VICTOR AND THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Flashback: For his ninth birthday, Victor got treated to a ball game at Yankee Stadium. With His father, he sat on the upper decks behind home plate. Screaming and cheering he was at the top of his voice alongside the crowd. So invigorating it all was. Pulled was Victor into his dream world as he tended to be. There he stood on the mound. Behind the diamond was none other than Jose Trevino. Victor was waiting for the sign, ready to deliver some heat. Winding up, he snapped his arm and the ball erupted towards the diamond. There it met the catcher's mitt with a booming sound. “Strike three you’re out” Amid the cheers the announcers were heard saying, “This boy is destined for great things” Victor was so emersed in his vision he nearly missed the game-ending home run. As he watched the players celebrate, he heard a voice say, “That will be you one day.” Though perplexed, Victor dismissed the thought as his own. And let the dream fade away. 

On the ride back home Victor was eerily quiet, too emersed in his thoughts. His father thought nothing of it. Victor had his moments and all learned not to be too bothered by them. 

During dinner, he finally landed back on Earth. Interestingly enough though he had a rather peculiar question to ask. Out of the blue, he asked his father, “How did they get to play today?” 

His Dad questioned him, “How did they get to play? You mean to ask, what it took for them to become professional baseball players?”. seeing Victor nod affirmatively he continued, “Well…., it took them many years of hard work and perseverance. Patience. Drills. Lots of games. Extreme grit and grind. Probably lots of success and failure too. Only the best out of millions make it to the big stage. Yeah, … it had to take lots of sacrifices.” he answered Victor with a thoughtful and wistful look on his face. 

“I see.” was all Victor said in return. Both to caught up in their worlds resulted in the ending of the conversation. 

His father's answer revealed to Victor the only thing his mind was able to comprehend at the time: it would take years. ‘It is impossible’, thought Victor. Impossible that he would ever pitch to Jose Trevino. By his father’s explanation, he would need years to get to the level where he could stand on that mound, if ever at all. He brushed the vision aside and went to his usual pastime - reading comics. 

The dream though never faded away. Every once in a while he had a flashback of the vision yet didn’t give it much thought until his best friend Charlie showed him an interesting pamphlet. Big bold white letters on a swirly gray, and black background were inviting all youngsters to join the New York Yankees organization for a Baseball youth summer camp. 

“ … All boys from the age of 6-12 are invited” it specified further. Not exactly sure why, Charlie, borrowed the pamphlet. At home, while his father was watching a replay of a Yankees game he fished it out of his backpack.  

“You want to play ball?” His father asked him. The expression on his face was unreadable to Victor; he had never seen it. And before he could decipher it a scowl took its place instead. “You are 9 already.” his father commented. Victor remained silent. His young mind was oblivious to the problem. Soon after his father shed light on the situation, “Many of the other boys must have already started at 4. You would need to play catch-up.” His father's deduction flooded his mind with understanding. ‘I would have to play catch-up’ he repeated to himself. His self-reflection was cut short when his father continued, “Will they provide equipment?” Despite seeing no response from Victor he continued, “You are sure you want this?” This time Victor responded with an enthusiastic nod. His father concluded their discussion with a resolute decision, “You know what? Let me call them and we will see.”

When Victor came home from school the next day, he did not expect his world would be swept into a whirlwind of training and sweat. His father had wasted no time and called the Yankees in the morning. They were given the green light so long as his father taught him the basics. 

Bob Beckerman used to play ball himself back in his day. A former high school pitcher and left-fielder. A rather promising prospect he was.  Until he suffered a nasty elbow injury during camping. Alongside shattering his elbow, his dreams were also shattered. But here was an opportunity o leave a mark after all. He said to his son, “You can go. They will pair you guys with your peers but expressed the desire that you learn at least the basics. There is one other boy who will begin anew. Perhaps you could let him join you two. Be friendly.” Excitement was sported on Victor’s face. He was going to play ball. “Today we need to go to the store to buy you the proper equipment.” His father continued. 

Later that day Victor began his new journey after receiving his glove, bat, spikes, and helmet. He was allowed to pick the not-too-extravagant things. His choice was a classical glove, helmet, and gray-colored aluminum bat. His spikes, the only more luxurious item, happened to be black with a tinge of red and gold on the sides. They looked cool.  

His father went into instant coaching mode. The glove needed to be broken into, so simple playing catch is what they began with. 

The sound of the ball hitting the mitt prevailed in the atmosphere for the next two weeks. It was all people could hear. 

Once they were done with learning the basic stance, they headed to the nearby local baseball field. There the real training began. Victor was shown everything, from batting, and fielding, to even pitching. He was only shown the absolute basics of course. It would be impossible to teach him more advanced stuff in such a short time. He would learn that at the camp. 

Victor appeared to be as natural as his father. He learned quickly. By summer camp he knew the basics enough to not fall behind. And so went the 4 weeks until summer camp started. It was only for 14 days, but it was sure to be exceptional. Or so the camp personnel told Charlie, Victor, and so many other boys. 14 days of getting to train with the best. 

Not beating around the bush, they started off their summer camp with everyone's favorite task. You guessed it. The very first thing on the menu happened to be running. 10 laps they were instructed to take. Nothing too difficult Victor thought looking at the lap. Deceiving it all was though, by the fifth lap Victor started to wonder if this was for him. And they had 5 more laps to go. 

Huffing and puffing pervaded the atmosphere. It was all people could hear from all the boys at the camp. A tactic probably, for soon the coach began to talk. They were going to be divided by skill. Alongside Victor and Charlie, there were two more complete newbies. There were enough of them that they were assigned a coach of their own. They would teach them everything. ‘What luck’, thought Victor. ‘This might not be so bad after all’, he further pondered. 

It all began with the coach teaching them the basics. All the boys thought this would be easy, but soon they were in for a rude awakening. The coach was merely testing their basics to see, how quickly he could move forward with the training methods. Soon they were asked to do more complex fielding which turned out to be much harder than they looked at first. 

They all struggled. It was taxing and exhausting, yet oddly bonding. The other two boys were William and Robert. Will and Rob in short. Turns out they lived near them. They became great friends and maintained their friendship even outside the camp. 

By lunch, they were beaten. They devoured it in mere minutes, ready for seconds. Luckily there was plenty of food available so they could eat to their heart’s desire. It reminded Victor of the parable of the sparrows. He felt provided for. He only wished he also felt equipped. This sure seemed like facing a giant in a metaphorical sense. 

After lunch, they switched to batting. They were all lined up, even the other boys, told to take their stance and swing. Up and down the line the coaches went and corrected their stance. Gave them tips and showed them tricks.

There standing in line, Victor finally took a good look at all the other boys. Most were well dressed in the best possible equipment, probably provided for by their clubs. Their swings we powerful, and precise, and the look on their face determined. Some looked way ahead of the rest of them. It was impressive to see, especially when he got to see Peter Jobbs take a swing.

This boy was exceptional. He played in Little League World Series last year. Ended up being one of the top players there, though their team didn't make it to the finals. He was almost a superstar. The other guys sure treated him that way.

Then there was shortstop Javier Garcia. His team also made it to the World Series, they were in west region contrary to Peter who was in the east region though. One of the best shortstops at this level or so they say. 

Hearing all this, Victor marveled and felt rather favored that he ended up in this camp at all. Here they were with pretty much no knowledge, yet learning with the best. They continued swinging the bats; their arms began to sting. It went onwards until 5 pm when they finally retired. A soak in the bathtub was what they were all dying for at the end of the day.

When walking by some of the other more seasoned players they overheard them talking about this camp being much harsher than usual. “It has never been this brutal before. The other camps were pretty leisurely. What happened since last year?” Another boy with short blond hair named John Snow, spoke “I heard one of the coaches this year returned from Japan where he coached high school baseball. That’s where the brutality is probably from”. An 8-year-old boy with curled brown-colored hair named Tim, short for Timothy, added, “This camp is nothing compared to what I hear they do in Japan in preparation for Koshien. That is hell.”

‘A coach from Japan?’ Victor wondered. ‘A camp even worse than this? Guess they must be good.’

Dinner ended up being a much more calm occasion. It was obvious all were tired and in need of rest. But no one was yet about to retire. Now came the even more fun part about the camp - hanging out. This year the camp was in the countryside and near the woods. All were staying in cabins. There were four beds per cabin. 

Victor and his crew decided to play some cards and looked through their baseball card collections. Though they planned to go to bed early, they stayed up until 11 pm. 

Groggily they were awoken the next day by a camp siren. Victor annoyedly thought to himself, ‘They even have a siren. Isn’t this supposed to be fun?’ 

They got themselves out of bed and the pain began. All Victor felt for the rest of the day was pain. Pain in his thighs, his arms. How he managed to move was beyond him. He had never had this much exercise in his entire life. He was so glad he trained with his dad beforehand or he probably would be dead by now.  

They continued with the same drills as the day before. There was a lot of fumbling, a lot of stumbling, failed passes, and so forth. And that is how it was until day 4. In their batting practice, they added batting cages with those automated pitching machines. 

Despite the struggles to the skilled eyes of the coaches, they were swiftly improving especially the newbies. They were natural at baseball and learned quickly. 

On day 7 they were all grouped together for a drill course. It was hard but fun. Interesting and exhilarating. They made it into a competition. It was during this drill course that Victor managed to build a couple of other friendships. Shortstop Manny Sanchez ended up gelling well with him and even showed him a move he had learned. He has been playing since he has been 4. Then he also managed to connect with catcher Jim Hendricks. Hopeful he would catch some of his pitches if he ever got to pitch. Meeting Jim reminded him of his vision.

The next day Victor asked if he could learn pitching. He was told honestly he could not learn pitching in only a couple of days. When he told them his father already helped him find his stance, they agreed to teach him the drills to improve his current stance, windup, snap, and finish, and help establish his best physical conditioning. 

Then they told him about the other drills: pitcher control drill, sit and throw drill, and the bullseye drill. Victor ended up training pitching for the whole day to get into the rhythm and truly become equipped. It was a different day. By the time he was done, he learned there were even more muscles that could end up hurting than he imagined. Every part of his body was aching. Even a bath did not alleviate the pain.

Even pizza, the coaches treated them with didn’t take away the pain. It did raise up his spirit within, especially since everyone seemed more lively than ever.  It ended up being quite rowdy in the cafeteria that night. All were starting to get accustomed to the new training regime, and new friendships were formed and well established by now. 

After dinner, Victor stopped Jim in his tracks. He was eager to pitch some pitches to an actual catcher. Jim was busy though. He had promised Johnny Vena, a curveball pitcher, that he would catch for him. After he was done with Johny though, he was willing to catch a ball or two for Victor.

And that is how the newbie four, as they became dubbed, ended up on the field with Jim Crew, the 10-year-old catcher, 9-year-old pitcher Johnny Blant, and their buddies left-fielder Lucas Rudd and short-stop Manny Sanchez. 

They silently observed Johnny pitching for 20 minutes or so, fascinated by Johnny’s curveball and even more his unorthodox stance. He had a wicked windup that looked almost otherworldly. Victor found it very helpful. He even got some tips when they let him throw some pitches. 

All in all, it was an amazing evening that Victor was going to remember for sure. 

For the rest of the days there, Victor trained fielding before lunch and batting plus pitching after. In the evening when he could he also connected with Jim. The day before the last day, he caught some of the pitches for him. The day before the last one, they had a group hang-out with an evening camp-like picnic. Sng were sang. Stories were told, and promises were made. Manny said to Victor he would love for them to join their little league team. And the boys said they would think about it. It was not that far away from them and was smaller than the other teams, but it had some amazing players this year. 

And so the last day rolled around. A special day it was to be. A game was to be played. And a surprise was promised, a secret the coaches were not yet willing to reveal. Two team were formed: red vs. blue. Who would win?

Victor and Charlie ended up on the blue team, Robert and William on the red. Each team had 14 members from which the initial 9 were picked They were promised all would get to play. None of the beginner four were picked among the initial 9. But excited they still were. All of them would for the first time get to play in a baseball game. 

The game began on equal footing. Both teams were fumbling on defense, but batting exceptionally. Normal for newly formed teams. It was back and forth the whole game and tight. Everyone was so invested in the game that they forgot about the surprise until the coaches stopped the game and called for two coach changes. One on each team. They called forth for a catcher change on both teams. 

In came for team blue Jose Trevino and team red Austin Wells to the shock of all players present. Every pitcher was to get an opportunity to pitch to them at least once. ‘Every pitcher gets to pitch to them? Does that mean me too?’ wondered Victor. In that moment he remembered the vision. ‘No way!’ further pondered Victor. ‘No way!’ resonated once more in his mind. ‘No way!’ continued pervading his thoughts when his eyes took in the sight of Johnny pitching to Jose Trevino. ‘This can’t be!’ his thoughts kept on going as he continued marveling at the amazing sight before him. Snapped he was out of his thoughts when Coach Rudy called out his name, “Victor, you're up next. Go throw some pitches in the bullpen in preparation”

Before he even knew it Victor, still a bit in a daze, found himself standing on the mound facing Jose Trevino, his catcher. So surreal it all felt. Here he was pitching as he had envisioned in his dream only a month or so ago. The dream had come true. And he barely had to lift a finger. Two pitches he managed to get in. Two pitches that stayed with Victor for eternity. They were the pitches that assured him that nothing was impossible. No dream was impossible or too high to reach.

As he walked off the field into the dugout, he thought to himself, ‘ Surely God is behind all of this.’ Whether it was God or not, the event left a stamp on Victor that marked the nature of his future path and adventures. Always eager to learn something new and experience God in unexpected and newfound ways was Victor’s new way of thinking.

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Until next time!