It’s been an interesting baseball year, for sure. The summer has seen many highs and lows. And this year, Zachary played on a new team so there was that element of learning too.

Each game, we asked Zachary to list his goals for the game. Most of the time, they are the same, hit a double, triple or home run. Play sound fielding game. Pitch with confidence.

The good thing about baseball is that it teaches you that to accomplish any of those goals takes a lot of hard work, especially when you are retooling a swing. We went through a month of ground balls as he struggled to implement the swing in games. And there was the local tournament where he had the worst weekend, EVER. The boy was frustrated, but each morning, he got up and brought his balls out to hit off the high tee.

As luck would have it, that hard work paid off. He hit his first home run and it was an out of the park home run. The boy smashed it. The smile afterward said it all.

Zachary continued to work. In his last summer tournament, he smashed another one. This time, no fence, but it didn’t matter. Direct hit, centerfield, all the way to the woods. As he rounded third, running like a mad man, it became obvious…he hit his second of the season.

And yes, I know that’s not a lot by some standards. For a contact hitter to switch over to some power, it’s impressive. A Korean with home run power, you have to love it!