My Mission

My mission is to help young, talented baseball players, who are passionate about America's pastime, become the best player they can be while also teaching them valuable lessons in hard work and resiliency. I believe every child should participate in athletics as they grow up because of the competitive atmosphere and comradery that are natural byproducts of sports. However, organized athletics have always been, and will continue to be, susceptible and influenced by the politics of "daddy ball" and competitive advantages. 

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I was born to an immigrant mother who had never heard of baseball until she had come to America. Everything that she learned about the game came from word of mouth through my participation in Little League. From the get-go, I was recognized as a naturally talented baseball player, especially as a pitcher, but rarely received the opportunity to showcase and nurture my abilities because coaches gave their sons most of the playing time on recreational teams. I was fortunate enough to have coaches on the summer travel team who saw that I was one of the more talented players in town, and put me to play against the best teams we played against, where I thrived. Nevertheless, the struggle to unlock my baseball potential hit another roadblock when I entered the 9th grade. 

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I attended Regis High School in New York City, an institution with a renowned academic reputation that was also a part of an ultra-competitive athletics conference. During my freshman year, I, again, was recognized as an exceptionally talented pitcher, and when spring time came, regularly threw complete game shutouts with double digit strikeouts on the JV team. Because of how much I distinguished myself from the rest of the team, my coaches overused me to the point of injury towards the latter part of the season. This was an incredibly challenging point in my life for a few reasons. As a first year student at an academically rigorous school, baseball was the main way for me to escape from the stresses of life outside of sports. Taking away the main thing in my life that brought me happiness was a tough pill to swallow. Going to physical therapy 2-3 times a week instead of being on the field with my teammates and cheering on my team was also a challenge that I didn't want to face. After a long 3 months, I was finally able to start throwing again, but was unexpectedly met with a new adversity. 

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Coming back from my injury, I completely lost the pitching mechanics that brought me success in the past. I was invited to play with the varsity team during the fall season, but looked like it was my first time pitching every time I stepped onto the mound. After my worst outing, I remember watching some of my other teammates pitch and saw there was something different about the way they were playing. The way they were moving just looked...different. And they were starting to have success that they hadn't achieved the year before. I, then, asked my teammates what they had done to improve so much in such a short period of time. They told me they had a pitching coach and started to explain a number of different pitching concepts that sounded like a foreign language to me. This is when I realized that I was now behind everybody else. I came home that night and asked my mom if I could get a pitching coach, which is someone she agreed I needed to establish a relationship with. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my mom had absolutely no idea where to look for one. A quick Google search yielded a few results, which we tried out, but quickly understood that paying someone to teach me how to pitch properly would cost a lot of money. However, something that I now understand as I look back at my experiences, but didn't realize at the time because it was our first time exploring the world of private pitching coaches, is that it's difficult to find a coach who is passionate about helping today's youth become better baseball players, has a wealth of knowledge they can explain in a way that's easily understandable, and doesn't just see the people they work with as dollar signs. 

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You might be asking yourself, "Why did James share this with me?" and the answer to that questions is simple; I know the struggles and hardships I experienced as a youth baseball player are not unique. Baseball politics and competition within the sport have grown exponentially since my time in the Little League, which can discourage a lot of talented, young players from pursuing a baseball career when they are struggling to compete with theirs peers and don't know where to turn for help. My mission is to re-ignite the passion for baseball inside of today's youth by being someone that they can not only learn from through an athletic lens, but also look up to as a role model and mentor. 

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