Sunday league baseball. A time when many players simply come to have casual fun and for 3 hours their stress of the everyday world is gone.
Meet Anthony Dwayne True Benson Jr, better known as True. An outfielder for the Rain Makers, a team within the Mens Atlanta Baseball League (MABL). He has a passion and drive for baseball that transcends far beyond a weekly casual Sunday league game.
After being cut from his high school’s varsity basketball team his junior year, he discovered his love for baseball. During his senior year, he made the decision to try out for his high school’s baseball team, which was not an easy feat after being away from the game for over 6 years. Without the help of professional coaches or state-of-the-art facilities, True began teaching himself the game of baseball. He knew early on that his pool of resources for baseball development was scarce compared to his peers. He recalls that there were plenty of days when he didn’t have a throwing partner and would throw against a fence with the small bucket of balls he purchased from Walmart. True remembers that there were times when his bike was his only form of transportation and he would bike 7 miles to the nearest batting cage, using his funds for food that night to buy pitching machine credits to get better. This intrinsic motivation he has for baseball is something that isn't common in the game today.
If you ask True what his end goal is in baseball, he will tell you, it is to play at the college and professional level. In a game often dominated by politics and favoritism, he knows that his shot of making it can come and go in the blink of an eye if he’s not ready. Though there are days when this journey can be discouraging for True, he still keeps his faith and remembers the end goal ahead, despite life's setbacks. He will tell you that baseball is bigger than just him. He works so hard at achieving his dreams within the game to give hope to his nieces and nephews and show that if he can do it so can they.
