Help Received: Peer reading, spell check

 

Sliding in to Activity Systems and Discourse Communities

From the feeling of the ball hitting the bat, to the taste of crackerjacks at a game, baseball has always been a part of my life.   I have played baseball for almost eleven years, since I was seven years old. Many would say that I have become part of the baseball discourse community, with a very specific activity system. The activity system has very specific goals set to try to achieve. In which they use very specific tools to accomplish these goals. The activity system is structured in to three main groups; the coaches leading the team, the players compete in the games and last but not least the fans cheering us on. Each role has specific motives for wanting to win. But lastly on top of all this, there are many, many rules in the game of baseball that make this very complicating. Not only has baseball affected me in this way but it has also change my vocabualy a lot too. I am a member of the baseball activity system with a common goal set out to win every game.

As an activity system our goal is win every game as a team, but everyone also has individual goals that they work toward achieving. The coach’s goals are to improve every one of his player’s abilities, and to win as many games as possible. They achieve this by giving the knowledge of baseball that they have on to the next generation of players.  The players on the other hand, not only set goals as a team, but individual as well. Going in to my senior year my batting average was at .280, and I wanted to finish out high school with above a .300 average. I trained really hard and ended up batting .315 on the season which was much better than I had hoped. This was all possible because of the help of my coaches, and fellow player pushing me to get better each day. And because my betting average was better our whole team’s performance was better in our next games. My activity system not only helped me to achieve my goals , but also in return it helped out the teams goals.

Activity system’s, also use tools to help them achieve their goals. The two most common tools in my activity system are the baseball bat and the glove. The baseball bat is used to hit the baseball as far as possible when thrown by the pitcher. The pitch could be thrown anywhere from 75- 95 miles per hours, and have some crazy spin on it as well. It is our job as the batter to make sure that ball does not get past us. The baseball bat is a very important tool, and is necessary to achieve our goal. The other main tool our activity system uses is the baseball glove, commonly known as the “mitt” in the community. This tool is used to keep the baseball from touching the ground when it is hit up in to the air by the opposing team, or to stop the ball from getting past you if it is hit on the ground. If you could not stop or catch the ball, you could not get out, and if you could not get outs, you could not win ball games. My activity system could not achieve its goal of winning without these tools necessary to win. We would not be about to hit, or make outs, and we would lose.

Our activity system is very structured between the leadership and players on the team. This structure is necessary to improve and win ball games. Our activity system is structured in to three groups; coaches, players, and fans. The role of our coaches is to improve our skills and to lead us to winning ball games. They improve our skills by setting up practices, workout groups, and scrimmages for us to play against other teams. In our practices our coaches set us up to work on the things we are the weakest in. This helps us to gain muscle memory and to be very precise in everything that we do. The work out groups that we are put in help improve our strength. This new strength leads to improvements in speed, agility, and over all power in the fundamental parts of baseball such as throwing, catching, and hitting. These skills will help us to win games. And lastly, our coaches set up scrimmages for us to get a chance to play another team and see where our skills need improving. We get to see how well we play in a live game time scenario and individually what we need to improve on most. All scrimmages, practices, and workouts are all very important to the success of our team and these come down to the coaches. The role of the players on the other had is to take in all of this information and apply it to their skills and to give one hundred and fifty percent every day. But ultimately in the end, it comes down to the players to win every game. And lastly, but possibly the most important the fans are a very important role to the success of the activity system. The fans role in the system is to motivate the players on the team, to support us in all of the travel, but also to get in the head of the opposing team. They cheer for us all game long no matter how good we are doing or how bad. They will always yell”come now kid” when we are up to bat and keep our heads high. We could not do it without the fans in the crowd cheering us on. Every role in our activity system is needed in order to achieve our goals.

What make baseball so complicated and not fun to watch for some people are all of the rules that go in to it. Baseball has rules for literally every scenario of what could happen. There are rules for the players, rules for the coaches, rules for the umpires and even rules for the fans. These rules can make or break a game. You could be winning by ten runs and if you have three fouled up plays you could be losing by two. Like if a ball rolls under the fence and you don’t hold your arm up they could run all around the bases and get a homerun. And this could be a game changer. Your parents could be asked to leave if they are being too loud or obstructing the game. Rules can even be called wrong by the umpire and the result of the game could switch. Last year I was in a game that was tied two to two in the twelfth inning. The game had gone on for three hours nonstop. And it all came down to one play. It was the bottom of the twelfth inning and we were on defense out in the field. The count was three and two with two outs and the bases loaded. It can down all to one pitch. Ball or strike. Bo Kenan was on the mound.  The pitch was thrown and the umpire called a “BALL”. We lost the game all because the umpire was wrong. The rules of our activity system caused us to lose our game and not achieve our goal.

Many of the common baseball phrases come from what you hear in the stands from the parents cheering. Things like “swing batter swing” or “come on ump what are ya blind”, but the ones that affect me the most are the ones that come from inside the dugout. When anyone on our team does anything good or goes up to bat we are cheering for them. We are yelling things like “come now kid” which mean get a hit, or “Or throw him one right down the pipe” which means throw a strike. And these are only two examples of many, of parts of my vocabulary that have been changed. but the discourse community baseball has definitely changed me.

Our activity system could not function without all of these things working in sink.  Our community set goals that we try to achieve both individually and as a group. As you could see the tools we use such as the baseball bat and the baseball glove are necessary for us to achieve these goals. It is also very necessary for all of the different roles of my discourse community to function together in order to achieve our goal. The coaches, the players, and fans need to function as one in order to keep winning. And lastly many rules factor in that must go perfectly as planned to in order for the community to achieve the goal. Not even to mention how the community has changed the way I talk. This activity system has to go exactly as planned in order to achieve our goal and win ball games.

 

Words: 1554

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works cited

** need to fix   Pg. 273- 283 “Activity Systems.” Writing about writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2011. Print.