This column was written by Tristan Gavin, ’14

Every year, over two million 10-year-old Americans sign up for Little League baseball. There are 25 players on the rosters of the 30 MLB teams at the start of every year, totalling 750 “big leaguers.” Of those 750, only 450 are American-born, and range in age from 20 to 40. Even if we assumed that all 450 players came from the same class of 10-year-old little leaguers, there is still only a 0.0225 percent chance of making it to “the show” for each of those kids.

At Whitman College, the 27 members of our varsity baseball team will all likely fall in with the 99.9775 percent. Even though it is unlikely that any of us will ever be paid to play baseball, we dedicate over 20 hours per week to the sport, and for little reward. The time we spend practicing and playing could just as easily be spent on our studies, through which we will all become “professionals.”

So, I have asked myself on many a sleepless road trip, why do we do it? Why do we spend so much of our lives working toward a sport we are unlikely to play again after graduation?

Whitman baseball has not had a winning season in over a decade, and has finished in the bottom half of the Northwest conference every year in that stretch. It is safe to assume that none of us is playing for glory. We travel around the state losing baseball games attended by only our parents, because club sports like Ultimate Frisbee have larger fan bases than we do. We play in a culture diametrically opposed to the one we grew up in, where we will never be idolized no matter how much success we find on the field. We will never get treated differently for being an athlete, but it has never been about that for us. We came to Whitman to get a degree just like everyone else; we are just the ones who get to play baseball along the way.

We play because we can. Other students do not have to deal with missing days of class for games because they don’t get to travel around the country with their best friends. They don’t pour enormous chunks of energy into a dead-end sport because they will never know the feeling of two dozen men coming together for a single purpose, while playing the game they love. We did not grow up with dreams of being accountants, teachers or anything like that. We grew up dreaming of playing in Yankee Stadium against the men we idolized on television sets and baseball cards. We were the kids who asked Santa for gloves and bats for Christmas, not video games.

Baseball helped shape our youth, and is still a part of who we are today. We play to hold onto the dreams of our childhood, because we aren’t ready to let go. We play because nobody has ever given us a good enough reason to stop. Until we find that reason, we are who we have always been: baseball players.

We are not alone. Our story is no different from the athletes on any of Whitman’s 13 other varsity teams. We all came to Whitman from all over the country to play the games we love while getting a top-notch education. While our labors may at times seem fruitless and our schedules bursting at the seams, we never for a minute regret our experience. What we have is pretty special, and no amount of 6 a.m. conditioning or restless bus rides will ever take that from us.