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At some point, everyone is told they are no longer good enough to compete with their peers in the world of sports. The moment may come too early in life for a person to care, or it may come after twenty successful professional seasons. For an overwhelming amount of aspiring athletes, it falls somewhere inside that painful middle ground, during our teenage years when we least expect it.

My moment was drawn out for a full year. It started with tryouts for the 8th-grade middle school baseball team. It was only my third year playing, but I had fallen in love with the game and like most kids that age I ignored reality and dreamed of one day reaching the major leagues. I had little playing experience, little hitting ability, and low fastball velocity, with no formal pitching instruction, but I was naive enough to believe I could make the team. Yet somehow, tryouts went better than they probably should have for me. I was lost at the plate, but I pitched fairly well on the mound. I struck out the most athletic kid trying out on three pitches, all swinging strikes, allowing me to learn some curse words I had never heard before. I left my first inning unscathed. The next inning I allowed contact, but all the balls were playable. Fielders booted routine grounders and shanked pop fly balls. I don't remember how many runs scored, three at the most, I just remember it clearly not being my fault.

The head coach thought otherwise. The list of players who made the roster was posted days later, and I scanned the list again and again desperately searching for my name. I thought there might be a mistake. The coach doubled as my English teacher, so I figured I would talk about the results with him before class, figure out what I did wrong. I don't remember anything he said except for his opening comment: "well, you kind of got rocked." After that, I was overcome with emotion, anger at him for misinterpreting tryouts and being so blunt, misplaced anger toward a kid who made the team after the coach ripped on him throughout the entire process,  and an overwhelming sadness that I had not achieved what I wanted so badly.

With another year of experience under my belt, I decided to try once again to prove my ability, this time by attempting to make the freshman team at my high school. An unusually high number of freshmen tried out for the team that year, over thirty kids competing for around seventeen roster spots. I knew I would have to be at my best to stand out. I myself do not even remember anything significant I did at those tryouts, the coaches certainly did not either. I did not make it past the first round of cuts, a result I was prepared for this time. I would play REC baseball that spring on a team where I was one to two years older than everybody else, officially ending my all-too-short baseball career.

Giving up on pursuing baseball was a big change in my lifestyle. I still followed professional sports carefully, but I was no longer hoping to make a career playing them. This forced me to develop other, more useful strengths, such as math, writing, and music. I completely changed my friend base, becoming very close with people who truly appreciated me for who I am and leaving behind the superficial, popular jocks I had become friends with mostly because of association through athletics. Playing music, not sports, became my biggest past time, and a very successful one at that. It also was beneficial that I did not expect to sell 100 million albums like I might have had I started playing years earlier. Being cut from those two baseball teams forced me to make changes in my life, and though it hurt initially, it helped me become a well-rounded person with the foundation for a reasonable career in the future.