-Stockton, California, Fall 1989...

She bought the wooden softball bat from the sports department at SEARS partly because it was not only on sale, but for the reason that she could not distinguish the difference between a softball bat from a baseball bat.

El's mom noticed his growing interest in baseball since the first day he decided to step out of the house and began playing with more frequency during his sophomore year of high school. After that first day, returning home just at dusk from the sandlot, there was a feeling El's life was forever changed.

The majority of his classmates played on various teams, or some organized city youth league. El, on the other hand, spent his developmental years perfecting the science of babysitting. This was at his father's request. His sister, who barely begun kindergarten, needed more attention than from what his father provided her between every televised inning of a Boston Celtics game, or the amount of money he threw away to the relatives in East Asia. His father did have a plan for the future, but it did not include El, his second born.

When El was able to practice baseball, he improvised binder paper which he crumbled and taped together to form a crude ball. He learned through much trial and error that by adding more layers of binder paper around the center, the sphere became heavier. Since he never held a real baseball in his hands before, he estimated the proper weight by feel. His father would never think of buying him a real baseball for him to practice with let alone spending money to celebrate his birthday, buy a Christmas present or consider capturing El's developmental memories with a photograph.

El's father was convinced his second born son was born to fail, to embarrass him as a parent. And, his father was intent on justifying that just to prove he was right all along.

However, El was special. El's father played catcher in high school. According to the stories his mother shared, El's father was quite a hitter. Eventually, a bit of that talent had carried over into El's nature. Unfortunately, his father refused to see or nurture that ingrained love for the science behind hitting a baseball. There was never a small acknowledgement of his son's uncanny ability to consistently pitch a ball and hit a six inch target from fifty feet away, a target El drew onto the brick wall of a classroom at the nearby elementary school with chalk.

This marksmanship was strengthened from the countless, summer days he spent in a place the neighborhood kids called a "Sandlot," a bumpy, grassy field that hid countless gopher holes.

His mother never spoke of sports. To her, badminton and tennis rackets were all the same as the balls used for American football and soccer. Even with her lack of knowledge of sports, she was the only adult willing to acknowledge El's passion for baseball, even when she had little money to spare.

The softball bat was unique among all the other bats. This bat was autographed by Steve Garvey, record holder of most consecutive games played in the National League (1,207).

El had it signed in that summer of '89, when his mom took him to a sports card show at the local mall in Stockton, where his mom usually bought new church clothes. El didn't know who Steve Garvey was, but his mom insisted the softball bat be signed by the All-Star since she remembered seeing him in a 'Hungry Man' commercial that aired between "The Price is Right," and her favorite soap opera, "General Hospital," during the late '70s.

El didn't complain. Like his mother, he, too, perceived all bats to be equal.

Besides, awkward as it was to use a softball bat for baseball games, El finally had something more respectable than the broken broomstick handle his father gave to him.

There would be games for El to compete in. Yet, they mainly comprised of a rag-tag ensemble of children of various ages and skills. Some of the players were as young as seven years old, while the eldest, the pitcher, had recently attained his driver's license.

"Shut up! I need to go soon! I have to call someone!" the pitcher exclaimed.

The younger players were intimidated by the pitcher's masculine, deep voice that already passed puberty. The fact he was almost legal to drink alcohol seemed to emit an aura of invincibility to the rest of the younger players.

The "phone call" the pitcher mentioned was meant for El's cousin, Gigi. The pitcher had a crush on her ever since he met her the week she visited from Florida to spend Christmas at El's house two years ago, in 1987.

Gigi, a year younger than El, used him, for most of the time, as an excuse to escape the surveillance of El's overprotective parents and spend the afternoon unsupervised at the arcade. Yet, instead of playing Galaga, or Ms. Pac-Man with the twenty dollar bill El's father gave the two, Gigi left El without any arcade tokens, or money for the remainder of the day that she, instead, would spend with the older player.

The pitcher had just struck out two batters...with just six pitches, each third strike a swinging out.

Now, El walks up to the plate...