So I just ran across a picture of mine when I must have been three or four years old. In the picture I'm holding a wiffle ball bat and wearing a Yankees helmet (in the house mind you). Baseball is my number one love. It is the first thing that I fell for and it is the first thing that sparked my imagination. Looking at this picture I remembered the first daydream I ever had. I'm about to embarrass myself, but I don't care. When I was about six years old I made my mom buy me a catcher's mask. I loved catchers. They were the dopest players on the field because they had all of the catcher's gear, but the mask was my favorite. I would always guess if the catcher had a mustache or not when I would watch the game. If he had a mustache I hated him. I think I was drawn to the mask because I was painfully shy as a kid and I felt like you could hide behind it. I think that is the main reason why I loved Darth Vader as a kid (I also prefer villains over heros, but that is a different blog post). Anyway, I had this catcher's mask. I had a favorite vest that was grey, blue and red. And of course I had my Yankees hat and baseball glove. So every afternoon I would drag my babysitter Kim to the park. I wouldn't play with the other kids though. I wore my vest backwards like a chest protector, put on my mask, put on my glove and imagine I was the catcher for the Yankees and play a full blown game...by myself. So here I am squatting down and calling balls and strikes with a pitcher, hitter and umpire who didn't exist. I would go to the bench when my team was up at bat. I can't imagine what I looked like to the other kids. I know Kim sat far away from me in the park. I won the World Series every afternoon. I really thought at the time that I was gonna play in the major leagues, but what I didn't realize was that I was building the foundation for the love that came into my life later on: film. I wouldn't trade those games in for anything. It made me who I am. I still think I'm a champion. I owe it to my younger self to never let that dream go.