A Story Of Heroism

Let me tell you a story about a small kid who had dreams of becoming a slugger in the big leagues someday.

His home was a tenement in the West side of Chicago, Illinois.  He'd never seen grass before, he lived in a tenement.  He'd never seen a bat before, all he'd seen was the club his father had to kill rats for dinner with.

But he had dreams, and oh, let me tell you, they were bigger than the world.  Everytime I used to hear the kid talk about it, his eyes would light up.  He lived to play in the big leagues.

His parents never gave him anything, the best birthday present he ever got was his parents simply remembering that it was his birthday.  He never had a birthday party and no one ever told him "Happy Birthday" on his birthday.

When he was in high school, he saw a baseball diamond for the first time.  He had always wanted to play and had always dreamed of it, but he never had the tools to play.  He never had a bat or a ball or a diamond or friends to play with.

He hardly ever went outside for fear of a drive-by shooting.

He was a freshman trying out for the team, and the coach said, "Have you ever even played baseball before, kid?"

The kid looked down at the ground embarrassed and replied, "No, sir, I have not."

He wasn't a bad kid, he never got into much trouble at school despite living in such a dilapidated shack with little to no parental support.

As he progressed throughout high school, he swung the bat on the porch of his house everyday.  He developed some of the strongest forearms in the grade.  Pretty soon, you could hear all the girls whispering in the hallways about his masculine forearm muscles.  He was on his way to becoming a star.

He would stand outside on that porch so much swinging his bat he soon became known around town as the Pimp.  He swung that bat so hard and for so long.  It gave all the ladies on the West side of Chicago great pleasure watching him swing that thing.

By the time the kid was a senior, he was batting .237.  His major league hopes were dwindling, but one major league scout decided he was going to take a chance on the underperforming high school kid with the skinny legs and big forearms with a pick in the 96th round of the baseball draft.

It turned out, that this gamble that the scout took paid off big time for the team.  He is now quite a star.

The name of that kid is Derek Jeter.