Non-Profit Baseball Club

Born to Play the Game

     I’ve often wondered about the relationship between genetics and athletic ability. Is it possible that we are born with the tools to excel at a given sport? Are we born with the love of a particular sport and is that love passed on to future generations genetically? Like the Gatorade commercials ask, Is it in you?  Anyone who spends five minutes with Angel Colón would be a believer! Angel is the five year old son of Pioneers’ Coach Luis Colón and it does not take long to see his passion and love for the great game of baseball, nor is it hard to see where it comes from, as Coach Colón has spent countless hours on his Field of Dreams, the baseball field. It is his escape from reality, the place where time stands still and nothing else matters, at least for 9 innings.

     Baseball has been part of the Colón Family for generations, whether it was Coach Colón’s grandpa taking the heat for him when he broke something in the house taking cuts when mom said “no ball playing in the house” or his dad making friends with the Little League President to get him into the league at 4 years old, two years sooner then the rules allowed. Whatever it was that inspired him from a very young age, his dad saw something in him, well beyond his years that said this kid’s a ball player. Well the apple does not fall too far from the tree. Coach Colón went on to have a successful career at many levels of the game, however, he remembers one thing that his dad taught him above all else. When his son Angel was born, he fondly recalls dad saying, “no matter what you have accomplished throughout your years on or off the playing field, nothing will ever compare to seeing your son accomplish those things and more because of the love and guidance you have instilled in him.”

     Angel has taken to the game like a fish to water. Luis vividly recalls the love his son has had for baseball since he could walk and how he was instinctually drawn to the game. “He would go into my baseball bag and put on my equipment, cleats, batting gloves, helmet from 18 months of age. He would come to my games to cheer although he could barely form sentences and drag me my bat which was bigger than he was along with my helmet before at bats in my league. I can recall the two most used words in his vocabulary before he’d drag me to the backyard, he’d say, “Daddy baseball.” It was unreal; I could not have created a more perfect son for myself. It was destiny, like God created him just for me!” Angel has been hitting off a tee both lefty and righty since the age of two, he can be seen running the bases after every home game ending with an emphatic head first slide at the plate and that was just after learning to walk. Since then he has become more advanced with each passing year, players have adopted him as their little brother so he has a very long line of “Big bros” as he calls them and this past summer he impressed crowds at the NBC World Series in Kansas as he would field groundballs and show off his gun before games, tirelessly handle bat boy duties during the game and take pictures with fans while signing the occasional autograph after the game. You could here fans yell out his famous number, “you’re my boy two thirds” referring to the  fraction as his jersey number 2/3, since his dad wears 23 and he is a fraction of his dad. Not bad for a 5 year old, I can only imagine how seasoned he will be by the time he is ready to play high school baseball. You heard it here first, remember the name Angel Colón.