This year the Joint Math Convention was in Atlanta, GA. As luck would have it, Turner Field was closed and SunTrust Park was not yet opened to the public. Would this be my first math convention without any baseball? Not only that, the city virtually shut down due to an ice storm. On Saturday afternoon, once the weather cleared up a bit, my wife and I took a walk to the CNN building. We had a wonderful tour guide named Corey James. After the tour, we asked him a few questions about CNN and then we somehow got on the topic of baseball including how much it meant to us. After I said that I wrote a baseball blog, Corey was interested in submitting an entry. Below he describes what baseball means to him.
My parents first signed me up for T-ball in the spring of 1995, as I look back in retrospect that time frame changed my life. As I grew up playing baseball I learned to love and have compassion for the game, from building relationships with teammates, colleagues, and coaches that I still keep in touch with till this day.
Some may look at baseball and think about some of the negatives such as steroid and supplement abuse. But baseball is way more than that, it’s a sport that can bring a whole family together and can be passed on throughout generations. My grandfather played and loved the game of baseball, and passed the love on to my mother who played softball, and passed that love of the game on to my siblings, and my parents and sibling included passed the love on to me.
I enjoy every minute of the game. The adrenalin rush of being on deck, the pulsating heart thumping feeling of stepping into the batters box, the excitement I receive from watching a home run, witnessing a stolen base, or even a bases loaded full count situation. All facets of the game are exciting. I plan to take my love for the game, and continue the tradition that my grandfather started and pass the love of the game along to my children, and my eventual grand children.
Baseball is more then a bat and ball. It’s a world where you can bring diverse populations together for good ole competitive fun, and excitement.
– Corey James, 03.08.2017