Cause Essay

There I was, standing in left field. The sun was shining and there was the smell of freshly mown grass drifting through the field. I heard the crack of the bat hitting the ball and looked up to see it coming my way. I backed up, put my glove over my head and caught the ball. What was I doing there in left field? Why would a nine year old girl be playing on an all boy’s little league team? Three reasons come to mind. The first is that I loved the game of baseball. The second is that my older brother played and I wanted him to respect me and finally it felt great to hear my mom rooting from the bleachers when it was my turn at bat.
I loved the feeling of being up at bat. That feeling of waiting for just the right pitch to come my way was so exciting. What made it even better was the fact that my mom would be sitting in the bleachers cheering me on. When I hit the ball she was the loudest one cheering, and when I struck out she was there to offer encouragement, and sympathy. She made me proud to be out on the field just by being at every game and rooting for me.
My older brother also played on my team. He was one of the reasons the I wanted to play baseball. I enjoyed the time he spent with me in our backyard, pitching to me so that I could hit better and playing pass with me until it got so dark outside that we couldn’t see the ball. I wanted him to respect me and be proud that his little sister was good enough to play little league even though she was a girl.
I can remember watching baseball on television a few nights a week with my brother. I didn’t really understand all the rules, but the excitement when Mark McGuire hit a homerun, or when Ricky Henderson stole second always made the game fun for me. My older brother and his friends were always playing baseball in the field in the back of our home. They let me play when they had an odd number of players. I enjoyed hitting the ball and running the wooden blocks that substituted as bases. I loved it when I caught a fly ball or when I tagged one of the older boys out on base.
I have always loved playing baseball. Although being out on the field or up at bat still gets my blood pumping, I gave up on playing by the time I hit thirteen years old . There were more girl oriented activities to pursue. My brother went on to play baseball all through his high school years, and even now almost fourteen years later we still go out in back of my parents home and get a game going with both us, our spouses and our kids. My mother still watches from a chair on the back deck and she still cheers for me when I hit the ball across the field. The only difference between now and when I was little, is that now I am the teacher and my own kids are the pupils. I hope to instill the love of the game in them that I still have to this day.