Meet Christian Yelich

CHRISTIAN YELICH: We're at Westlake High School, where I went to school about 10 years ago, 2010. Going to school here was cool. I mean, it was your average high school experience.  Football games on Friday nights, playing baseball games here. It's cool to be back. It's a pretty common dream and goal is to play pro sports, whether it's baseball, basketball, football, whatever it may be. As a kid, I had that dream. All my friends had that same dream. Yeah, it was here, where you were just playing with your buddies for fun. Trying to make the team freshman year and then having a chance to go pro four years later as a senior, it's pretty cool that a lot of it just started right here. I didn't know I was ever going to play in the big leagues until probably the year before I did. I was a first round pick and all that, but at the end of the day, that doesn't mean anything either. That just means that's where you're drafted, and now you're in the minor leagues like everybody else. I don't know if I ever knew that I'd play at an MVP level. But once you get there and you know you're capable of it, then that's the standard and that's what you hold yourself to. My family, my friends, people that have known me forever, they've seen good, bad, all those moments since I was a kid. Not even just baseball stuff, just life things. After my injury, there's a frustration period. You have a couple day lull. And then once you realize there's no changing it, you have to put your focus into getting better. I know that I can do it. I've got all the confidence in the world to do that, and that's what's going to happen. I think to be fearless means you acknowledge the fear, adversity, but push through it anyways. Sure, there's a sense of doubt there, but you have to have belief in yourself and kind of laser focus on what you want to achieve. And that's what makes it possible to achieve your dreams, and I've had that since I was a kid. You get to play the game for a short amount of time, so why not get everything you can out of it while you can? I think you'd be cheating yourself, the game, the fans, the team, the organization if you didn't have that drive and you didn't want to be the best version of yourself.