This is the story about how Autism Speaks Baseball with the signing of Tarik El-Abour, the first Professional Baseball Player in History who also has Autism (by Nadia Khalil).
Tarik with his sister Sarene El-Abour
What happens when you take a passion, add to its desire, add to that perspective and knowledge and then just do what you love and every day? Well, if it is applied to playing baseball, you get a baseball player.
Playing baseball does not come easy. It is a game when hitting three out of ten balls is great. That means you have to know how to deal with the seven balls you did not hit.
Tarik has had a baseball mentor since he was 14 years old on his first team in High School from Worldwide Baseball Prospects (WBP) and WBP kept Tarik in balance of all the baseball hardships he faces along the way. WBP also worked diligently to look for opportunities for Tarik to advance to the next level of baseball. Without WBP, Tarik would not have been able to understand the process and WBP gave him the support he badly needed.
Tarik is Autistic. His thinking is the opposite of chance, yet his love for baseball forced him to learn to understand chance and to be able to handle the rejections that were coming his way.
When he was in middle school his speech pathologist told him he should have a plan B because wanting to be a professional baseball player is only a dream. Once Tarik left that school, I noticed that he would never pass that school or never wanted to be in that area. I asked him one day why he was avoiding the school and the entire area the school was located at and he simply said, my speech pathologist does not believe in dreams and that is where she told me that. he associated that entire area with no dreams and he did not want to be reminded of that so he avoided the entire location altogether.
His love for baseball is a life lesson for the rest of us watching nothing stop this soul from living what he loves. It is not a matter of yes or no, it is a matter of how. Now is simply his life. His next step is to get to have the honour of playing MLB (Major League Baseball).
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