Athletics... sports... competition... games... play... whatever you call it, I know it is an essential part of our world, and I know it impacts us on so many levels. I am honored to be a coach, to be part of something so good..

Yup, each and everyday I wake up, I feel that way.

So, being from New England and growing up with the Red Sox I am a HUGE baseball fan. The ups and downs of being a Sox fan... the emotional roller coaster, the heart wrenching losses, and the World Series Victory... all are a huge part of who I am, and the passion I bring to the pool deck. I found myself yesterday counting down the minutes to the WBC... and when it started, I realized instantly that it was privilege to watch the Dominican Republic play Venezuela. It was an All-Star Game that felt bigger than the World Series. Plus, as a Red Sox fan who regularly thanks the baseball gods for David Ortiz, I was overcome with excitement as he stepped up to the plate. The excerpt below gave me the chills and I had to share it with you. Please, find a moment and watch these games. They are wonderful.

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By Jason Stark - ESPN.

How can one man have such a never-ending innate feel for the defining moments that present themselves in the course of a game, a season, a career? How can he keep finding ways to transcend those moments and turn these games into another scene from "The Natural"?

He put his stamp on two more of those moments Tuesday.

Second inning. Scoreless game. Ballpark vibrating. "PA-pi, PA-pi" chants ringing in 10,000 sets of ears. The incomparable Santana on the mound.

And then Ortiz unleashed that magic bat of his. A baseball splattered off the black hitter's background, way above the center-field fence. And the Dominican had struck first.

Now roll the tape forward seven more innings. A 6-1 Dominican lead had shrunk to 6-5 -- and easily could have been gone altogether, if not for a hotly disputed call that a seventh-inning Miguel Cabrera rocket off the top of the center-field fence had stayed in play for a double instead of cleared that fence for a game-tying homer. (Just for fun, get out your Spanish-English dictionary and look up "sucio" -- which is what the Venezuelan faithful were calling second-base umpire Dusty Dellinger.)

With Tejada on first and one out, up stomped Ortiz again. Out sprinted Venezuelan manager Luis Sojo, waving for Astros left-hander Carlos Hernandez, managing "by instinct," he said.

Ortiz worked the count to 3 and 2. People began rising in their seats all around the park, almost as if they knew what they were about to witness.

Hernandez tried to sneak a curveball past Big Papi. But here it came, hanging like a Picasso. An instant later, this baseball was finishing its long journey, soaring over the right-field fence, the Venezuelan bullpen and a chunk of parking lot -- then finally putting a dent in a TV production truck out there in satellite land.

Grown men sprinted up and down the aisles. Flags waved everywhere. "PA-pi" chants rattled eardrums. And more people were waiting for Ortiz at home plate than once waited for Lindbergh's airplane to land.

It was the end of the drama, the biggest blow of a five-run ninth inning and just the latest, greatest chapter in Ortiz's now-voluminous collection of outrageously heroic flashes of the bat.