TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

So we’re in October, and there’s two things that you can kind of count on here in the United STates - getting ready for Halloween and Major League Baseball’s playoffs and World Series. I certainly grew up an LA Dodgers fan and have family members and friends who follow baseball religiously, as it's not only the oldest of the major American sports, but one with a lot of opportunities to see games at a variety of levels in virtually every corner of the country, and a fair amount of history and tradition that’s part of the overall American story. So, I was grateful to share a conversation with Arjun Nimmala, someone who is already changing baseball's story. This past summer, Arjun who is from Valrico, FL, not far from Tampa, became the first first generation Indian American teen to be selected in the first round of the major league draft. Now for a lot of youth playing baseball (and their parents), it starts out with tee-ball and little league and travel teams and by the time middle school starts, many have already logged in a lot of time and exposure. Arjun’s path was a bit different. His immigrant parents were athletes in India, and Arjun’s exposure to a bat and ball was primarily learning and playing cricket with family and friends. He played a lot of soccer and basketball, and it wasn’t till he turned 12 that he began to take up baseball and concentrate on sharpening his skills batting and playing shortstop. He takes his craft seriously and trained in the past with his favorite player Francisco Lindor from the Mets. And after getting drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays and finishing high school, Arjun went straight into working with the team and playing in the summer rookie minor league in that unforgiving Florida heat, along with recent players like Rohan Handa and Kumar Rocker, he represents a bright future in American sports for South Asian origin athletes. Not to mention that he just turned 18 a few weeks ago, making him among the youngest and more precocious talents out there. We had a chance to catch up just before his birthday and talk a bit about the journey and how he prepares and both about his background and what he thinks of his future legacy, but we started with talking about the swirl of the past few months of getting drafted, finishing high school and playing baseball as a rookie and how he’s felt during this time of transition: