Chasing a dream

As I was scrolling through Instagram a few days ago, I stumbled across a different kind of baseball post than I usually do. It was a video of a guy seemingly in his 20s hitting in a cage. This may sound like a typical video if you have baseball in your algorithm, like I do; however, the big difference was, it didn’t look good. The swing was awkward, and I initially thought it was some sort of joke. When I clicked on the profile, there were a handful more videos of him doing various baseball activities, both pitching and hitting, and again, it didn’t look good. Scrolling through a few more videos, I listened to him explain that he wants to be a baseball player; his content is serious, and he understands that he has a long way to go. This man's name is Idris “Iddy” Norman, and he’s 26 years old.

If I had seen this a few years ago, I’d probably have laughed, moved on, and not thought of anything other than “He’s got no chance.” I’m constantly finding out that with age comes perspective, and sometimes the past me couldn’t see anything beyond the surface.

When I realized that this guy was for real, I began to think about how interesting it is to take up the game of baseball in your mid to late 20s and how far you could possibly go. There are tons of advantages to starting the game of baseball at a very young age. You can teach your body the correct patterns while you're young and growing and never have to think about them again as long as they’re correct. You can create a tremendous amount of arm strength, baseball IQ, habits, instincts that are all huge factors in your ability to play. With that being said, it takes a lot of time to teach that to a child or teenager due to the immaturity that naturally comes at those ages to process and put into practice the things that you’re learning. I’ve often said and heard many other ballplayers say that they wish they could think the way they do now back when they were first learning.

I’m following Iddy’s journey for two reasons. The first is to see just how far someone can develop their skills in the game of baseball starting as an adult. The second is to get the unique opportunity to see someone chase their dream knowing how difficult and unlikely the outcome of that dream may be.

I love seeing someone go after what they want, especially when it’s almost impossible to see how they’re going to accomplish that goal. It would be very easy to say that it’s not a worthwhile endeavor for him to pursue because the odds are stacked up so high against him, but the odds of any baseball player making it to the league are also stacked high. This happens to be the perfect combination of two things I really love: the game of baseball and a dream chaser.

Regardless of the outcome of his journey, I encourage you to follow him on his journey and show him some support. You never know what a few words of encouragement can do for someone when they’re trying something seemingly impossible that might be the pushing factor to continue on just one more day.

You can find Iddy on instagram at Iddy.norman.baseball.