By janaveda on Skatehive
The memory of my country's championship in this year's World Baseball Classic is still fresh. Yes, the sport I played in my teens was baseball. A scout even spotted me as a prospect and gave me a tryout in a minor league in the state, an affiliate of a major league team in the United States. But I flopped in the opening game, making a fielding error. Perhaps it was the effect of staying up late and drinking too much the night before. I missed a great opportunity. Back then, my father asked me whether I wanted to be an athlete or a college student, and I chose the latter. Of course, it wasn't mutually exclusive; I suppose I could have managed both at first. I remember playing every day in that era on a field near my house that my cousins and the kids from my block cleared and leveled for our games almost every afternoon. I close my eyes, and I can see myself running after the stitched leather ball, after calculating its trajectory. I would run backward and, stretching out my glove, al