Gotta Hand It to Them

By Ethan Bourg

Going into the 2020-2021 school year I had decided to transfer schools and leave a place where I had built a name for myself.

My reasoning for leaving had a lot to do with my family and my mother’s career.

My mom was a teacher and had been in the Tomball Texas Independent School District for twenty years. However, after that many years, she had worn tired of the job and decided that Magnolia would be better.

After she had gotten the job she wanted, she came to me and asked if I would be okay transferring. I loved the idea of all the new challenges like having to go to a new school, making new friends, and earning my spot on the baseball team. 

I settled in well and the school year was going great until around January. 

It was then I started to feel a pain in my left hand. 

That same pain that the doctors said would have healed by then. But after the pain became unbearable, I decided to go get another MRI done on my hand. 

The doctors said my hamate bone was broken and I would need surgery. This was a week before the beginning of the high school baseball season. 

At this time everything started spiraling downhill for me. 

I got the surgery done on February 10th and they had said it was a six to eight-week recovery. 

After the surgery was successfully done, all I could do was sit there and wait for my hand to heal up. I started to realize that everybody that was behind me was going to pass me up, and that motivated me.

I think it’s important before continuing that you all know this. At my last school, I was one of “those guys”. I’m referencing all the kids in their respected sports or groups that usually have more weight on their shoulders than they can bear. 

Getting back to my hand situation, I had just lost all motivation after surgery.

I got my surgery cast off two weeks after the procedure and the doctor said my hand looked good and was healing right. I took this as a sign to start playing baseball again. 

I took this sign this way not because of the passion I had for the game but because of what I had to live up to.

The thing about being a hyped-up player at such a young age is that you center all your attention on satisfying others and living up to their ideas of you then just simply playing the game.

I had forgotten what it meant to just play the game I loved. 

And there was a consequence for that. 

After two and a half weeks, I was back on the field and playing high school baseball. 

Now, I know that this was too fast to be back on the field but I felt I had no choice.

As soon as I stepped onto the field and got a ground ball hit to me, I realized that my mentality was not the same at all. I had been dug in so deep mentally that I had started to play scared.

After my first five or so games, my performance was poor and my motivation was lost. 

I started to hear people say that I was “overrated” or that I was just flat-out not a good ballplayer. I knew these weren’t true, however; I started listening to the outside noise and I let it affect my game. 

About midway through the season, my hand was still hurting, I was not playing baseball to my standard, and my motivation was nonexistent. I started to not eat anything and my weight started to plunge. I lost around twenty pounds simply because I lacked the motivation to do anything, even eating. 

For the first time in my life, I did not want to go to practice or do anything including baseball. 

This was not myself and I knew it. 

The saddest thing was I knew this was self-inflicted. Obviously, I knew I couldn’t control the hand situation but any smart player would have waited the six weeks to recover and come back on their own terms.  

Well, when I had decided to get back out there too early to appease the crowd, I handed over those terms to everyone but myself. 

I knew that I had to get back to my old self and start loving the game again. 

One of the sayings that I live by is “embrace every day”, it basically means to enjoy the little things while working towards your goal. The real issue was not the hype or anything like that. It was that this hype and pressure, which I want to clarify is a privilege, had taken my focus off the process and put it on the literal outcome. I needed to get back to enjoying the small things, the things I could control.

Once the high school season ended, I returned to my gym looking skinny and almost like I was dying. I started putting in every day, consistent hard work that I should’ve been doing all along. The work that made me in the first place.

I started eating the right foods again and my hand started feeling healthy.

My life slowly but surely came together and I had put on about twenty-five pounds again.

I decided to block out everybody else and just do what I love to do. For the first time in months, I was feeling amazing. 

The school year ended and I had gotten back with my summer team and I reconnected with all of my buddies that I loved playing ball with. These boys are like family to me at this point and getting back to playing with them just brought back my old self and my confidence.

In these past few months, I have learned a lot about myself, but also just a lot about life and how to conquer your fears and doubts. 

Most importantly, I realized that this “hype” is way harder to deal with than most think. Everyone wants to be THAT guy. But they have no clue what it brings with it. Like I said earlier, if you’re fortunate enough that people want to spend every waking moment talking about you and your ability, it’s a privilege. 

That added pressure should have driven me to focus even more on the little things that made me a player of that caliber, to begin with. Not shifting my focus to what everyone else thinks.

So please, always be true to yourself and love what you do.

If you are doing what you love then it doesn’t matter what other people think about you! 

Shut out all the outside noise and do what makes you happy. Push yourself, work hard, do everything with confidence, and the rest will fall into place as your dreams become your reality. 

If you’re a player or person flying under the radar, remember those are the clearest skies.

And to those around you that want all that hype, sometimes you just gotta hand it to them. 

That goes as well to all the people whether it be other players, parents, coaches, sportswriters, etc. that only want to talk about “huge potential” players. They themselves will feel the stress just trying to keep up with it all.

Experience is the best teacher.

But if you’re wondering if I would change anything, the answer is absolutely not. In fact, I look forward to more high-pressure situations and cultures. Although I might have fallen short previously, I will always welcome situations that can make me a better player and person.