Senior Night for baseball...
This night was 14 years in the making. For fourteen years, I played baseball, the last four with a great group of guys who I am definitely going to miss and already do. So let me walk you through the entire night.
Senior Night is the last home game of baseball for the seniors on our team. Pretty self explanatory. Anyways there were ten of us, and only ten of us played, besides a junior who came in relief. Anyways, the game was a tough one, not only emotionally but the game itself was a typical north crowley come from behind fashion, sadly it did not turn out the way we had hoped. We lost 6-7, story of our season, half of district games were lost by one run. And for most of us, this was our last game. Less than half of us will go on to play college baseball, and less than that may make it to play longer. But for me, this was it, this was my last game, and it still truly has not set in yet. But I do feel very fortunate, my last time in the field I caught the last out on a flyball in foul territory, and the last time up to bat I hit a base hit to right field, so I do feel very blessed that is the way God decided to end my baseball career.
But it was after the game that hit me the hardest. Every other member of the NC Baseball program, freshman through junior lined up around the base path and shook each of our hands after we walked out to the mound with our mom and dad as our dads threw our last pitch to us. This was the emotional part, and I did it last. I was the last Senior of '010 to round the bases and step on homeplate in the 2010 season.
So did I have any regrets? Well, I would love to say no I didn't have any regrets. However, I would be lying to you, and I am a horrible liar so you would have figured it out anyway. My only regret is that I did not keep God involved in the game as much as I had planned to. But that is the funny thing about plans, often times they never end up the same way you had planned, hehe, planning the plans never come out how you planned. This year I did a better job of it, but I will never be able to meet my expectations because I set the bar way too high for me to ever achieve. But that's okay, because everything that happened during my four years of baseball has formed me into the man that I have become now. Both athletically and in my relationship with Christ.
A friend of mine once told me that, in a nutshell, God had given me this gift of baseball, and I had held onto it for too long instead of giving it back to God and letting Him use it my life to glorify Him rather than myself trying to use it to make me happy. And he was right. I held onto baseball for so long because I never wanted it to end. But as I caught that last out, as I got my last base hit in my final at bat, and as I rounded the bases for the last time in a baseball uniform, I stepped on home plate, signifying a full circle ending to a great baseball career that would not have been possible without God, and with that final step on the plate, it was time to let go. It was time to let go and give it back to God, and since then, that connection with baseball is not the same, but that is perfectly okay because God is bigger than a game of baseball.
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