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Every other week, a bunch of bloggers from different backgrounds all give their take on the same topic. This time around it is “What did you want to be when you grew up?”
When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you can get a bunch of different (sometimes hilarious) responses. Their brains haven’t developed the filter that tells them they can’t do or be something. Often, their responses will be related to what they happened to be doing at the time the question was asked. You get the typical policeman, teacher, astronaut, athlete. The best one I’ve ever heard was “I want to be a firetruck!” And it was said with enthusiasm.
A while back, I came across a project I had done back in third or fourth grade about this exact topic. We were instructed to draw out our life plan. What I wanted to be at the time was a baseball player. Not just any baseball player, I wanted to play for the New York Yankees. If I remember correctly, I even included the contract details.
Interesting sidenote: I even stipulated the rationale for the contract I would get. I didn’t need to be the highest paid player, just what I was worth. Apparently, I was well versed in the concept of greed at a young age.
A year or two later, my family moved and I stopped playing baseball. This was at the same time as the last MLB player’s strike. They brought in replacement players and cancelled the World Series. I was done with baseball for many years. I tried again for a season in high school and the game had passed my by. A couple years later, my Minnesota Twins were nearly contracted out of existence and my love of baseball resurfaced. I started a petition to express the outrage I was feeling at the possibility of my team going away. I managed to get several hundred people to sign it but my efforts were limited. I had no real resources and I lived five hours from Minneapolis. A month or two after I created that petition, a much more organized (and better funded) group led by Paul Ridgeway really gained some momentum. My team was saved and returned to respectability shortly thereafter.
These days, I get my allotment of infield dust by playing on and managing my church’s softball team. I’ve been playing softball for over a decade now and every spring I get that itch to get back on the field.
I never made it to the big leagues, but I think I’m more satisfied playing softball at the local park than I would have been living the life of a major leaguer. The things I didn’t know…
