Trip back to the Midwest

You always to stay humble...


After I found out that I wasn't going to be playing baseball overseas in Europe this summer, I told myself I wanted to travel more.

I talked to my co-workers at Fox Sports about where I should travel. Perhaps Europe? South America? Africa? Mexico? I didn't really know where I wanted to travel first.

As I was thinking about where to travel, I used stumbleupon.com to see what kind of places people travel to or unique places to go to. And what I really was looking forward to was traveling out of the country.

After nights of "stumbling," I became more overwhelmed of where to travel. There were just too many places to choose from.

So instead, I went in another direction and decided to go back to my old stomping grounds and visit some friends in Iowa instead.


I arrived to Iowa from be in 80 degrees and sunny SoCal to being 45 degrees in Des Moines, Iowa.

Just to keep it brief, I felt like I was on a tour.

Sarah and Emily. 

My friends Sarah picked me up from the airport in Des Moines, then the next day my summer roommate Alicia picked me up from Des Moines to go to Cedar Rapids. She was kind enough to let me borrow her car and drove to a restaurant to meet up with my roommates during college and their girlfriends. Then the first day in Cedar Rapids, I drove to the school to visit some people and surprisingly after a year and a half since my last visit, people remember who I was (crazy, right?). Then still on the same day, I met up with another teammate from Puerto Rico and catch up with him. Then the day after, went to go have lunch with my summer roommate and her parents when I was out in Iowa for an internship. Then met up with another roommate for dinner. (How about that for a tongue twister, and keeping it brief. Joe Sheller would definitely not be proud of this.) And now at this point, I still have one more night left to survive before I go back to LA.

Teammates from when I played at
Mount Mercy University

A lot of people would or did tell me, "Why Iowa?" But this trip back to the Midwest reminds me that I am blessed with friends around the world and I wouldn't give up anything for that. It also keeps me grounded from living in a city with a million people in it, where I personally take a lot of things for granted.

I wanted to thank everyone that went out of their way just to come say "hi" to me. It really meant a lot to me. I wouldn't be where I am at today without you guys.

Special shout out to Sarah Beck, Alicia Spurgin, Emily Roder, Vinnie Pantaleo, Jeff Dorman, Colin Johnson, Carlo Rivera and Elizabeth Sadler. I can't thank you guys enough.


Jun


“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.” 
― Muhammad Ali

Dream that remains a Dream

Everything happens for a reason...


A lot of people might not have known, but after I got done playing baseball at Mount Mercy, even with no connections what so ever, I still had the itch to play.

After graduating from the Mount, I was still in Iowa during the summer of 2013, interning at a Newspaper company and playing semi-pro baseball on the weekends. One day, I was hanging out around school and ran into my coach. He was asking what I was up to and there I asked him if he had any connections to any professional teams, not the Major Leagues but other independent teams out there. He looked at me with a blank face and told me, "No."

Then in October 2013 2 months after I moved back to California, I went on a trip to Las Vegas to coach in a baseball tournament with a travel ball team that one of my college coaches started up. One of the guys that coached for the team just came back from playing baseball in France. On the last day of the trip, I introduced myself and asked him how he got in to playing at France. Of course, he had a track record of by starting in the Pecos League, then going to the American Association, then going over seas to play in Europe. When I asked him, he told me he went through a website and sent out an email with a resúme and couple of team got back to him.

After he told me about that, days after a got home from the trip, I started to send some emails to France, England, Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and so on and so forth.

I waited about a couple of months before I got any reply back. But during the time I was waiting, my buddy Mason told me about a guy he knew and told me to get in to contact with him.

So I got in contact with a guy named Keith. He was basically a recruiter. When I talked to him, he laid down how much he wanted from me just to talk to a team, and if I made the team, there was a more money involved added to the negotiation. At the time, I was only a part time Production Assistant at Fox Sports so I didn't have much saved up, so I passed up on it. But while we were discussing the possibility of me finding a team, he mentioned the Pecos League.

Now, the Pecos League, if you haven't seen the show on Fox Sports 1, is a professional baseball league where undrafted players go to play if they didn't get pick up by any other teams in other leagues. So When Keith told me about the Pecos League, I checked out the website. There I saw a possible ticket in to playing professional ball. There was an ad saying there are try outs in the state of Texas during the month of February. But the thing was, it was about $2,500 for the try out for the whole month. I knew it was a long shot since money was at the issue again, but I emailed one of the manager of the team and got in contact with him. In the end, after talking to the manager from December to February, I didn't end up going, but found out one of my teammates from Mount Mercy went out there and made that team.

So back to talking about Europe. After the Pecos League fell through, my thought was, "Ok, I gave it a try. I guess I'm done."

Then in mid-April, I checked my email in the morning. I looked and saw that the email was from baseball team in France. And the weirdest thing was, this was one of the team I DIDN'T send a email to. But it was an opportunity to play again. But there was one problem.

I just got hired as a full-time employee at Fox Sports in late March.

If I was a part-timer, no questions asked. I would have packed by bags that day and left whenever they needed me. But that wasn't the case. So I talked to the manager, Manu, for about a week and a half. I had a hard time deciding since being full-time at Fox Sports means having benefits and the whole 9. Then again, in the end, since I replied to his email with an open-ended answer, he signed another player.

Some things just doesn't work out.

Then the Summer of 2014 came along and I was asked if I wanted to play in a local sunday league team for the summer. Even with the crazy schedule at work, I agreed to play.

Meanwhile, I kept in touch my my buddy that played in France while he was in season. Some bad news came from him that he just got released from the team, but found another team in Belgium couple of days later. He kept telling me I should try to still play if I can because you only get to play this game when you're young.

That got me thinking about playing again, so I sent a mass email to all the countries again. This time, I had teams reply back but saying they didn't really need a player or there are no roster spots. One team from Norway emailed me back actually trying to help me out to find a team through another recruiter, but things didn't work out there.

Then this past October (2014), a team from Sweden emailed me saying they were interested in me and wanted to speak with me. I had an interview via Skype and it went well. The GM who I spoke to, Johan, actually went to school at Santa Barbara City College for a year and played baseball so I thought we had a connection there.

2 months passed by and I didn't get a reply from him whether or not he was going to be on the team or not. But regardless of having the job at Fox Sports, I ready to let that go to go chase my dream.

Then finally on January 13th, my dreams got crushed. I got an email at midnight saying that they were gonna take another player instead.

My mind raced with a lot of thoughts. I killed myself for about 4 months to be in the best shape to play baseball if the opportunity came; I woke up extra early to go work out before I went to work at Fox; Off days weren't even off days. I should have took the offer from France when they asked me to play for them. Just a lot of things running through my head.

Until that point, I always worked towards something, like getting ready to play baseball. But now, I feel like I have more free time on my hands, I don't even know what to do. I guess I'll have to find another hobby. I'll get over that hunch sooner or later.

Shoutout to Brian Kohrogi, Taylor and Logan Gelbrich, Brian Ramirez, Chris Pascual, Ronnie Lopez, Mike DeMaria,  Jenny Valliere, Brian Collins and last but not least my family who was in support of all this. Can't appreciate how much it meant to tell me or allow me to chase my dreams. And it was that close!

Now that this is put to rest, what now?


Jun

The one change in 2015

2014 has been a grind for me.

For about 6 months of the year, I was working out 5 days a week (with some being two-a-days) and finally got hired full-time in March at Fox Sports.

It was a constant case of running around and then going to work. Even on my days off, I would go work out in the morning and then come home to realize my friends are either in school or they don't have week days off, so I end up working out again.

I felt my body getting exhausted but I kept pushing myself but felt in the best shape of my life, until I injured my arm (not sure what it is even until now). But it's set me back from going to the gym to workout or even go hit at the batting cage if I was bored.

In the last two weeks in 2014, I've done a lot of sitting around and thinking, but mostly itching to get back to working out.

But during that time I was just sitting around, I realized I never make time for myself. I'm usually at work 5 days out of the week, training with one of my buddies 3 days out of the week in the morning, going to CrossFit classes twice a week before the crack of dawn, and running errands on my days off. All the hours add up without realizing it and then a new week starts.

In 2015, I want to do something different. 

I always said to myself I want to travel. I see friends on Facebook post pictures of them going to different places and seeing the world. I envy them for that.

So this year, on my days off, Im going to try to start traveling a little more. Nothing big at first though.

I'm feel as if I'm always stuck in the South Bay, and haven't really seen much of the greater state of California. So first things I'm going start with is seeing different parts of California.

I don't know if I can do it every week, but I hope this goal lasts for the whole year.

Jun