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Just Your Standard Bull

published: May 28th 2010
by: Michael Sturgess

This is a column that I can honestly say that I will only write one time in my entire life. I try not to make statements like this but since it is about my daughter graduating from high school, and I have only one child, I think I can safely say so.
    Yes, my daughter Shelbi graduates from Clark High School, San Antonio, Texas on June 9, 2010. I really can’t believe it. This is the same child that couldn’t wait to be born—coming 6 weeks early during our 1st Annual San Antonio All Breed Bull and Commercial Female Pen Show & Sale. Shelbi was born February 6th, 1992, one day after our first sale was completed. I will never forget that experience. Shelbi made a grand entry then—she still does now.
    Many of you who have worked with us or attended this event will recall that the sale has always been on a Wednesday. The schedule goes like this. Consignors bring us their cattle and check them in on Monday; we show them on Tuesday, followed by the sale on Wednesday. In the old days, we did not have lap top computers with the software we have today. These days, we take our computers, printers, our files, and other needed items with us to the sale. Back then, we spent the entire day checking in and penning cattle and then would go to the office to do the paper work at night.
    I remember getting home and going to bed just short of midnight after a long hard day. Shortly after 1:00 am, my wife Lauren wakes me. Her water had broken. And as I said before, she was still six weeks away from the expected due date. Now remember this was early Tuesday morning. Shelbi was not born until about 6:45 pm on Thursday afternoon. The next 65 hours and 45 minutes was spent trying to make sure that Shelbi was not born!
    I have never spent a longer week in my life. The only time I spent at home was to shower and change clothes. What little sleep I got was in the hospital room. I was either there, at my office late at nights to get the sale paperwork in order, and a short period of time at the sale itself. At any rate, Shelbi was born--all 4 pounds and 14 ounces of her. She would literally fit into my hand.
    Since that day, she has brought nothing but joy to our lives. She is very bright—graduating in the top 5% of her class at a large 5A school. She is very outgoing—a member of student council and a class officer for several years. She has even showed signs of being an athlete. We never got into 4H and FFA mainly because of my travel schedule. What we did was play softball. And up to halfway through her sophomore year, we played quite a lot of it.
    Since there aren’t many cattle sales to work during the summer months, the sport of softball was something she and I could do together. We went through CYO leagues, Little League, tournament teams and even a little bit in high school her freshman year. I really enjoyed those years helping coach, playing catch, taking her to pitching lessons. I have fond memories of that time in her life. Shelbi is the type of person that wants to do everything she does as well as she can. As a freshman, she pitched every inning of every game for her Junior Varsity team. This, while taking pitching lessons two afternoons of every week and maintaining high grades in school.
    Another particularly proud moment I recall was between her freshman and sophomore years. We had signed onto a tournament team who was pretty deep with pitching and was made up of girls mainly from another school. Shelbi knew she wouldn’t get much time on the mound but that was OK with her as it gave her more time to work on her fielding in the outfield. As luck would have it, we were enrolled in a local tournament on a weekend where we were going to be a little short on pitching, so there was a chance that Shelbi would be needed. The first game of the tournament was not pretty. Our starting pitcher gets hurt—another gets hit pretty hard and the team in general gets down on their selves.
    The second game scheduled was against a virtual who’s who in local high school sports, made up of the very best seniors in the San Antonio area. The coach asks another girl to pitch. She refuses, thereby incurring the wrath of an angry coach. The coach turns to Shelbi and asks her and Shelbi takes the mound. What happens next was something for a proud father to behold. She takes the mound against these all-stars and pitches three scoreless innings. In fact, she has a perfect game going with no hits, no walks AND no runs. She does this by pitching away from these stronger girls, throwing drop balls and off speed pitches. Frustrated, they just kept fouling ball after ball until ultimately they would pop it up and be called out.
    In the top of the fourth with one out, their clean up hitter comes to the plate. Shelbi gets a pitch too close to the center of the plate and the girl hits a line drive back towards the mound. Instinctively, and desperately trying to hold onto what she had going, Shelbi sticks out her throwing hand to catch the ball. Well, she didn’t catch it--but she did stop the ball. The young lady makes it safely to 1st base, and Shelbi has yielded her first base hit of the game. Meanwhile Shelbi looks at her finger closest to her pinkie and discovers that it is not exactly pointing in the right direction anymore. Calling time, the coach goes to the mound and sees the finger and wants to take her out of the game, but Shelbi wants to finish.
    Her pitching control now being compromised, Shelbi ultimately loses this hard fought game. After the game was over, I took her for an X-ray where we discovered that she had in fact suffered a fractured finger. She could have quit that day and I would have supported her. Instead, she taped her two middle fingers together, we went back to the ball field and she played in the outfield in the game later that same afternoon.
    Shelbi will attend Texas A&M University this fall. Lauren and I have witnessed her exhibit the qualities of a fightin’ Texas Aggie! Gig ‘Em Shelbi! You make us very proud!