Dylan Castellanos 3/9/22 CCAA Freshman Comp Literacy Narrative In this essay I will be talking about my deep love for my sports, but I also will be talking about how I’ve been losing my love for it too. So take it back all the way to when I was 5. This was my first time ever playing sports and that sport was baseball. I had no idea what I was doing or how to play. So the first time I went to hit the ball, I was very nervous and you can see it in my legs by how much I was shaking. So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and I actually hit the ball. Keep in mind I never had any experience with baseball at all, so for me to hit a ball in my first ever year was actually a key accomplishment in my life. That hit felt like the start of everything, I felt more confident in myself and kept playing. So fast forward 4 years later, I was very comfortable with baseball, after so much training with my grandpa who I’d like to thank because without him I feel like I wouldn’t have been where I was at. So after a couple of years of experience, I felt like no one could stop me, I felt like no one could be better than me. I felt like that was when I wanted to take baseball seriously and actually make it pro when I got older. So after a great season, my team made the championship. This was when I got that same feeling of nervousness from when I was 5. I was so nervous because there were so many people watching and this was the first year that I took my team to a championship. But I took my deep breaths and I calmed down. I had one of my best games ever and we were up by 3. I was thinking that we had this game in the bag, until the final inning. They came back and got the lead. So it was me up to bat and this was our final chance to win. I hit the ball but it went straight into the fielders glove. We lost. I took this loss very hard knowing that I put in so much work and I was having such a good game, just to get the final out. This was one of the most humbling experiences I had, this taught me to not be cocky and to let my game do the talking. After that happened I made a promise that I will win a championship. So I took the offseason to train and get better. Next season comes by and I had another great year, so we got to the championship again, and next thing you know we lost it again. I was thinking what was going wrong. So I took another offseason to work even harder, and the season got here. We were last place and didn’t even make the playoffs, this was really taking a toll on my confidence. So another couple years passed and still no championship so I switched leagues. This was one of my favorite times playing baseball. I was with my friends, I was doing very well, and my team got to the playoffs and then we got to the championship. The team we were playing was not the best so we thought the game was ours. Until they started hitting everything and had a major lead on us. We had our last batter up and he struck out. I lost another championship. At that point I was over it. I was balling my eyes out crying everywhere. Just the fact that we knew we were better than this team and we lost to them made the loss hurt even more. So fast forward to covid year, this was one of the worst experiences i ever had playing baseball. My coach was an absolute jerk, our team was always getting targeted and even worse I was getting benched for no reason. I was better than most of the people on the team and I was still getting benched. Then he wondered why we lost almost every game. This was absolutely frustrating for me, this made me want to quit, I didn’t even want to go play anymore. This triggered many emotions for me because this was the sport i grew up with, this was sport i loved with all my heart and just to have that happen to me made me lose my love and interest for the game. So the year after that I didn’t care anymore so I decided to just play for fun. I had another amazing season, my coaches were good but my team was absolutely terrible. I was doing all the work for the team and I felt like I had no help. But we somehow still made it to the championship. It was such a close game until they came up to bat and they won the game. After that I just sat there after the game. Not even crying because I was so used to losing. I knew that it was my last year, I just didn’t want to play anymore. I wanted to give my grandpa one more year to see me play but I lost all my love for the game that I grew up with. I didn’t want to waste my time anymore so I quit. I thank everybody who was with me on my baseball journey especially my uncles,my dad and my grandpa. All in all I feel like this all taught me a lesson to not waste time on something that isn’t working.