Introduction My fortieth birthday was a tough one for me.  Behind me was half my life.  I found myself carrying a lot of heavy baggage.  Worse still was what I had left behind me: a trail of missed opportunities and dead dreams. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of who I’ve become.  But who among us is immune to existential crises and regrets?  Not me, and probably not you either. For me, turning 40 was a landmark event–bigger than any birthday I’d had prior. My perspective tipped–seemingly overnight–from “the future holds such promise” to “I’ve already decided what my life is and what it’s likely to be.”  Amidst this existential crisis I held the limp corpses of my abandoned dreams and demanded answers about how this came to be.  How did I allow this to happen? Baseball When my dad introduced me to baseball at the age of four, I couldn’t get enough.  I’d watch every televised game the Oakland A’s played, which fortunately was almost daily.  My dad taught me how to play catch.  …