When I turned 16, everything changed — again. One day I was in Burbank, where palm trees lined the streets and I could practically pitch blindfolded to the back fence of our house. The next, I was in Boise, Idaho — a place that felt like a different planet. No culture. No rhythm. No friends.
And I was alone.
We didn’t just move once. We moved a lot — Burbank to Boise (1 year), Boise to Aurora, Colorado (5 years), then to Arlington, Texas (2 years), and finally back to Aurora again. All because my dad worked for Albertsons and followed the job wherever it sent him. I hated it. Deeply. So much so that during our first year in Idaho, I had to see a psychiatrist for how unhappy I was.
It nearly cost my dad his job. He almost moved us back because of me.
But we didn’t go back.
And so, I adapted — or tried to. I was introverted, and starting over at every school felt like emotional quicksand. In Boise, I spent entire lunch hours on the payphone talking to my mom. It wasn’t just homesickness. It was a kind of invisible grief — for a life I had been ripped from, for a childhood I couldn’t get back.
In Arlington after high school, I wasn’t going to parties or chasing careers. I was watching General Hospital, One Life to Live, and All My Children. I went to the gym because my mom suggested it. I was physically moving but emotionally frozen.
⚾ Baseball Was My Anchor
I enrolled at North Lake Junior College in Texas, clueless about how college worked. My mom and I picked classes like we were ordering off a diner menu; “I’ll take Beginning typing, Government and History”. A few random electives. No idea about required courses or academic tracks. School and I had never mixed — and my 1.9 GPA (four D’s, two C’s) made that clear. I was ineligible to play baseball.
But then came a twist in the story.
After two years in Texas, we moved back to Aurora. My grandfather, back in California, had a connection — the head coach at Pasadena City College. They had lunch together in Toluca Lake, and the coach said he needed pitching.
I packed my car and drove solo to Hollywood. No plan. No friends. Just one dream still intact.
When I arrived at P.C.C., the athletic counselor hit me with a reality check: “You’ve already taken 12 units in Texas. Your clock has started. You’ve only got two years of eligibility.”
I was crushed — until he smiled and said something that changed my life:
“Just don’t turn in your transcripts.”
Genius. So at 21, my college baseball career officially began.
🎯 Reclaiming Purpose
I was still quiet off the field, but on the mound I came alive. I had the ball. I had control. Time slowed down. For the first time in years, I wasn’t drifting — I was driven.
And I finally understood something I’d never learned in Texas: if I wanted to keep playing, I had to pass my classes. No eligibility, no baseball. That realization clicked. Suddenly, school wasn’t just noise — it was the price of admission to the only life I wanted.
Those two years of stumbling gave me the clarity to focus. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was out on my own in Hollywood. No social safety net. No friends to fall back on. Just competition, purpose, and a fire that had survived every move, every class I failed, every time I thought I’d lost myself.
That was the moment my second life started.
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