And to my surprise, it turns out that game was almost two years ago now.
As a few of you that have followed and/or corresponded with me know, I have been dealing with some shoulder issues for a while now. My formal diagnoses are a torn labrum and a torn infraspinatus. The infraspinatus has been of particular concern. It is likely that I have had this injury since before I came here to Rhodes -- probably really got going when I struggled in my senior year of high school. Things have been up and down since, and at least since the end of my freshman baseball season when I did earn a spot in the rotation things have been all downhill.
I was struggling on the hill in a spring intra-squad about a year ago and my coach tells me that I'm throwing more than 10mph slower than when I first arrived. Made sense that I had become entirely ineffective. This is when we found out that my shoulder wasn't in good shape. I discovered this injury at the absolute worst time, because I would always have been "doomed" if I needed surgery -- the recovery time would leave me barely hopeful for a senior year return. So, we tried to avoid it...but after over a year of surgery alternatives, I have run out of options. It is not much of a shock, because I had been warned that it likely would not work out.
Baseball has already given me its biggest gift, and that is that I found this school. When I came to Rhodes, my take on baseball was that all it had to do was not screw up the academic experience I hoped to have. This did not mean that baseball wasn't very important to me, but rather I was SO enthusiastic about this school in and of itself. That has not changed and it makes leaving baseball far easier. For those wondering, I would never have heard of this school if not for an opportunity afforded me from our very own TRHit. I played with Tom's College Select squad and via his recommendation and personal note to Coach Cleanthes, I found a home at Rhodes College. One fateful night in the HSBBWeb chat room led me to the school of my dreams, saved me lots of money (scholarship! 
), and likely determined my ultimate career path since that itself was turned on chance.
So what now? I had started to feel rather negative about baseball as I sensed my time was running out. It was an enormous time commitment and I was unable to do much other than feel frustrated that my arm didn't do what my mind still felt like it could do. On the other hand, I did not feel good about the prospect of "abandoning" the team entirely either. When I told my awesome coaching staff that I had to leave the squad, they were gracious enough to offer me the chance to be one of our play-by-play broadcasters for the live web broadcasts of our home games. Another former player and I will split the duties -- alleviating my concerns about time commitment from practices, etc. but allowing me to still be a part of a program that I owe much to. I feel that I matter as much to my coaches as a former player as I did when I was starting every week.
What's ahead? Well, by chance I took a course in my freshman year called "Introduction to the Cinema." It was an art credit and I didn't have to draw anything, so I was on board from the get-go. Something unexpected happened, though. I was extremely stimulated by the field of film analysis, which is somewhat like the field of English but felt more relevant and multi-faceted than literature. I came to school planning to major in Political Science and I still am going to have that major. What was unexpected was this passion I have for the broad field called "Cinema and Media Studies." I'm now hard at work preparing to apply to Ph.D programs next year in this field, possibly bringing to bear my studies in Political Science as well as Spanish, a class I really hated in high school but became unexpectedly handy in my studies. The end game here would be professorship and this is what I really want to do. I now get to spend some of the free time I once spent at baseball working on conference papers and other research that I hope to get published and later help me in graduate school admission and even later a job search.
I share all of this with everybody for a few reasons. On one hand, I know some people just like updates on the players that post here. I also want to just thank everyone here for all the insights you've shared -- many weren't directly to me or may have seemed very trivial at the time, but the end sum was a life-changing and life-enhancing experience playing baseball for me. For those that are younger or parents of younger guys, I hope I can serve as a somewhat positive example: baseball was a primary and positive experience, but I'm proud to say that I was adequately prepared to be without it via being at the right school and making sure I had more big time activities in my life than only baseball. Thanks for reading one of my many long posts.
I plan to stick around HSBBWeb and give back what I can, so feel free to ask any questions even if you're just curious about what I'm up to!