During my youth in the late 70's early 80's, I found my way onto one of the best baseball teams in my city. My memories of being on this team is still vivid today. We had the best players from our area, several played on different high school teams. We were called the Superstars. Everyone knew us from all around the city, especially after winning a City-Wide Championship. People came out in droves to see us play. Our uniforms were black and yellow, just like the Pittsburgh Pirates. Our hat had the gold horizontal pinstripe around it with the gothic looking P logo in the center. Our pants were black with a gold, white, gold stripe along the side. Our jerseys were black, yellow and white, with the same stripe as our pants, outlining the collar and the bottom of both sleeves. It had "Superstars" in yellow, diagonal across the torso of the jersey. During the summertime, the temperature was very hot, sticky and muggy in tropical Florida. The coaches would bring bags of grapefruit for us to consume during practice to stay hydrated. We also drunk from a water hose to help quinch our thirst. Before each game, I would paint my Brooks emblem on my cleats yellow trimmed in black. I played 3rd base, the hot corner, which I loved playing. My statue was a slender frame at the time, but I had a pretty good arm. My high school coach due to favoritism decided to move me to second base to start my junior year, which I didn't care for but learned to play it well, but not great like third base. I felt my hopes of making it to college and to the big league was dashed with his decision. I felt at home, with peace and harmony at 3rd bases, not so much at second base. I never got real settled there. My summer league coaches were former players from the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets organization. They were both awesome and boy did they eat and breath the game with passion. During my last summer league season in baseball, I finally learned how to hit different pitches very well. My favorite was driving outside pitches deep into right field gaps, for extra bases. That season, I led the Superstars and perhaps the league in hitting. I was simply on fire and received coach accolades with a whopping +700 batting average that year. I made the newspaper sports stats as a Senior year with a batting average of 300. I was selected to play on a traveling semi-pro team. We played against other inspiring players, all dreaming of making it to the major leagues. After one year of traveling, I enrolled in junior college to learn electronics engineering, did a 4-year stint in the Air Force and then a prestigious career with a private aviation company. I look back on my time with "The Superstars". It was fun, exciting, playing baseball with all my friends, meeting other players from around the city whom we competed against in high school. Traveling to major league training facilities in Florida and playing on some of the Negro League fields, like Durkeeville and others, off the beaten paths in Florida and Georgia. These were our field of dreams. We captured the heart and adulation of many fans from different neighborhoods, cities and towns.
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