Carney 1

Austin Carney

Professor Pierson

September 27, 2017

Autoethnography: Pompano Beach High Baseball Community

In high school, I avidly played baseball. Our team was successful mostly due to the fact

we were a tight-knit group of guys and viewed one another as brothers. We hang out regularly on

and off the field. This community however is not limited to us players but expands to our

parents, coaches and volunteers. It takes more people other than the ones on the field to become

successful. At Pompano Beach High School our coach has grown a tremendous program in the

past 3 years despite many challenges. We are a magnet school so it is practically impossible to

have players transfer from other schools. Therefore, us boys, parents and coaches have been

together the past four years nearly every day. Believe it or not a lot of literacy takes place within

the baseball community. Gee claims that the focus of literacy studies should not be language, or

literacy, but social practices (pg. 276). Accordingly, our baseball community practices many

literacy activities from writing, different communications: play signs, gestures and speaking to

fundraisers and statistics. And even though we dont physically write on the baseball diamond

the baseball community itself has improved my literacy without doubt.

Literacy Sponsors

Within the community the main literacy sponsors are the parents and coaches. And not

just the parents who pay for the equipment and drive the kid to school every day and feed them;

but all the parents who are a part of the booster club helping fundraise and facilitate any event,

game or need of the team. These parents would help orchestrate fundraising benefiting the team
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to enable them to get new jerseys, equipment and be able travel. The parents did a lot of work

but they purposefully didnt do it all. For example, every year the players were required to sell at

least one banner to a local business. This involved emailing mangers and going door to solicit

themselves and the team to raise money. This taught the team formal literacy skills with speaking

and writing. Doing fundraisers like these also taught players to be grateful because they had to

earn all the money which allowed them to travel during spring break and have nice equipment.

The parents had some monetary motivation, which was to make it so there was no money out of

their pockets, but not much. They mostly did it to give the players everything needed to succeed,

likewise the hours they put in could have been worth much more money at their job. The coaches

also had little monetary motivation. They did get paid for coaching, which was not much when

you consider all the time and labor they put towards the team outside the 2-hour post-school

practices and games. The coach enjoys being on the baseball field and wishes he could still play

and win games. Thats why he coaches the team because he can live through the team, watching

the players succeed and grow as human beings. Its more than just baseball on the field theres

life lessons to be learned. Likewise, the players and coaches created a relationship that will last a

long time. For example, he texted the class of 2017 baseball graduates to check up on them the

other day. A coach who didnt care or had other motives wouldnt bother to do that. Yet, hes out

on the field every day without hesitation. Deborah Brandt defines the Sponsors as "usually

richer, more knowledgeable, and more entrenched than the sponsored" (pg. 73). The coaches are

not richer in wealth but rich of wisdom. And the whole team soaks up everything he says like a

sponge. Hes impacted every single player, teaching work ethic, morality and teamwork. This

high school team made few mistakes; they were very successful. The teams successes derives

from him instilling confidence in the players abilities. Concluding to the communitys last
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literacy sponsors, the players amongst each other. The team was very open with one another and

great about teaching little tips and tricks. Players also were not afraid to point out one's flaws.

This accountability was the underlying reason the kids sponsored one another and it turned into

many wins which brought the team to states. It also took place with the upperclassman

sponsoring underclassman. Average people are enabled by more powerful sponsors says Brandt

(pg. 81), which directly ties into the seniors teaching freshman lessons to succeed. Showing them

the ropes, such as giving them rides, is all a part of the apprenticeship that will stick with them,

reciprocating when theyre seniors.

Discourse

To even become a member of the team and be a part of this community one doesnt

necessarily have to play well but understand the game of baseball and be able to bond with the

rest of the team. In this Discourse, the test is to get through try-outs and make the team. It is

mostly pretty clear who is going to make the team and whos not. Baseball is a spring sport

therefore try-outs are in the spring. However, the team still workout play scrimmages in the fall.

The Fall is not mandatory but it is highly recommended. For the newbies who show up in spring

without acclimating themselves with the players and coaches theyre at a strong disadvantage.

Most of the players who show in the Spring without participating in the Fall would be what Gee

considers a pretender: an outsider with pretentions to be an insider (pg. 283). They normally

come to the field and dont fit in while also under performing, which means theyll get cut and

not be a part of the team. Once one makes the team they become part of the community and

those are their brothers for the next four years. Being a part of the Discourse means they share

ways of being in this world which integrate words acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social

identities explained by Gee (pg. 278). These friendships are like no other, lasting a lifetime. They
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can also trust one another with just about anything. All the relationships are transparent and

everyone has like goals when it comes to the game, ultimately winning. The coaches would fuel

this fire and push the players harder than they thought possible, making them determined. Their

coach also had the team convinced to believe in the baseball gods and that karma was very real.

The deal was that if one did what they were supposed to off the field, good things would happen

on the field. This impacted behavior in class and around town, because if anything ever

happened, such as a bad teacher email, the whole team would be punished, most often with

running. Giving attitude to the coaches would also result in punishment. Therefore, the teams

mannerisms consisted of: positive attitudes, politeness and helpfulness. Other than

communication between one another, an approach towards literacy is the rules of the game and

the fact that players can interpret them and fallow them correctly. Besides the universal rules of

the game, the coach has implemented other rules to keep players in line and on task, on and off

the field. On the diamond, common literacy activities were: reading line-up cards, scoreboards,

stats and signs from your coaches. Although most of our critical literacy activities took place off

the field essentially: group chats, emails and fundraisers.

Rhetorical Situation

The more essential literacy activities are the ones that players learned from the most.

Group chats, emails and fundraisers all entail different discourses (language or communication),

audiences and Rhetors (who generates it), definitions by Grant-Davie (pg.484). Group chats

mainly serve as internal communication amongst the team. Here they are very informal and write

short hand. In this case the audience and rhetors would be players and/or coaches. Emails are

broad but all very formal. There two types of emails that happen in this community. The first is

type is communication between the parents and coaches where parents are constantly getting
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updates on the team. The other is from players to coaches at the college level, which is a very

important part of the recruiting process. Here its important to be very formal and sound

professional, especially in the case where one is communicating with very high academic

schools. This taught players how to properly compose an email and how to professionally

communicate with possible future literacy sponsors. Lastly, our most important literacy activity

was fundraising. This is what helped the kids be a little bit more persuasive in their writing when

necessary. The participated in many fundraising activities from car washes, to poker tournaments

and dinner on the diamonds. The text for these events included flyers and emails that would be

mass dispersed throughout the school, friends, family, ultimately anyone. Those people were

considered our audience, anyone willing to sponsor was valid and any donation was accepted.

The exigence was to produce funds that would enable us to travel and have new equipment and

jerseys when necessary. Exigence is a problem that can be addressed and solved through

rhetorical discourse (Grant-Davie pg. 485). The team annually received minimal funding from

the school because theyre a public school, being one of many constraints. Other constraints

consist of a lack of fallowing, prior to this season, because it is a rather small school with a rather

small reputation, which can make it hard to find support. Materials and time can also be a

constraint on how well fundraising events are run. Also, the donations are constraints, no one

knows how generous someone is feeling on a particular day. And lastly, the rhetors of our

fundraisers would be the players, coaches, booster club and school.

Personal Writing Process

My personal writing process starts with a good understanding of the prompt/topic and

concrete planning that gives me a strong base to start. When I plan I like to jot down all my ideas

,especially when Im writing a typically long paper that possibly is constructed over a few days, I
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will forget them. Especially if I formulate well thought sentences I will write them down word

for word, which also helps as a memory refresher when I come back to it later on. Once I sit

down and begin my paper I prefer to do as much as possible while my juices are flowing because

this is when I honestly get the best work out of myself. However, there are constraints so thats

frequently not the case. I only take breaks if necessary but when I do I like to come to stopping

points so I dont forget where I left off, most often for lengthy assignments. I prefer to write my

paper chronologically to help flow with transitions and from sentence to sentence. I find it

difficult to just drop chunks of information in-between a piece I previously created to be side by

side, it ruins the fluidity. I prefer to stay concentrated which happens best when I am alone

without music or anything else to distract my train or thought. However, a little white noise in

the background can sometimes be soothing (low volume music or TV mostly). I like to reread

my writing once Im done with a section to make sure it is error free and I feel like it helps me

flow into the next paragraph as well. I had a couple of close friends in high school who used to

review my papers who I felt were better writers than myself. However, I still may have them

read it over now that Im in college but Im going to go to the writing center first for my major

corrections. Once Im done with a paper I like to finish them early and reread a day or so later (if

time permits) because I often catch different mistakes or flaws. However, I normally dont have

this much extra time because I either procrastinate or am not given that large of a window to

complete the assignment. Which brings me to my first are of improvement: dont procrastinate,

do the assignment early, relieving stress on myself equates to better work. Also, I would love to

increase my vocabulary to broaden my variation of diction.

Influence of Community on Writing

The baseball community has influenced my writing tremendously. It has mostly

indirectly impacted my writing by instilling a determined hard-working mindset. This has given

me a solid foundation to grow as a writer, steadily improving. The community has directly

influenced my writing through fundraisers and emails. Literacy with our fundraisers taught me to

write persuasively and how to create signs, flyers and emails. The advertising taught me how to

make things stand out in poster and flyers. Most impactful literacy activity was writing

professional emails to college coaches. This was most challenging for me, especially while

communicating back and forth. However, my coach really helped by giving pointers and

suggestions on what to add in the emails. I would often times revise them like essays and send it

to him to proof read before I sent it, even though they were only about a paragraph long. Once I

got the hang of the professional format and concept I became more confident.
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Citations

Gee, James Paul. Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics. Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics, vol.

3, Beford/St. Martin's, 2017.

Brandt, Deborah. Sponsor's of Literacy. Writing About Writing, vol. 3, Bedford/St. Martin's,

2017, pp. 6899.

Grant-Davie, Keith. Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents. Writing About Writing, vol.

3, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2017, pp. 484511