A Dream Come True

Evan Scribner

Troy Scribner

As a nation, we are passionate about our sports teams and players.  Sometimes we are distracted by and focus only on how much money professional sports players are paid.  But that's not the subject of this post nor what's really important.  What it's really about is a "Dream Come True." Not just for the players but for their families, and friends, and coaches, and mentors who have spent much of their past twenty years - almost the entire lives of these young athletes -  nurturing their growth and development. It's about the parents who spent years in the backyard pitching and catching and hitting and coaching and teaching; the years of schlepping around to dozens of rural ballfields to play games,  the years of local teams, school teams, college teams,  multiple levels of the minor leagues -  thousands of players each with the same goal and dream -  a chance to be successful as a Major League baseball player.

The odds are long for success.  Only a very few have the tenacity, talent, and good fortune to gain a berth on a Major League team.

It's a story that dreams are made of.  A young boy with photos and posters and autographed balls on the wall above his bed, his last thoughts at night and first in the morning about baseball.  Sitting around the house on a rainy or snowy day throwing a ball into the pocket of a new glove to break it in just so.  It's that same young boy going to try-outs year after year and hoping to make the cut each time. It's about long, hot and dusty bus rides across much of America to the next game.  It's about moving from town to town with each new team, not really having a home except perhaps their childhood home - the parent's homestead.

Then one day, for the very few, the call comes.  And at that moment, it was all worth it - whatever the hardships and sacrifices, to be able to live the dream.

At a Major League baseball stadium there is an area set aside for the player's guests to attend the games.  More than anything, what fills those seats is the parents and grandparents and family members and lifelong friends who just beam with a pride born out of a lifetime of effort and overcoming long odds.

So next time you think of a professional athlete, think about the years of hard work, the sacrifices, the long odds of success and be happy for the pure human drama that plays out each time these competitors take the field.  All these young men are somebody's sons or brothers or grandkids or childhood friends and the joy and meaning in life the sport has given them is priceless.  These young men achieved their wildest dreams - it's a wonderful thing to celebrate.

And if the odds are long for any one young man to make it into the big leagues, I wonder what are the odds that two brothers both earned the opportunity to play in the big leagues!! Congratulations to Evan Scribner in the Oakland Athletics organization and his younger brother Troy Scribner in the Houston Astros organization and their parents Dave and Gail for achieving just that!