Personal Narrative: Curveball By Dane Kutnick

It was the beginning of Spring 2015 and I was in 4th grade. Baseball season was right around the corner and I was shopping for gear. My baseball team, the Alameda All-Stars, was put together by me and my twin brother, Austin, when we asked our friends if they wanted to play with us.

“Unfortunately, Jack, there will not be many opportunities for you this year.” Seconds after being told I had made the varsity baseball team, I did not expect my coach to so bluntly tell me I would be spending more time watching the game than playing it. Our state ranked team had a pitching staff full of Division 1 commitments and future MLB draft picks, and I was being told I did not measure up. The bench became my best friend.

Softball. My favorite sport. It’s not a contact sport so, the chances of me injuring another player are slim to none. Or so i thought….. I was in Traverse City last year with my team for a softball tournament. It was the fifth inning of our morning game, we were down by a few runs and I was on deck. “There is one out,” I thought to myself “I have to get on base.”

When I was younger, I always wanted to be someone famous like a singer, an actress, or even an astronaut. But one day I came across a sport, but this was not just any boring sport to me, it was a sport that I knew I wanted to do for a career or even until I grew old. It might just be a ball and bat to some people but to me it felt more than a sport. It felt like an endless vacation from everything going bad in my life. That sport is softball. But I knew something that felt so wonderful has to have some challenges.

Five minutes after I arrived at my brother’s Babe Ruth Baseball game, I was asked to step in and umpire because the current ump had to leave for an emergency. Having experience umpiring little league games already, I willingly accepted. Not knowing what I was getting into, I returned with my gear on and restarted the game. The first batter stepped in and walloped the first pitch he saw down the left field line. As the ball rolled out of play, the runners continued to sprint around the bases and the play continued. Realizing that the ball went under the fence, I called timeout after the play and met with my partner who agreed with my view. I moved two runners back on the bases, taking away two runs from the hitting team. The team’s fans

Life throws many challenges at you, but you need to know when to tackle them and when not to. A challenge is something that Is a struggle for you and needs more attention than a problem. Now I know this from experience from the time that my baseball team was in the league finals and disaster struck out.

Today is the second game of the, 2014 baseball state tournament, held in Wahpeton ND. My team and I are so pumped! We get to play our rivals, Fargo. We only hate them, because we play them so much. We drove down to Wahpeton in groups within our team. It only took about a 45 minute drive. Once we got to the field, I opened up the car door, and took a huge deep breath saying to myself, what another great day. I got out of the car and could start to smell hot dogs and humidity.

Dunaway had drove the ball over the shortstop 's head and had rounded second, it had been a close play, so she slid into third. The umpire, strong and confident, stood up and called her out. Tears rushed down the young girl 's face, as the coach, coach Dalfino, yelled at her saying, “This is no circumstance to cry.” The athlete had walked off of the field, limping in pain.

My team and I watching from the crowd, as Clarkstown and New City battle it out to advance to the next round. The sun beaming down on us like we were asphalt on a summer day, and getting in our eyes causing us to put on eye black. I can’t help myself and smell hot pretzels being made so my dad and I buy one and share it before the game ends. The game finishes, 4-3 in favor of Clarkstown, my coach tells us to go to the out field to stretch and throw if you were a parent in the stands all you would see would be 10 bright white baseballs flying back and forth. The umpires soon arrive and our three coaches call us over, to say “We did not try this hard and make it this far to lose, so let's go get that win boys!” my team replied with “Let’s go

Two years ago I played for the Carolina Reds. After a while we all determined we wanted a ring. During our first year we battled so hard to win a ring tournament. However we came up short every time.

The June 27th, 2015 championship game for our local West Hanover baseball team, it was a beautiful day Central PA perfect for the great game of baseball. Looking back it was a day I will never forget, possibly one of the most important days of my life. We were playing our rival team the undefeated Hershey teams, us only having one lose in our regular season to the one and only Hershey team. This team was loaded with athletes their cocky attitudes. They were like the Yankees and we were the Phillies, we were the underdogs but we had a motive we had an inspiration for the win.

Jack was on his way to the first baseball practice of the season. Everybody knew that Jack was the best baseball player in the small town of Bosville, but over the summer a new baseball player moved into town, named Joe. Joe was supposed to be better than Jack. Joe was only 15 and he already had college scouts looking at him and trying to get him to play for the team they were scouting for. For the first time in Jack’s baseball career he is going to have to play good to keep his position at shortstop.

It was a cool fall night, and Joey was up at the pitcher’s mound, ready to face the most challenging team in the league, the Tigers. “Ok,” Joey thought,” I can do this.” Joey’s hands were shaking and his knees were weak. Joey got into his windup and threw the first pitch. It was a fastball right down the middle. The hitter from the other team smacked it down to second base and the second baseman threw him out. The next batter stepped up and he threw two fastballs and a change up to strike him out. Joey was confident he would end the first half of the inning pretty quick, but then he saw Conner. Conner bullied him at school because he had a weight problem. Every day when Joey got to school he was picked on. The thing that Joey hated the most

Division Series. It was the fifth game in the series of best out of five games with

For a young baseball player one of the highest goals to achieve is hitting a homerun -for me that was all I wanted. I already achieved most of what I wanted in baseball, and one of my proudest was a no-hitter, but it was no home run. When I first realized how bad I wanted this feat was one night after a practice where all we did was just hit. The majority of my teammates hit at least one homerun that practice, but me I hit the fence but never was able to send one over. The car ride home after the practice was horrible, I was a mess. I told my mom, “ I’m horrible at this game, I get so close everytime and I just can’t hit a ball over the fence.”