Baseball 101

Since I was just a three year old you could always find a baseball in my hand. My dad said my favorite toy as a baby was a stuffed baseball that I would toss around. I started playing playing baseball at the age of four and played throughout high school forever falling in love with the game of baseball. I have spent endless hours playing on private baseball teams, working with my father, and even by myself just working on technique. After high school I had offers at numerous division two schools and one division school, but sadly threw out my arm senior year of high school actually requiring surgery. After, being done with playing baseball I began umpiring to stay in tune with baseball and stay with something I consider a passion. So in honor of one my first jobs that I started at the age of 14, I will be explaining the basics of how to be a baseball umpire. I have spent years of my life dedicating it to baseball and have seen it not only from an umpires shoes and players I have basically seen it all. 

The first thing you need to do is secure the proper equipment to umpire. You need shin guards, chest protector, umpires helmet, and steel toed shoes to stop the ability. Baseball for umpires is no game, equipment is necessary when you have ninety mile per hour fastballs whizzing by your head. If you do not have the proper equipment you can take a foul ball and really get hurt. Throughout my time I have taken balls of the arms, off the helmet, and even in the ankle. You can not protect everything so you need to line up properly behind the catcher in order to avoid majority of balls. You need to get a official umpire shirt, grey pants, a belt, and also a ball pouch that goes on your belt for the balls. After you have the equipment set up, you need to begin to grasp the strike zone. The strike zone is typically knees to the letters and from both the inside and outside of the plates. It really is not that easy of a job, you really need to focus and learn not to flinch when a pitch comes directly at your head. Fortunately I played catcher for years so I have that ability way before hand and did not have to learn that. 

Most people know the basics of how out and safe works. Some basic rules that some might not know are three strikes your out, four balls is a walk, three outs per inning, and foul balls count as a strike (you can not strike out on a foul). Some more intricate things that you will learn over time is positioning, balks, and specific rules that leagues will carry. Each league has different sets of rules and different levels of baseball are almost completely different. For example, you need to wait for the pitch to cross the plate in order to steal, but in higher level baseball you can steal whenever you please. Baseball umpiring might sound tough, but it is extremely profitable. I have the ability to make upwards of 25 to 40 dollars an hour cash depending on the level of baseball I am umpiring, if you can get over it being a extremely high pressure job it is totally worth it. When I am not interning I still umpire whenever I can. 

 

Something about Home

The town of Lodi, New Jersey has been my home for the entirety of my life. I can still remember not being allowed to drive my bike past the stop sign at the end of the street or playing basketball on the street with my friends till it got too dark, then still playing a while more till we literally could not see the ball. I used to have a trampoline in the backyard that hosted my friends and we would play games like kill the man with ball and handball. Growing up I was lucky enough to have my best friends PJ Potter and Vincent Pinghera live just three and five blocks away. We would constantly switch off at each other's houses playing videos games, basketball, riding our bikes, anything we could do that occupied us believe me we did it. I grew up on a little street called 2 Lorelei Ter. It was situated on a dead end so there was always little traffic. It was the worst when it would snow though, plows would never come down the off the beaten path street and my dad would end of attempting to clear it with his snow blower. I still remember pulling out the football and tossing it around with my dad in the snow. Making diving catches in the middle of street is something I will remember forever, I always wanted to be a football player playing in a snow game. The way they would slide after diving or getting tackled looked like an insane amount of fun. PJ, Vinnie, and I would always go to avenue E deli and as weird as it sounds I still can remember what everyone purchased each time. Kind of crazy to look back riding around with our bikes on the streets of Lodi and something about that makes driving around Lodi now in my car a little more satisfying. I was lucky enough to have both of best friends from the young age of four. Really crazy to think about it, but we are still best friends to this day. Whenever I go home we always link up and just hang out. We all go to colleges pretty far away from each other so we rarely see each other outside at school, but no matter how long we spend apart we always come back together like nothing changed. Sure, those avenue E deli runs may have turned into a quick drive to Wawa, but it is something about the inseparable bond we have that makes home home. Knowing that I am going to go back to not only my family, but literally friends that I consider brothers. I still remember waking up twenty minutes before high school and rushing to pick up Vinnie, PJ, my girlfriend and just running into first period as the bell rang. The struggle to find the spot amongst the extremely crowded streets near my parking lot less school. I remember going to baseball practice with them, tossing the ball around and screwing around. I guess I associate home with a much simpler time. Not worrying about internships or employment law tests, but just hanging with friends, how we're going to get a couple four lokos. High school sports and who got with the hottest chicks. Before I got my liscense me and my friends would walk home everyday. It was brutal and we hated it, and of course my house was the last one on the walk. I would always persuade everyone to come over and hang out so I did not have to walk that final couple blocks solo. These are couple things I hold close to my heart when I think about home and I wish I could relive on a daily basis. I will never forget these things.

Interview with Mike

I decided to interview my sister's boyfriend, his name is Mike Goolsby. The reason I choose to interview is how interesting of a life he has lived up to this point. Mike was a infantry man and was deployed in Afghanistan. He was honorably discharged after being hit by a road side bomb and still struggles with post traumatic stress disorder in his everyday life. Mike grew up in Texas on a military base, then moved to Alabama, and finally ended up in New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University Business School and graduated with a degree in finance. After, college he received a job offer from Bloomberg to be a financial analyst.

Introduction was brief with nothing noteworthy, just quickly chatted about present events like the Superbowl and Donald Trump.

Zach: What was it like growing up on a military base and what was the name?
Mike: The name of the military base was Fort Hood. Fort Hood was like a big town, but everybody worked on the military base. My Dad and Mother were both in the military so for me it was almost a right of passage to join. I kind of just felt like it was my duty seeing that my parents did it, living on the base made me realize at a young age that I was going to join the army.

Zach: What did being in the Army teach you?
Mike: The army really taught me how to be a leader. I lead my squad in Afghanistan, I need my fellow soldiers to be confident in my decision making. I have led people in situations where lives were at stake so now it is easy for me lead in everyday situations. Also the army taught me self-discipline, always pushing myself to get up in the morning or little situations each day.

Zach: Was it hard dealing with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder?
Mike: Yes it was. At times it would definitely get on my nerves and bother me. I have definitely gotten by PTSD for the most part, but I often at times will have trouble with loud noises or surprises.

Zach: Were you injured from the bomb?
Mike: I made out very lucky, a lot luckier then some of the people with me. I was around the wall so fortunately I escaped with bruises and scrapes, but completely blew out my eardrums. The force of the bomb sent me to the ground and my ears were bleeding. I blacked out for a short period and remember waking up to another person in my platoon asking me if I was okay.

Zach: Did you enjoy your time at Rutgers and did you find it hard?
Mike: Rutgers was a great experience for me and was a lot harder then basic training (sarcastic tone). I like to think I have a good work ethic and refuse to let anything beat me so despite Rutgers being hard I always seem to overcome.

Zach: Was it different being older then most of your fellow students due to serving first?
Mike: It was a bit different, but everybody treated me the same. I am definitely a lot older then your average student, but I feel as if that was to my benefit. Being older I already knew who I was and what I wanted to do in life. I feel as if younger people are still trying to figure themselves out when I had plenty of time to do that already.

In closing I wish I could go into further detail about some of the stories Mike has told me because they are extremely interesting. I personally find Mike and his military experiences to be kind of eye opening and makes me really appreciate further who serves.

Keller Basketball

I am currently a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, better known around campus as TKE. One of my favorite sports is basketball, I love watching basketball and playing pickup basketball more than anything. It is kind of my way to continue to play sports at a competitive level and it helps me stay in shape. For me, I can play pickup basketball for hours on hours. I hate running so really this is a fun way for me to get cardio in. One of the reasons I joined a fraternity like TKE was their participation in Keller which is basically an intermural league where fraternities compete between each other. Stats are recorded, wins, losses and in the end Keller hosts a league tournament for the championship. It is a fun way to stay in shape, stay competitive, and have fun. For me baseball was my sport in high school, I had D1/D2 offers, but basically had an elbow injury that ended my career. After that occurred I lost my want to stay athletic and in shape, but fortunately pickup basketball has changed that for me. This past Monday we had a game against another fraternity, so I wanted to walk you through how the game went.

 TKE Keller Football Championship

9:32 Pm: My fraternity team and I showed up early to shoot around and stretch out. Getting a good stretch is key for me because of the two discs I have problems with in my lower back. We showed up with nine players, basically the perfect amount to get enough playing time, but still stay fresh.

10:12 Pm: We lined up with the refs, they gave us a brief break down on the rules and how they were going to call a lot of fouls to keep the game in order which is reasonable in Keller. You are much better calling more fouls, then less. We lost the tip and game was off.

10:24 Pm: TKE 15-SAE 4 I checked into the game for the first time. I sometimes start and sometimes come off the bench. It just worked out where we had more big men, then guard so I decided to let the other guys start. I am not much of a shooter, I play more in the post, and use my weight to scoop offensive/defensive rebounds as much as possible. The game was going extremely well, we really kept it out of reach about the entire time.

10:35 Pm: TKE 30- SAE 8 We really began to pull away at this point and I came out of the game at half time. We were really out playing them on just about every on the court. We were out boarding them and are defensive was the best I have ever seen it. Luckily we do play pickup together often, so we really do have some chemistry out there on the basketball court. We were honestly thinking about making up some basic plays to run out there on offense. One of our plays Brian Conforth I combine to use screens/pick and roll to pick up some easy points. He is a good passer and finisher and I am a big guy so I set good screens.

10:50 Pm: TKE 46- SAE 13 The game ended in a mercy late in the second half. We were all really happy with how we played and think we can carry this momentum onto the rest of the season. We won Keller football league this year and really want to show our dominance by winning basketball after. I finished the game with six points and seven rebounds. Overall a solid game for me, and what I do on court as a hustle player. 

Can you have two homes?

For me college has been a roller coaster ride. Freshman year I attended West Virginia University, while I enjoyed my time there it never once felt like home. After a year at West Virginia I transferred to Rutgers. I lived off campus my sophomore year and still live in that same house my junior year. I also have the house lease signed for the following year. So for me despite the fact that I spent eighteen or so years at my house in Lodi, New Jersey and that is definitely home, I struggle when I get the feeling of home when I am at Rutgers. Being in New Brunswick does not feel like I am away from home. There is some obvious differences to my real home and New Brunswick being that in Lodi I live with my parents, dog and sister. At Rutgers I live with three of my good friends. 

I know I am different then a lot of people here at Rutgers...I can name one person I know who has lived in the same spot three years of their college career, but I think that is part of the reason why I feel like Rutgers is home. Not having to move my stuff after each year. Being able to cook in the same kitchen, consistently bringing new things to make the house better each year. By no means is the house half the house I have in Lodi, but something about it being my house makes this special. Makes me realize how much I will miss waking to chilly house because our heat sometimes tends to fail us, my door drifting open if not closed properly or how our mirror stays foggy forever after a shower. For these three years I have spent exponentially more time in this house, then I did at Lodi so why should I not call this home. 

Sure, I go home to Lodi and say I am going home. Sleep in my room that I have slept in since before I could remember, eat my Mom's cooking, and still battle to eat all the Stella Dora cookies before the rest of the family... my heart knows this is home. Coming down the stairs to my dog greeting me will never get old. Waking up to late and seeing the family throwing you stares, some even might disappointed stares. My Dad cracking a wise joke about my sleeping habits and me laughing about it. The point is it is really tough to compare these places. My mind tells me New Brunswick is home, I mean it makes sense right all my clothes are there, basically everything I own and I spend all my time there. But, I go to Lodi and my heart tells me this is home. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it really is okay to accept two places as home. When I graduate and move out of my little house in New Brunswick and back into my house in Lodi, a new period of life will start. Lodi will be my home in heart and mind. New Brunswick will just be a memory.