By Jemima Schoen<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tommy Lasorda, former MLB player and long-time manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers once said, \u201cNo matter how good you are, you\u2019re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you\u2019re going to win one-third of your games. It\u2019s the other third that makes the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, at the close of AJA\u2019s spring 2021 Baseball season, that missing third was the departure of one-third of a winning team, with five seniors graduating. Coach Joey Wilson, a Yeshiva High School alum, was worried about spring 2022. \u201cWe knew it would be tough coming into the season because we lost five seniors last season, three of which played four years of Varsity Baseball, and we replaced them with a bunch of freshmen, so we knew it would be challenging.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Junior Eli Cohen didn\u2019t know what to expect. \u201cHonestly, at the beginning of this Baseball season, I was pretty scared. Our team only had three upperclassmen, hitting was a major work in progress, and we barely had any well-experienced pitchers. However, I soon learned of one thing our team did have: commitment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With only one senior on the team, Coach Wilson looked to the juniors and sophomores to form the basis of the team and show commitment and leadership. \u201cWe had a number of players on the team who obviously are now a year older. They’ve had some great experience from last year, working within the same system. And they stepped up, and they became the leaders to replace the leaders who left last year.\u201d Scheduling the first few practices at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays, in frigid weather, the coaches put together a team of athletes who showed their commitment. \u201cI think [at] our first three practices, it was under 30 degrees, and we ended up with kids who really wanted to play,\u201d reminisced Coach Wilson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to sophomore Mikey Wilson, a left-fielder, \u201cthe 8:00 a.m. practices were just at the beginning,\u201d but that experience was \u201ca lot of fun.\u201d Junior Jordan Steinberg, the team\u2019s catcher, echoed this sentiment, saying that although he \u201cdidn\u2019t like waking up early,\u201d he still found that the practices made the early wake-up call \u201cworth it.\u201d Sophomore Noam Landman expounded upon this point, even calling the 8:00 a.m. practices \u201cthe greatest triumph of the season.\u201d He thought of the practices as such because they \u201cshowed the players\u2019 dedication to want to get better no matter the circumstances.\u201d As it turns out, the grueling, cold practices shaped the team\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scheduling the first few practices at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays, in frigid weather, the coaches put together a team of athletes who showed their commitment.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Coach Wilson explained that baseball is \u201ca very slow sport. There’s just a lot of downtime with the entire team being in the dugout. And the team just has a lot of opportunity to chill and goof around and have fun and learn from each other\u2026 And this team just really gelled\u2026The dynamic is just very strong, and the camaraderie very strong between them. And you really don’t notice when you’re watching these kids play and watching them in the dugout that half the kids on the team are underclassmen, and half the team are older classmen \u2014 it’s just one team. And I give the kids a lot of credit for coming together and feeling comfortable with one another and learning from one another and cheering each other on. And that really was instrumental in us actually having a great season.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a freshman on the team, centerfielder Yakov Wasserman felt that his baseball experience was slightly different than in other sports by function of how baseball works. \u201cIn baseball, you can’t really control who gets more playing or who gets more action because the ball has a mind of its own,\u201d and therefore, Yakov felt that \u201cin baseball, lowerclassmen and freshmen get a lot of opportunities.\u201d Additionally, the coaching and fairness in batting orders also contribute to a feeling of increased opportunity and value as compared to upperclassmen. Batting eighth, Yakov said, gives him \u201ca chance to prove myself in a higher position\u201d that he appreciates. It was clear to Yakov that the team values everyone, especially as they close out their season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In an average year, AJA baseball has two seasons. The first season consists of scheduled games with other schools that serves as a pre-season warm-up for the second season that the team plays at Dunwoody Senior Baseball. This year, facing scheduling, Pesach, and field procurement challenges, the Jags only played two games in their first season. However, Coach Wilson noted that \u201cwhere we lacked practice we’ve made up for in terms of competitiveness\u2026 we had a lot of freshmen coming in\u2026and even though they are not as experienced at the high school level and strong and developed, they are competitive, and they’re great players.\u201d The team has been working hard together, and with AJA alum and former YA pitcher Gary Friedlander joining the coaching staff this year, Coach Wilson asserted that \u201cwe have a week left, going into the playoffs, and I feel we have a very good shot at making it far in the Playoffs if not winning the Championship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eli Cohen agreed. \u201cWe applied ourselves very hard to our improvement and it clearly showed. Now, we have wins under our belt, a lineup of solid pitchers in the making, a lack of fielding errors, better hitting, and a sense of dignity. Although the season is coming to an end, it was such a journey and I couldn\u2019t be more proud of our team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In summing up this not-yet-finished season, it seems that AJA\u2019s missing third has been found. It consists of a winning combination of commitment \u2014 of athletes to a sport, of teammates to one another, and of coaches to their players, and that really does make all the difference. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How AJA\u2019s Boys\u2019 Baseball Team Managed to Stay Committed Against the Odds By Jemima Schoen Tommy Lasorda, former MLB player and long-time manager of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":2135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry","rows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screenshot-2022-09-18-11.31.41-AM.png?fit=431%2C281&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions\/2137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}