Best Little League Player In The Country

This post is going to be a little different, just because when I finished this next video I was almost in tears. Not bad tears but tears of pride. This post is dedicated to my father. When I was little he (and mad respect to my mother) never ever put any limits on me when it came to sports. They never said I couldn't do something because I was a girl, in fact they especially my father would push me to be as competitive as my brothers were. 

There was not a better example then when I played Little League. I started on a team full of both girls and boys. As the years went by and we moved from tee-ball to real baseball, the girls started to drop like flies. Yet I remained. The boys got bigger. I remained. I don't think I know what I was doing at the time, but before we knew it I was one of the only girls left in the league. I was ten. I was still hanging in there. Still supported on the sidelines. 

The next two years will go down as two of the most special years I will ever remember. You see once you turn ten you are eligible for the All-Star Team that played after the regular season through the summer. Up to that point there had never been a girl from my league that had made the team. That all changed. Somehow I landed on the roster and somehow continued to stay on that roster for the last two years of my baseball career. I was astonished. Parents were too. Opposing players didn't know what to do with me. I remember I had to change behind the dug out during one practice when we got our new uniforms. We were making the rules as we went along.  And in the most lasting memories I will ever have in my life in my last at bat during my final season, I hit what a (this generation) of DeMaio kids had yet to do ever before.... I hit a home run. You couldn't make it up. It was magic. 

I left Little League and moved onto softball after that final year. Unlike Chelsea the league had a specific "no girls" rule for the "Babe Ruth League". But to me it was fine. To me I proved everything I had ever wanted to. To me my baseball days were over and that was fine. Yet looking at this video it just makes me so happy to think... "look how far they have come now....my mother had a choice of cheerleading and volleyball, I played little league and Chelsea may make it to the majors..." Amazing. 

So thanks Dad for spending so many hours on the sidelines of my game. Thanks for setting up the throwing nets in our backyard. Thanks for buying me baseball gloves for Christmas when Mom I'm sure wanted bows for my hair. Thanks for letting me be different....and letting me know that it was okay.