College Athlete Advantage Baseball Scholarship

Growing up baseball was always a relevant topic in my household. I grew up with my grandfather, grandmother, and mother. My grandfather was the person who got me most into the sport. He often bought me baseball-related things such as plastic bats, baseball cards, my first glove, and my first real bat. By the time I was three, I was already excited to storm the tee-ball field. My grandfather and I would sit and watch Major League games, and he would tell me all about what everything meant. He would tell me about the rules, what the different statistics meant, and how his favorite team (Atlanta Braves) seemingly fails to make the World Series every season. Growing up in Birmingham, AL also meant that baseball was a good bit of everyone’s life, and I think that could be generally said for all of the South. We don’t have a Major League team, but we do have a Minor League AAA team, the Birmingham Barons. My grandfather took me to many of their games as a kid. Birmingham was also home to a team of the lesser-known historical Negroe Southern League where African-Americans played baseball because they weren’t allowed to play in the Major Leagues due to segregation during the Jim Crow era. My grandfather grew up playing baseball himself. As expected of the time period, race relations and baseball didn’t only clash in the Negro League, but in local leagues as well. As I grew older, my grandfather felt more comfortable with telling me about his stories during the Jim Crow era. One of the stories that have been engrained in my mind is when he spoke of his attempt to try out for his high school baseball team. He described how he was treated unfairly at the tryout, and on his walk home, he was chased by students spewing racist rhetoric. I think that this story was so significant because, at the time, I attended the same school he did as a high schooler. But those events did not falter his love for the sport, he continued to play, and he even played in a local men’s softball league until about a decade after I was born. I remember going to his games, watching him play, and looking in awe at how far he and his teammates would hit the ball. One of the fondest memories that I have of me and grandfather is when I asked him after one of his games, “why don’t the players run around the bases after they hit a home run?” He jokingly told me, “we’re too old to be running around the bases.” I think that my love for baseball is deeply rooted in my relationship with my grandfather. He taught me everything that I know, and he still makes it to every game of mine that he can. Without those trips to the batting cages and those days when we would play catch in the front yard until the streetlights came on, I would not be the baseball player I am today.