Viva Fernandomina!!!!!

I grew in a pretty large family; I have three older sisters and two older brothers. My father was an avid soccer fan, due to the fact that he played semi pro soccer back in Mexico. But while growing up in the United States during the 1980’s soccer was not something that many people liked in our area. But my father tried very hard to have us have fun during our childhood, so he entered us in Lennox little league. We all played baseball and softball while we grew up and our parents were very involved in little league with them being a baseball/ softball coach, or team parents. But my fondest memory was the fund raisers we had in order to win cool stuff. There was once a fund raiser we had in which the top two grossing participants would get the opportunity to walk on to the field of the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium and be announced in front of the home crowd.

So my brother and sister started to sell candies in order to try to make it on to the field of the Los Angeles Dodgers and be announced in front of the home crowd. So we all started to work hard to sell the candies, we would go all over town selling these dam candies. We would be outside of the supermarkets, laundry mats, gas stations, you name it we where outside selling these dam candies like a drug dealer selling his smack to crack heads all over town. Every week my parents would get four or five boxes of candies, I never knew that my parents were selling candies at their jobs too. So this was a whole family venture that we all entered to win the gold prize of being able to be recognized in front of the Los Angeles Dodgers crowd. A dream comes true for an illegal family at the time.

So the week before the major league season started, Lennox little league announced the winners of the candy fundraiser and low and behold we the Zavala family won.  The coolest thing my brothers and sisters did was to put all their candy sells in my name making me a winner by a landslide. I was the chosen one that was going to be able to walk on the field and have my name announced. The coolest thing ever to happen to me at such a young age.

The day of the big event my whole family bought tickets on the upper deck to have the whole family participate in the event of me being able to be on the field. My father was allowed to be next to me before they had us walk on to the field. I remember seeing all these white kids with new baseball gloves and bats with markers. I had no idea what was going on with all these white kids having markers and equipment with them if they said in the letter we received that no sporting equipment was allowed. But while we waited for us to be allowed into the field, Steve Garvey, Mike Scioscia, and Fernando Valenzuela came out and started to sign all the white kids’ sports equipment and all I had was my bare hands. My father franticly struggled to find something for these Dodger players to sign for his son. The only thing that he was able to find was a napkin from his front pocket. I was the happiest child in the world having my napkin sign by these players, which at the time I had no idea who they were. So to this date I love that my father only had that napkin for these legendary players to sign. It just lets me remember of where my family started out in life, and how far we have came in life.