My dad was good at baseball, maybe college level and he went to portage central which is a good recruiting school, therefore, he could have gone to college for baseball or even the majors. He wasted it because he dropped out for family reasons maybe it wasn't his fault but its seemed right to him at the time, does he regret it maybe but without making that decision who knows he might have never met my mom and had me or maybe even my stepmom and have my little brother Greyson . Growing up I wanted to be a pro baseball player, I wanted to go to college and I still do, my dad wanted to make that possible. He wants me to pretty much fill his shoes because he loves the game so much he has taught me everything I know about baseball he is wise he knows pretty much everything about his favorite sports team he knows almost every starter where they came from and where they went to college or for college teams he knows the background of every player it’s crazy and also really strange to me for someone to know that much. When I was younger I listen to every word he had to say because I knew that he knew a lot of sports and baseball in particular I also never been on a team before he told me what a coach was but I never had one before, so my first example was my dad telling me how to play a sport that we both loved. It was great, I wanted to be good, I wanted to show him that I could play ball, to show him what he was telling me was paying off.

 We used to play baseball in the front yard it wasn't big and at my age it wasn't small there was a fence that separated my yard and the neighbors but the neighbors yard was huge so they didn't care when we went over there. We would hit wiffle balls and run the bases which were either sandals or shits and we all used the same bat we didn't have the best equipment but that isn't what mattered, my dad would try and get us out and we would try to hit the wiffle balls over the fence and at my age it wasn't every time at bat so for me to hit one over it would have to be a really good hit and for me to hit one over the fence was a huge deal I would walk around with my chest out like I just crushed the ball like some major league player my dad would hype me up and made me sound sweet. We would do these basic drills and to learn the general game like ground balls and pop-ups and running the bases. Then some days we would just sit inside and watch MLB the tigers to be exact and he would tell me “did you see that? He did this because of that and that because of this”. 

It's kinda awesome that my parents are divorced, lots of kids hate it or think bad of it but it's nice to me I get a whole week in a different environment, I would spend a week on week off so I would stay with my dad for a week and stay with my mom for a week. Times could have been better, my dad being in between jobs trying to support me and my brother Taynan while paying for things like the house and the bills. We didn't have it great but he made every moment fun and even though we didn't have the best things that other kids had like Xboxes and PlayStations we had a dad who would spend time with us and at the end of the days to me that's better than having any games systems. I think it’s really important at a young age to spend quality time with your kids and he did, lots of kids don't have dads like that ,I have only met a couple of people in my 16 years of life where I have seen dads outside playing with their kids, we were only playing baseball but he was a 30-year-old man running and playing around like he was 5 or 6. That is huge to a kid at that age it makes them the person they are today and it sucks the situation he was in because maybe he felt like he had to do that or maybe he just wanted to spend time with us and do things we wanted to do. 

My dad had been seeing this woman at first I wasn't sure about her or her kids but after time passed she was alright  her name was Erica, Erica had two other kids; Brionna who was my age and Gaige who was about 5 years older than me and about 2 years older than my older brother Taynan and we all used to live in this little house and Aricas oldest son gaige, he didn't really have a father figure because he dad was in jail or prison for as long as I can remember for reasons I don't even know. We all were super close especially me and Gaige because we both loved baseball so much, me and Taynan have always been close except he didn’t love baseball like me and at that time it’s all I wanted to do and It’s all I could think about, he liked it but you could tell there was something else he wanted to do still to this dad me Taynan and Gaige and really close he is the brother we never had.  Us three and my dad with all the neighborhood kids would play big wiffle ball games in my front yard my dad was only the pitcher because he was a grown man so it was unfair to everyone else but almost every day we would have these huge wiffle ball games and we would try so hard and take it so seriously, we loved it.

  At the time it was better than anything you could ever buy from the store. I never realized the long-term effect I got from those days, the knowledge I have now is mostly things I learned back then, I pick up something along the way but I never realized until now what kind of effect it had on me.