Mark’s Team Will Always Remember the Summer of 2019

At my age of 57 years, I have put together a wealth of memories. If you were to put them all into groups, one of the very special ones would be the memories of Summer.

And when I think back thru the years, Summertime included baseball. The years in my life playing baseball were a very special time.

I still today, have a baseball with some faded signatures written on it by all my teammates. It was a ball that I knocked out of the park in the 1974 tournament. It's been 45 years, but I can still feel it coming off my bat and watching it soar over the center field fence as I trotted to first base.

I remember pitching my team to the tournament win in 1976. I still have the faded newspaper team photo and story of the victory. These things stay with you you're whole life.

And now today I coach youth baseball. I'm doing everything in my power to help these young boys today, create the memories that they can cherish for a lifetime. And this season, in 2019, it was mission accomplished.

It was the most memorable season these boys will ever see. The team of 11 boys, mainly 9-year olds, who chose the name of "The Hungry Vipers", came out to play baseball.

I've never seen boys of this age train any harder. And when it came to game time, they never gave up. They went all the way thru the regular season playing 12 games without losing a single one.

Then they went into the end of season tournament and won two in a row. But, they lost their final championship game. It took 15 games before they would finally lose one.

I know I can honestly say that the guys that were helping me coach, and more importantly all the boys on the team, will never forget the Summer of 2019!