Introduction
Baseball has been an American sport for as long as the country got independence, I think, or so my grandfather says. My father, and his father and the father before him have always been fanatics of baseball and not as audiences, but, actual players. As seen, baseball has been part of my family's generation for as long as the legend goes. Therefore, my siblings and I love our family tradition, which is baseball and my father ensures that my siblings and I participate in all sports activity with emphasis on baseball. The following paper will discuss my family's legendary love for baseball, how it resonates with the current generation and what it means to our family.
Playing Baseball from a Young Age
I began playing baseball while I was young, and my father and his brothers would meet up at a local park and practice all day long. The enthusiasm in my father's eyes was an accurate depiction of how much he loved baseball. Growing up, I participated in a lot of sports probably because it is an inherited trait. My father played on the Mav's baseball team in Missoula while my mother played softball at Hellgate High School. Hence, one can only admit that sport runs in my DNA. I particularly remember when I was seven years old and my brother was about twelve years of age, we would run out of the house with baseballs in our hands and bats in the other and we could play all day and all night long.
The Baseball Heritage in Our Family
It was not until I joined the baseball team at Mount Jumbo Little League that my father explained to me what the baseball heritage was all about in our family. According to him, my great-great-great-great grandfather played in the major league for the Arizona Diamondbacks. His professional sportsmanship earned him trophies and endorsements which he used to raise his family. The passion that my great-great-great-great grandfather had for baseball has been an inherited gem throughout the generations. Due to an injury, however, he stopped playing baseball and retired. Soon after, his sons took up baseball playing both in the minor and major leagues in Canada and the United States of America. There is a lot of information found in the photographs in my grandfathers' den showing all the inherited trophies, medals and pictures of our generational men playing baseball. As such, it has become a tradition where both women and men of our familial line have to play baseball either as a hobby or a school sport.
Tee-Ball and Our Unique Type of Baseball
According to my grandfather, tee-ball was the name used to refer to baseball back in the days. Tee-ball is similar to baseball including having a coach to direct the players, the consistency in the number of players as well as equipment. The difference was that the marking of the field was a little different from the average baseball that American and Canadians are accustomed. Therefore, our family plays a different type of "baseball." In this type of baseball, there is the box made out in the middle of the field where the pitcher has to throw the ball. The distinct markings of the field are different from the normal baseball field. My great-great-great-great grandfather would play on such a field and to make it worse; he did not have any helmet or any bat. His father curved out a log and made a huge bat that was larger than his hands and for the helmet, let us just point out that, according to his father's famous words "he had to take it like a man when a ball hit him on the head!"
The Journey of My Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather
According to my grandfather and my father, my great-great-great-great grandfather was at first reluctant to play because his father was shrewd and dictatorial and he wanted his son to live his father's dream. In an effort not to make his father mad, my great-great-great-great grandfather had to get up as early as five in the morning (or rather when the rooster crowed in the morning) and would run more than five miles and back to their home. Failure to do so resulted in severe punishment which included logging of timber for his father in the backyard of their home before school and failure not to attend school resulted in a more severe beating.
Becoming a Legendary Baseball Player
My great-great-great-great grandfather sounds like he did not want to play baseball but, based on the legend about him; he became one of the most revered baseball players of his time. It was not until in High School that my great-great-great-great grandfather began to love baseball. He even started his baseball team in his local school and would train others using bats carved out of tree trunks and a dusty field marked out with used car oil. The passion grew from there, and his father was proud. To show how proud he was of his son his father bought him a new helmet- at that time baseball equipment were meant for the major league players since they were expensive. He was the only child in his school that owned a helmet.
Pursuing Baseball as a Career
The severity of playing baseball back in the day, according to the stories told of my great-great-great-great grandfather went through a lot. There is a particular story said about him that at first he wanted to join the army but, his father refused and that he had to play baseball as it was becoming a more lucrative sport compared to dying abroad. So my great-great-great-great grandfather watched baseball in the baseball field in the minor and major leagues, listened to the radio about players in the area and knew all their names.
His passion grew stronger from then and decided to train himself to enroll in the scouting process that would occur while he was in high school. For months my great-great-great-great grandfather would wake up in the morning, take a morning run for one hour, exercise for thirty minutes and then go to school. While in school, he would try and remember how he saw other professional baseball players did it in the field such as how to hold a bat and how to run and practiced from evenings till late. It took him more than three years of failed attempts to be scouted for the major league and become a player. But, in his final year in high school a scout recruiter from Arizona came calling in his hometown, and let's say, the rest is history. Therefore, my family has adopted the tradition of playing baseball as a commemoration of the efforts of my great-great-great-great grandfather and the reputation he built for himself.
