Self Reliance Emerson and Thoreau

Alex Jordan

My First Homerun

February 8, 2016

When I was 10 years old I had never hit a homerun and all of my friends had hit one which made me jealous and I was dying to hit a homerun.  This was our last baseball tournament of the season so if I wanted to do it I had to do it in this tournament so I wouldn’t have to think about it in the offseason.  The final day of the tournament was September 11 so I had to do it on that day and note that day was the day before my birthday so it would be a crazy birthday present to hit a homerun before my birthday.  This season I had been hitting well I had many close calls with hitting the ball off of the fence and I knew it was going to happen this last tournament.  I was one of the biggest kids on the team and had hit a ton of homeruns in practice.

  It had taken the whole tournament and I still had not hit a homerun it was the last game of the tournament so it decided if I was going to get this homerun or not.  I had pretty much gotten a hit every at bat that day and had already hit 1 off of the fence so I was feeling very confident coming in.  My hitting coach was at the game and told me my swing was great and to just let the home run come naturally.  In 10u baseball we only played 6 innings so I was likely to get 2 or 3 tries to hit this homerun.  My entire family was actually at the game so it would be huge to hit my first homerun in front of all of them.

So the game time has come my coach has me batting 3 in the lineup and playing first base which is my main position.  The first 3 innings I did not hit a homerun which was frustrating because I knew I had it in me but I waited it out and kept my focus.  In the top of the fourth inning I made a diving play at first base which gave me confidence going to lead off the inning at the plate.  When I was facing this pitcher he was a righty and he threw kind of hard so it was what I liked to face.  

The first two pitches to me were out and low which gave me a 2-0 count which is probably my favorite count to be in.  I wasn’t thinking about the homerun at all I was just focused in knowing it had to come natural.  And then it happened, the pitch came in high and inside and I turned on that ball as hard as I could and I had connected.  The ball was the highest I had ever hit a ball in my life to that point.  There were power lines 30 feet behind the right field fence at the field I was at and I hit the ball over all of the 6 powerlines that were there.  It was farther than any homerun I had hit at practice or anywhere.