How Lupus Affected My Mini Baseball Career

Blog Featured

I’ll be featured on Peter Abraham’s blog on Jan. 7. If you want to know what it’s about, you’ll have to wait until the 7th and go to his blog and read it… http://yankees.lhblogs.com/

Here’s the first entry I almost submitted to Peter but I decided not to because it was more about me and not the Yankees.
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My name is Sean Serritella and I live in Livingston, New Jersey. I’m disabled with a form of lupus. I run a blog called yankeesdaily.com. My favorite player is Don Mattingly and I’ve been blogging over a year.

In 1983, my father kept telling me about a player named Don Mattingly and how much potential he had.

They were having tryouts for little league and there was a draft and I made a team called Varsity.

Every time up at bat throughout the season, I pretended I was Don Mattingly. I used the same stance he used.

I made the All Star team on the fact I did pretty well in the first three quarters of the season. I started to slump in the last quarter.

I was worried about my slump and how it would affect my all star appearances. We would play teams from other towns.

A kid on our team named Jay was the leader of the All Star team. He started getting on me saying I was a wasted All Star pick because every time I got up, I’d make an out. He was right. I felt bad.

I didn’t know I had lupus and it was starting to affect me. I felt weak and tired and I felt helpless.

The coach benched me and I wasn’t playing anymore.

The last game of the All Star season, the coach decided to call on me to pinch hit.

Jay got mad. He started getting on the coach’s case saying, “He’s an automatic out! I can’t believe this!” “He’s a waste!” “He doesn’t DO anything!”

The first pitch was outside for a ball. I wasn’t used to the speed of the pitch because we were playing the best teams with the best pitchers. I was worried. I was getting ready to disappoint every one again.

After the first pitch, Jay then started yelling at me, trying to encourage me to get a hit. Jay was yelling, “Come on Sean, you’ve been hitting great all year, get one hit for us. We know you can do it!”

When I heard Jay yell that, it made me feel good about myself. I felt an extra rush of adrenaline.

The second pitch came in. I smashed it right up the middle for a base hit, something Don Mattingly would do. After the hit, I heard Jay yell, “Great job Sean.”

It made me feel great that I finally contributed something to the team even if it was only a base hit.

I’ll never forget that day. The day I believed in myself because other’s believed in me.

Because of these events , I will never forget Don Mattingly and how much he meant in my life.

My baseball career ended but that one day standing on first base, that one moment, I was somebody and no one could ever take that away from me.