A Piece of Humble Pie, Order For One Please

So I'm not very happy with the situation with my hobby. I know it's stupid to get upset about it, but I do work very hard, and this is something I want very badly. But as I said before, it's just a hobby, so it's kinda silly to get worked up over it.

Especially if you watched Sportscenter at all this last week.

I wrote about the piece they did on Jason McElwein, and at the end, I mention that there should be a whole network dedicated to just showing 'feel good sports stories'.

No there shouldn't be.

I wouldn't be able to handle it. Sportscenter this past week, ran their "My Wish" segment. Each story was about a kid who had a sports dream, but because of some physical or mental disability, would never be able to live out that dream. So the folks at ESPN/ABC made the dreams a reality.

The first one I saw was about a girl named Katie. She played Little League baseball in Oregon. Her team won the state championship a few years ago, and she was the only girl on the team. She was a leader on the team, both in play, and in spirit. But she had to give it up, when it was discovered she had brain cancer.

Katie is a huge Seattle Mariners fan, so they rounded up the whole bunch of Little Leaguers that won the title a few years ago, and took them out to the stadium for a Mariners game. Well, everyone on the team except one - Katie's best friend. I think his name was Brandon, but he had moved down south, and couldn't make the trip with the team. Katie was pretty bummed out about that fact, but looked forward to the trip.

After having a chance to run around the bases before the game, and meet alot of the players, they took the team to centerfield for a team photo. The PA announcer then boomed over the stadium that it wasn't a complete team photo, and that someone was missing. He directed their attention to the centerfield gate, where Brandon came running in to greet Katie.

Pretty sappy I know.

The next one had a kid with a birth defect that left him with liver and kidney failure at age one. He's now 10, and spends nine hours a day on dialysis. The disease has forced him to put on weight faster than most kids, and limits his range of motion due to central nervous system damage as a result of the liver and kidney failure at such a young age.

Despite all the limitations, the kid insists on going out in the yard everyday, and hitting a baseball off of the tee. Prolonged movements leave him sore, and even more incapacitated later on in the day - but he won't come in the house until he's hit several balls off the tee, and walked around the bases.

He got to spend a day with Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies, and hit off a tee on home plate at Coors Field.

That story kinda got to me. And the series got me thinking about my situation. I have above average motor skills. I know I'm lucky to be able to play sports the way I do. Sometimes I bitch about my situation, but then I see something like this, and think that those kids would shave years off their lives to be able to do what I can do.

And that's a pretty humbling thought. But I'm still going to fight for the starting job, and when/if I get it, it will mean a little bit more now that I've been reminded of just how precious each one of those seconds on the field of competition are.