playing major league baseball was within my grasp. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the big leagues, I actually started to play organized baseball. I wasn’t a bad player by any stretch of the imagination, just not a great one. As I progressed though my little league career, I realized that I had everything an athlete would need to succeed at any given sport: speed, strength, size, intelligence, and toughness. However, when it came to baseball, I just didn’t have “it.” I could hit the ball, but I couldn’t hit it a country mile. I could throw the ball; I just couldn’t find a way to throw the ball 90 miles an hour. I learned to accept that I was destined to be, at best, an average player. My parents told me that I could be a late bloomer, that plenty of current major leaguers started out as benchwarmers on their little league teams. But I knew better, my major league dreams were over before I even reached high school.
With tryouts for the Junior Varsity baseball team approaching, I considered whether I should even bother trying out. I knew that at best I’d be stuck on the bench, and at worst have the traumatic experience of being told that you’re not even good enough to waste a perfectly good uniform on. My friends encouraged me to forget about it and focus on preparing myself for the upcoming football season. But my love of the sport was too great for me to give it up without a fight. If the coaches didn’t think I was good enough, then so be it and they can come drag me off the field. After a week of practice, I resided myself to being cut from the team. But fate intervened when several players quit after the tough conditioning program our coach instilled after every practice. If they had stayed, I would not be writing this essay right now. I made the team by the skin of my teeth and rarely played my freshmen year.
After an only slightly more active sophomore year on Junior Varsity, I attempted to make the leap to Varsity against my better judgment and the advice of the other players who were certain I would not escape being cut this time. But I beat the odds again when the coach was impressed with my attitude and I once again squeaked by when other, more talented players, were cut instead. I knew playing opportunities would be few and far between and many of the other players why I bothered wasting my afternoons at practice when I would be parked on the bench when it mattered the most, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from a sport I had loved virtually since birth. Now I wish I could end this story with the dramatic cliché of me finally getting an opportunity to play in a big game and winning it for my team with a homerun with two outs in the last inning, but unfortunately this is not the movies and no such event happened. I watched from the dugout my Junior and Senior year as many of my friends got to live my dream of becoming baseball stars.
Many people may look back on an experience such as this and regard it as a colossal waste of time, but I do not. I learned more about how to succeed in life sitting in a baseball dugout than I did sitting in any classroom. The key to success is not what you do when you have every advantage in a certain area of life and success is assured, but what you do when the cards are stacked against and you have to rely on heart and determination to gain even the smallest victory. I may not have made the majors, but I look forward to my adult life armed with lessons I learned from the run-down baseball field at my high school.
With tryouts for the Junior Varsity baseball team approaching, I considered whether I should even bother trying out. I knew that at best I’d be stuck on the bench, and at worst have the traumatic experience of being told that you’re not even good enough to waste a perfectly good uniform on. My friends encouraged me to forget about it and focus on preparing myself for the upcoming football season. But my love of the sport was too great for me to give it up without a fight. If the coaches didn’t think I was good enough, then so be it and they can come drag me off the field. After a week of practice, I resided myself to being cut from the team. But fate intervened when several players quit after the tough conditioning program our coach instilled after every practice. If they had stayed, I would not be writing this essay right now. I made the team by the skin of my teeth and rarely played my freshmen year.
After an only slightly more active sophomore year on Junior Varsity, I attempted to make the leap to Varsity against my better judgment and the advice of the other players who were certain I would not escape being cut this time. But I beat the odds again when the coach was impressed with my attitude and I once again squeaked by when other, more talented players, were cut instead. I knew playing opportunities would be few and far between and many of the other players why I bothered wasting my afternoons at practice when I would be parked on the bench when it mattered the most, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from a sport I had loved virtually since birth. Now I wish I could end this story with the dramatic cliché of me finally getting an opportunity to play in a big game and winning it for my team with a homerun with two outs in the last inning, but unfortunately this is not the movies and no such event happened. I watched from the dugout my Junior and Senior year as many of my friends got to live my dream of becoming baseball stars.
Many people may look back on an experience such as this and regard it as a colossal waste of time, but I do not. I learned more about how to succeed in life sitting in a baseball dugout than I did sitting in any classroom. The key to success is not what you do when you have every advantage in a certain area of life and success is assured, but what you do when the cards are stacked against and you have to rely on heart and determination to gain even the smallest victory. I may not have made the majors, but I look forward to my adult life armed with lessons I learned from the run-down baseball field at my high school.