The Dreamer

New York, NY (WFAN)  -- Dreams are things that people cling to. It makes you want to dare to be something more than what you are. Dreams can come to those who have no reasonable means to make them come true and yet they do. Life's circumstances can sometimes make dreams feel unattainable.

For the Big Dreamer, however, no circumstance or amount of adversity, will destroy that, which is buried deep within one's heart. A dream can carry you when nothing else can. Many years ago, a young boy grew up believing that he could be a professional baseball player. I know that dream because I shared it as well. This boy was different however. This young boy was born on an island, many miles from where I grew up in America. He hailed from the Dominican Republic but shared the same dream. Some day, he would play professional baseball.

A doting and loving grandmother in a small, modest home would raise that young lad. The local fire chief, if there had been one, would surely frown upon the fact that the home was crowded with nearly a dozen relatives living in the same cramped quarters. The boy learned quickly how to share but was selfish about one thing and that was his dream. At age 16, he moved with his grandmother and some other relatives to the United States, hoping to leave their impoverished conditions behind and build a new, exciting life in the U.S. The family settled in the middle of America in a town called Independence, Missouri. There had already been a previous dreamer to hail from this small town, the 33rd President of the United States, one Harry Truman.

The young boy had no such aspirations but he did dream about being a professional baseball player and no one could tell him any different, in Spanish or English. You see, the boy did not speak a word of English as he started high school. Thank goodness for a English-speaking cousin, for he would prove to be very valuable on a visit to the principal's office. The young boy wanted to play on the high school baseball team and took the cousin along to "ask" the principal if he could play on the varsity team. Told that it would require a tryout with the baseball coach, the young man nodded happily. That tryout would consist of thirteen pitches being thrown with twelve of them being hit over the fence! The dream was now in effect. A spectacular high school career with home runs in excess of 500 feet, began to build the young man's reputation in the Kansas City area.

A brief and successful community college career would lead to many major league scouts telling the young man that he would be chosen in the first round of the 1999 June Free Agent Draft. During this same time, the young man had fallen in love with a local girl. Engaged to be married New Year's Day 2000, draft day was going to be an extremely monumental day of joy for this young ballplayer and a portent of things to come for the young couple. Draft day came and the expectations were high. Soon, disappointment took the place of those expectations. The first round completed without his name being called. Round two came and went and still, his name was not announced. Round three, same result. It wasn't until round thirteen that this budding baseball player was picked. The brutal reality of what this meant was that Major League Baseball felt that 401 other amateur players were better players. Stunned with the news, the young man sobbed openly. At about that same time, his fiancee arrived at the door of the apartment. Expecting a celebration, the young fiancee instead found a dejected man who proclaimed he was going to quit. "There is no way that 400 players are better than me," he said. It was at that moment, the young woman consoled her soon to be husband but issued a challenge. "If you are going to quit, what does that mean for us? I am going to be your wife and I will be in your corner but you are not going to quit! If you feel the same way in a year, than I will support you 100% no matter what life brings us in the future. Why don't you prove them wrong?" Those words never left his ears or his heart. That young player would sign for a far smaller bonus than a first-rounder but went out and PLAYED like the first-rounder he felt he should have been all along.

That young ballplayer would not only succeed but he made it to the Major Leagues in a year and a half. Since his debut, that young man has put up numbers in his eight plus years that no Hall of Famer ever produced in their first eight seasons. Not Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, or anyone else you can name.

On that June day ten years ago, the DREAM he had would take a serious hit. He was that close to quitting! What a shame it would have been for all of us to never have seen the Great Albert Pujols swing the bat...