Wounded Warriors

Wounded Warriors

Image by familymwr
Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team Soldiers Saul Bosquez and Cpl. Matt Kinsey practice Feb. 24 at Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Fla., spring training home of the Washington Nationals. U.S. Army photo by Tim Hipps, IMCOM Public Affairs


Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team feels like ‘America’s Team’

By Tim Hipps
IMCOM Public Affairs

VIERA, Fla. – Army Cpl. Matt Kinsey says he plays for the newest version of “America’s Team” – the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team.

“We’ve got the best fans of any team in America,” Kinsey said Feb. 24 after practicing at Space Coast Stadium, spring training home of the Washington Nationals. “Everybody says we’re America’s new favorite team. The support that we get is just unbelievable – everywhere we go, we get first-class treatment.”

All of the players are Soldiers or Marines who lost limbs while deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. They are the first softball squadron completely assembled with wounded warriors playing on prosthetics or with missing body parts.

They plan to play 60 to 75 games this year against able-bodied teams, and they expect to win most of those contests. For these guys, however, every day spent on a diamond is a win-win situation.

“The fans thank you for your service and everything, but they are kind of in awe because they are not used to seeing – it’s the first time it’s ever been done: guys playing competitive softball on prosthetics,” Kinsey said. “I think they look at us walking in like, “Ah, I don’t know if these guys are really going to be up to snuff.’

“But they find out pretty quick that we can play. As soon as the game is over, I think they are just in awe of how hard we play and the talent level we’re at. We get a really good reception.”

The team is the brainchild of David Van Sleet, 56, a former Army specialist who spent the past 32 years working with prosthetics for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I’ve been involved with softball my whole life, managing, coaching and playing,” Van Sleet said. “I just stopped to do this. I’m the brainchild, the founder and head coach.

“I saw some pretty athletic looking guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan,” he explained. “And the University of Arizona acquired a Congressional grant that enabled us to bring 20 guys to Tucson in 2011 for a disabled veterans sports camp. I came up with the idea to make it a softball camp.

“When we were there, the camaraderie and the skill level that I saw, I was like, ‘Man, we’ve got something here.’ More importantly, the guys told me that we had something there, and they didn’t want it to end. We took it from there, and it’s just exploded.”

The team carries13 to 15 players on the roster and takes 11 on each road trip to play against military teams, firemen, policemen, celebrity squads, elite women’s teams and all-comers.

They will face a D.C. celebrity team following the Boston Red Sox-Washington Nationals game April 3 at Nationals Park in Washington. They have a game set for Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. More extravaganzas are set for Huntsville, Ala., and The Hamptons on Long Island, N.Y. Olympic softball star Jennie Finch has invited them to Louisiana for a “ Battle on the Bayou.” And they will play before the NCAA Women’s Softball Championship finale in Oklahoma City.

Kinsey, 26, played baseball for Rockville High School in Indiana and a year of junior college ball for Danville Area Community College in Illinois. He experienced arm problems there and returned home to work on the farm for a couple of years before joining the Army in March of 2006.

“I was on my second tour of Afghanistan when I stepped on a land mine on a night patrol and I lost my right foot,” Kinsey recalled of June 2, 2010, the day his life forever changed. “Half of it was missing initially. The explosion blew away from me, so I was very fortunate that happened. When I got to Walter Reed [Army Medical Center], we decided to take the rest of the foot. Now I have a nub.

“I had a very quick recovery. I was running by August.”

Running again, however, was a learning process.

“It’s different at first. I’m not going to lie,” said Kinsey, who shifted his pitching and catching baseball prowess to shortstop for softball. “You basically retrain yourself on how to play and how to move. But as far as getting up and going and planting, I probably have more of an advantage because I create more torque. I have more leg than a lot of the guys.”

Saul Bosquez played high school, American Legion and two seasons of junior college baseball at Grand Rapids Community College before joining the Army. He soon deployed as a specialist from Fort Benning, Ga., to Iraq. On Aug. 1, 2007, Bosquez had completed a convoy of Iraqi police checkpoints and was returning to base when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device that broke his left leg in 11 places and collected two of his right toes. Eventually, he became a below the knee amputee.

“It was the best thing for me to do,” Bosquez said. “It was a tough decision, being 22 years old, and having to decide where I wanted my leg cut off at. I guess it’s a decision you never think you’re going to have to make.”

Bosquez’s first athletic journey outside of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington was to Jim Estes’ Salute Military Golf Association clinic for wounded warriors in Olney, Md.

“You can feel sorry for yourself all you want, but it's not going to make your situation any better,” Bosquez said then. “So why not try to do something?
“It’s like the easiest thing to do for guys missing legs,” Bosquez recalls of the golf therapy. “It’s not very high-impact, and it gets them back out there competing. Golf is not always against other people, though, it’s a very mental game. I have a newfound respect for golf. I play a lot of golf now.”

On a good day, he has a golf handicap of 13, a score most honest hacks would envy. Bosquez, however, was a former football and baseball player who swam and ran track. He still yearned for team competition and was determined to play baseball again – or at least softball.

“I can do other things, but they don’t have a lot of programs for the things that I want to do,” he said. “I would like to start a baseball program and actually play in a league.”

He since has learned how to ski on snow and water – something he never attempted on two natural legs.

“I had never tried either one until after I lost my leg,” he said. “I picked it up just like that. Anything athletic always has just come pretty naturally to me.”

Fast forward four years, and Bosquez is playing in a veritable softball league of his own.
Last March, about 20 wounded warriors gathered for the tryout camp at the University of Arizona. They concluded with an intra-squad game in which Bosquez threw out a runner at home plate to preserve the victory.

“That was a pretty cool moment,” he said.

Kinsey said learning how to achieve daily activities was the hardest part of dealing with his injury.

“Being out here on a ball diamond, your mental instincts kick in,” he explained. “I’ve played in thousands of games so it’s more muscle-memory than anything. Everyday things like showering or getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, you have to hop there – but you get your own system and learn what works.”

Kinsey bats third in the Wounded Warriors’ lineup.

“I go deep every now and then if the wind’s not blowing in,” he said with a grin.

He still has difficulty fathoming this whole scenario.

“If you would have asked me over a year ago when I got hit if I would be playing softball at spring training with the Nationals, let alone being on this team and getting to go to all the places that we’ve been to, I’d tell you that you were full of it,” Kinsey said. “This has been a dream come true, and it’s only getting bigger. We’ve been from the East Coast to the West Coast so far.”

Kinsey, a sixth-year Soldier, is stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center but is on PCS home leave, awaiting clearance by the medical board.

A former quarterback, Kinsey helped coach his high school team for the past eight seasons. Now he’s taking it to the next level.

“I’m going to be coaching college football next year at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, but between doing that, softball is basically is my fulltime job,” he said. “I’m going to be continuing my education up there.”

Meantime, Bosquez is basking in the moment of traveling around the country to play softball.

“We’ve blown up in the past year,” Bosquez said. “We were in “Sports Illustrated.” We were on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble” on HBO. We just played a flag football game against retired NFL guys in Indianapolis the week of the Super Bowl, and we won by like 21 points. And we were on like a five-minute segment on SportsCenter with Rick Reilly.

“It’s been a pretty big ride.”

The Washington Nationals and Louisville Slugger are their primary sponsors, with Boombah providing shoes and Phiten tossing in accessories. Even Jimmy Buffett has boarded the caravan.

“This past October we hung out with him in Las Vegas, where the world’s largest margarita was made,” Bosquez said. “Wherever we go, the people who bring us out will take care of us.”

All but one of the former baseball players had never played competitive softball, so they are learning the nuances of the game on the fly.

“Me and Matt still have the baseball swing and mentality – it’s kind of hard to break out of that,” said Bosquez, 27, who received Army retirement papers three years ago. “Pretty much every athletes’ dream of a second chance after they’re done, we got it, and we’re all taking the most from it.”

The players hope to spread awareness and inspire others to realize that “just because you’re injured, it’s not over.”

“You’re going to have to work for it, but you can do it again,” Bosquez said. “We show that, and hopefully other disabled guys and other amputees will get that. Hopefully, we can inspire them to go out there and try.”

“It’s no different than someone who has a nagging injury or something that just can’t heal. You might go out there and trip over your foot or something that you wouldn’t have done before you got hurt – just little things like that. But like they say, a day out on the golf course or a day out on the field is better than a day of pretty much anything else, so you can’t complain.”

Kinsey concurred.

“As long as I can play, I’ll play,” he said. “I’ll play until my legs fall off, or my arm falls off, or whatever.”

For his efforts, Van Sleet received the Veterans Administration’s highest award before Congress last year.

“I’ve had a pretty good career with the V.A.,” he said. “They took the flag off the Capitol and gave it to me.”

Cpl. Matt Kinsey

Image by familymwr
Army Cpl. Matt Kinsey, shortstop for the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team, works out Feb. 24 at Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Fla., spring training home of the Washington Nationals. “We’ve got the best fans of any team in America," he said. "Everybody says we’re America’s new favorite team." U.S. Army photo by Tim Hipps, IMCOM Public Affairs

Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team feels like ‘America’s Team’

By Tim Hipps
IMCOM Public Affairs

VIERA, Fla. – Army Cpl. Matt Kinsey says he plays for the newest version of “America’s Team” – the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team.

“We’ve got the best fans of any team in America,” Kinsey said Feb. 24 after practicing at Space Coast Stadium, spring training home of the Washington Nationals. “Everybody says we’re America’s new favorite team. The support that we get is just unbelievable – everywhere we go, we get first-class treatment.”

All of the players are Soldiers or Marines who lost limbs while deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. They are the first softball squadron completely assembled with wounded warriors playing on prosthetics or with missing body parts.

They plan to play 60 to 75 games this year against able-bodied teams, and they expect to win most of those contests. For these guys, however, every day spent on a diamond is a win-win situation.

“The fans thank you for your service and everything, but they are kind of in awe because they are not used to seeing – it’s the first time it’s ever been done: guys playing competitive softball on prosthetics,” Kinsey said. “I think they look at us walking in like, “Ah, I don’t know if these guys are really going to be up to snuff.’

“But they find out pretty quick that we can play. As soon as the game is over, I think they are just in awe of how hard we play and the talent level we’re at. We get a really good reception.”

The team is the brainchild of David Van Sleet, 56, a former Army specialist who spent the past 32 years working with prosthetics for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I’ve been involved with softball my whole life, managing, coaching and playing,” Van Sleet said. “I just stopped to do this. I’m the brainchild, the founder and head coach.

“I saw some pretty athletic looking guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan,” he explained. “And the University of Arizona acquired a Congressional grant that enabled us to bring 20 guys to Tucson in 2011 for a disabled veterans sports camp. I came up with the idea to make it a softball camp.

“When we were there, the camaraderie and the skill level that I saw, I was like, ‘Man, we’ve got something here.’ More importantly, the guys told me that we had something there, and they didn’t want it to end. We took it from there, and it’s just exploded.”

The team carries13 to 15 players on the roster and takes 11 on each road trip to play against military teams, firemen, policemen, celebrity squads, elite women’s teams and all-comers.

They will face a D.C. celebrity team following the Boston Red Sox-Washington Nationals game April 3 at Nationals Park in Washington. They have a game set for Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. More extravaganzas are set for Huntsville, Ala., and The Hamptons on Long Island, N.Y. Olympic softball star Jennie Finch has invited them to Louisiana for a “ Battle on the Bayou.” And they will play before the NCAA Women’s Softball Championship finale in Oklahoma City.

Kinsey, 26, played baseball for Rockville High School in Indiana and a year of junior college ball for Danville Area Community College in Illinois. He experienced arm problems there and returned home to work on the farm for a couple of years before joining the Army in March of 2006.

“I was on my second tour of Afghanistan when I stepped on a land mine on a night patrol and I lost my right foot,” Kinsey recalled of June 2, 2010, the day his life forever changed. “Half of it was missing initially. The explosion blew away from me, so I was very fortunate that happened. When I got to Walter Reed [Army Medical Center], we decided to take the rest of the foot. Now I have a nub.

“I had a very quick recovery. I was running by August.”

Running again, however, was a learning process.

“It’s different at first. I’m not going to lie,” said Kinsey, who shifted his pitching and catching baseball prowess to shortstop for softball. “You basically retrain yourself on how to play and how to move. But as far as getting up and going and planting, I probably have more of an advantage because I create more torque. I have more leg than a lot of the guys.”

Saul Bosquez played high school, American Legion and two seasons of junior college baseball at Grand Rapids Community College before joining the Army. He soon deployed as a specialist from Fort Benning, Ga., to Iraq. On Aug. 1, 2007, Bosquez had completed a convoy of Iraqi police checkpoints and was returning to base when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device that broke his left leg in 11 places and collected two of his right toes. Eventually, he became a below the knee amputee.

“It was the best thing for me to do,” Bosquez said. “It was a tough decision, being 22 years old, and having to decide where I wanted my leg cut off at. I guess it’s a decision you never think you’re going to have to make.”

Bosquez’s first athletic journey outside of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington was to Jim Estes’ Salute Military Golf Association clinic for wounded warriors in Olney, Md.

“You can feel sorry for yourself all you want, but it's not going to make your situation any better,” Bosquez said then. “So why not try to do something?
“It’s like the easiest thing to do for guys missing legs,” Bosquez recalls of the golf therapy. “It’s not very high-impact, and it gets them back out there competing. Golf is not always against other people, though, it’s a very mental game. I have a newfound respect for golf. I play a lot of golf now.”

On a good day, he has a golf handicap of 13, a score most honest hacks would envy. Bosquez, however, was a former football and baseball player who swam and ran track. He still yearned for team competition and was determined to play baseball again – or at least softball.

“I can do other things, but they don’t have a lot of programs for the things that I want to do,” he said. “I would like to start a baseball program and actually play in a league.”

He since has learned how to ski on snow and water – something he never attempted on two natural legs.

“I had never tried either one until after I lost my leg,” he said. “I picked it up just like that. Anything athletic always has just come pretty naturally to me.”

Fast forward four years, and Bosquez is playing in a veritable softball league of his own.
Last March, about 20 wounded warriors gathered for the tryout camp at the University of Arizona. They concluded with an intra-squad game in which Bosquez threw out a runner at home plate to preserve the victory.

“That was a pretty cool moment,” he said.

Kinsey said learning how to achieve daily activities was the hardest part of dealing with his injury.

“Being out here on a ball diamond, your mental instincts kick in,” he explained. “I’ve played in thousands of games so it’s more muscle-memory than anything. Everyday things like showering or getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, you have to hop there – but you get your own system and learn what works.”

Kinsey bats third in the Wounded Warriors’ lineup.

“I go deep every now and then if the wind’s not blowing in,” he said with a grin.

He still has difficulty fathoming this whole scenario.

“If you would have asked me over a year ago when I got hit if I would be playing softball at spring training with the Nationals, let alone being on this team and getting to go to all the places that we’ve been to, I’d tell you that you were full of it,” Kinsey said. “This has been a dream come true, and it’s only getting bigger. We’ve been from the East Coast to the West Coast so far.”

Kinsey, a sixth-year Soldier, is stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center but is on PCS home leave, awaiting clearance by the medical board.

A former quarterback, Kinsey helped coach his high school team for the past eight seasons. Now he’s taking it to the next level.

“I’m going to be coaching college football next year at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, but between doing that, softball is basically is my fulltime job,” he said. “I’m going to be continuing my education up there.”

Meantime, Bosquez is basking in the moment of traveling around the country to play softball.

“We’ve blown up in the past year,” Bosquez said. “We were in “Sports Illustrated.” We were on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble” on HBO. We just played a flag football game against retired NFL guys in Indianapolis the week of the Super Bowl, and we won by like 21 points. And we were on like a five-minute segment on SportsCenter with Rick Reilly.

“It’s been a pretty big ride.”

The Washington Nationals and Louisville Slugger are their primary sponsors, with Boombah providing shoes and Phiten tossing in accessories. Even Jimmy Buffett has boarded the caravan.

“This past October we hung out with him in Las Vegas, where the world’s largest margarita was made,” Bosquez said. “Wherever we go, the people who bring us out will take care of us.”

All but one of the former baseball players had never played competitive softball, so they are learning the nuances of the game on the fly.

“Me and Matt still have the baseball swing and mentality – it’s kind of hard to break out of that,” said Bosquez, 27, who received Army retirement papers three years ago. “Pretty much every athletes’ dream of a second chance after they’re done, we got it, and we’re all taking the most from it.”

The players hope to spread awareness and inspire others to realize that “just because you’re injured, it’s not over.”

“You’re going to have to work for it, but you can do it again,” Bosquez said. “We show that, and hopefully other disabled guys and other amputees will get that. Hopefully, we can inspire them to go out there and try.”

“It’s no different than someone who has a nagging injury or something that just can’t heal. You might go out there and trip over your foot or something that you wouldn’t have done before you got hurt – just little things like that. But like they say, a day out on the golf course or a day out on the field is better than a day of pretty much anything else, so you can’t complain.”

Kinsey concurred.

“As long as I can play, I’ll play,” he said. “I’ll play until my legs fall off, or my arm falls off, or whatever.”

For his efforts, Van Sleet received the Veterans Administration’s highest award before Congress last year.

“I’ve had a pretty good career with the V.A.,” he said. “They took the flag off the Capitol and gave it to me.”

Saul Bosquez

Image by familymwr
Saul Bosquez, an Army veteran who lost his lower left leg and two right toes to an improvised explosive device while patrolling Iraq on Aug. 1, 2007, works out Feb. 24 with the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team at Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Fla., spring training home of the Washington Nationals. The squad, which consists of Soldiers and Marines wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, will play 60 to 75 softball games this year against able-bodied teams across America. U.S. Army photo by Tim Hipps, IMCOM Public Affairs


Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team feels like ‘America’s Team’

By Tim Hipps
IMCOM Public Affairs

VIERA, Fla. – Army Cpl. Matt Kinsey says he plays for the newest version of “America’s Team” – the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team.

“We’ve got the best fans of any team in America,” Kinsey said Feb. 24 after practicing at Space Coast Stadium, spring training home of the Washington Nationals. “Everybody says we’re America’s new favorite team. The support that we get is just unbelievable – everywhere we go, we get first-class treatment.”

All of the players are Soldiers or Marines who lost limbs while deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. They are the first softball squadron completely assembled with wounded warriors playing on prosthetics or with missing body parts.

They plan to play 60 to 75 games this year against able-bodied teams, and they expect to win most of those contests. For these guys, however, every day spent on a diamond is a win-win situation.

“The fans thank you for your service and everything, but they are kind of in awe because they are not used to seeing – it’s the first time it’s ever been done: guys playing competitive softball on prosthetics,” Kinsey said. “I think they look at us walking in like, “Ah, I don’t know if these guys are really going to be up to snuff.’

“But they find out pretty quick that we can play. As soon as the game is over, I think they are just in awe of how hard we play and the talent level we’re at. We get a really good reception.”

The team is the brainchild of David Van Sleet, 56, a former Army specialist who spent the past 32 years working with prosthetics for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I’ve been involved with softball my whole life, managing, coaching and playing,” Van Sleet said. “I just stopped to do this. I’m the brainchild, the founder and head coach.

“I saw some pretty athletic looking guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan,” he explained. “And the University of Arizona acquired a Congressional grant that enabled us to bring 20 guys to Tucson in 2011 for a disabled veterans sports camp. I came up with the idea to make it a softball camp.

“When we were there, the camaraderie and the skill level that I saw, I was like, ‘Man, we’ve got something here.’ More importantly, the guys told me that we had something there, and they didn’t want it to end. We took it from there, and it’s just exploded.”

The team carries13 to 15 players on the roster and takes 11 on each road trip to play against military teams, firemen, policemen, celebrity squads, elite women’s teams and all-comers.

They will face a D.C. celebrity team following the Boston Red Sox-Washington Nationals game April 3 at Nationals Park in Washington. They have a game set for Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. More extravaganzas are set for Huntsville, Ala., and The Hamptons on Long Island, N.Y. Olympic softball star Jennie Finch has invited them to Louisiana for a “ Battle on the Bayou.” And they will play before the NCAA Women’s Softball Championship finale in Oklahoma City.

Kinsey, 26, played baseball for Rockville High School in Indiana and a year of junior college ball for Danville Area Community College in Illinois. He experienced arm problems there and returned home to work on the farm for a couple of years before joining the Army in March of 2006.

“I was on my second tour of Afghanistan when I stepped on a land mine on a night patrol and I lost my right foot,” Kinsey recalled of June 2, 2010, the day his life forever changed. “Half of it was missing initially. The explosion blew away from me, so I was very fortunate that happened. When I got to Walter Reed [Army Medical Center], we decided to take the rest of the foot. Now I have a nub.

“I had a very quick recovery. I was running by August.”

Running again, however, was a learning process.

“It’s different at first. I’m not going to lie,” said Kinsey, who shifted his pitching and catching baseball prowess to shortstop for softball. “You basically retrain yourself on how to play and how to move. But as far as getting up and going and planting, I probably have more of an advantage because I create more torque. I have more leg than a lot of the guys.”

Saul Bosquez played high school, American Legion and two seasons of junior college baseball at Grand Rapids Community College before joining the Army. He soon deployed as a specialist from Fort Benning, Ga., to Iraq. On Aug. 1, 2007, Bosquez had completed a convoy of Iraqi police checkpoints and was returning to base when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device that broke his left leg in 11 places and collected two of his right toes. Eventually, he became a below the knee amputee.

“It was the best thing for me to do,” Bosquez said. “It was a tough decision, being 22 years old, and having to decide where I wanted my leg cut off at. I guess it’s a decision you never think you’re going to have to make.”

Bosquez’s first athletic journey outside of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington was to Jim Estes’ Salute Military Golf Association clinic for wounded warriors in Olney, Md.

“You can feel sorry for yourself all you want, but it's not going to make your situation any better,” Bosquez said then. “So why not try to do something?
“It’s like the easiest thing to do for guys missing legs,” Bosquez recalls of the golf therapy. “It’s not very high-impact, and it gets them back out there competing. Golf is not always against other people, though, it’s a very mental game. I have a newfound respect for golf. I play a lot of golf now.”

On a good day, he has a golf handicap of 13, a score most honest hacks would envy. Bosquez, however, was a former football and baseball player who swam and ran track. He still yearned for team competition and was determined to play baseball again – or at least softball.

“I can do other things, but they don’t have a lot of programs for the things that I want to do,” he said. “I would like to start a baseball program and actually play in a league.”

He since has learned how to ski on snow and water – something he never attempted on two natural legs.

“I had never tried either one until after I lost my leg,” he said. “I picked it up just like that. Anything athletic always has just come pretty naturally to me.”

Fast forward four years, and Bosquez is playing in a veritable softball league of his own.
Last March, about 20 wounded warriors gathered for the tryout camp at the University of Arizona. They concluded with an intra-squad game in which Bosquez threw out a runner at home plate to preserve the victory.

“That was a pretty cool moment,” he said.

Kinsey said learning how to achieve daily activities was the hardest part of dealing with his injury.

“Being out here on a ball diamond, your mental instincts kick in,” he explained. “I’ve played in thousands of games so it’s more muscle-memory than anything. Everyday things like showering or getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, you have to hop there – but you get your own system and learn what works.”

Kinsey bats third in the Wounded Warriors’ lineup.

“I go deep every now and then if the wind’s not blowing in,” he said with a grin.

He still has difficulty fathoming this whole scenario.

“If you would have asked me over a year ago when I got hit if I would be playing softball at spring training with the Nationals, let alone being on this team and getting to go to all the places that we’ve been to, I’d tell you that you were full of it,” Kinsey said. “This has been a dream come true, and it’s only getting bigger. We’ve been from the East Coast to the West Coast so far.”

Kinsey, a sixth-year Soldier, is stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center but is on PCS home leave, awaiting clearance by the medical board.

A former quarterback, Kinsey helped coach his high school team for the past eight seasons. Now he’s taking it to the next level.

“I’m going to be coaching college football next year at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, but between doing that, softball is basically is my fulltime job,” he said. “I’m going to be continuing my education up there.”

Meantime, Bosquez is basking in the moment of traveling around the country to play softball.

“We’ve blown up in the past year,” Bosquez said. “We were in “Sports Illustrated.” We were on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble” on HBO. We just played a flag football game against retired NFL guys in Indianapolis the week of the Super Bowl, and we won by like 21 points. And we were on like a five-minute segment on SportsCenter with Rick Reilly.

“It’s been a pretty big ride.”

The Washington Nationals and Louisville Slugger are their primary sponsors, with Boombah providing shoes and Phiten tossing in accessories. Even Jimmy Buffett has boarded the caravan.

“This past October we hung out with him in Las Vegas, where the world’s largest margarita was made,” Bosquez said. “Wherever we go, the people who bring us out will take care of us.”

All but one of the former baseball players had never played competitive softball, so they are learning the nuances of the game on the fly.

“Me and Matt still have the baseball swing and mentality – it’s kind of hard to break out of that,” said Bosquez, 27, who received Army retirement papers three years ago. “Pretty much every athletes’ dream of a second chance after they’re done, we got it, and we’re all taking the most from it.”

The players hope to spread awareness and inspire others to realize that “just because you’re injured, it’s not over.”

“You’re going to have to work for it, but you can do it again,” Bosquez said. “We show that, and hopefully other disabled guys and other amputees will get that. Hopefully, we can inspire them to go out there and try.”

“It’s no different than someone who has a nagging injury or something that just can’t heal. You might go out there and trip over your foot or something that you wouldn’t have done before you got hurt – just little things like that. But like they say, a day out on the golf course or a day out on the field is better than a day of pretty much anything else, so you can’t complain.”

Kinsey concurred.

“As long as I can play, I’ll play,” he said. “I’ll play until my legs fall off, or my arm falls off, or whatever.”

For his efforts, Van Sleet received the Veterans Administration’s highest award before Congress last year.

“I’ve had a pretty good career with the V.A.,” he said. “They took the flag off the Capitol and gave it to me.”

051/365 | Day 51 | Feb 20

Image by JcOlivera.com
1st day of The OSCAR exclusive Secret Room Gifting Suite @ the SLS in Beverly Hills

Vendors setting up their tables, they will be giving away some of their products to Hollywood Celebrities it was a long day, I was on my feet for hrs had a little break, and had lunch with the volunteers, it was a crazy but fun day!

This was my day 51 of my 365 photo a day project.

2009 01 20 - 0868 - Odenton - MARC Station

Image by thisisbossi
[for the full Inauguration story, visit my blog]

My MARC ride back to Odenton was quite a bit more busy than the ride in – indeed, not a seat left. I took a window seat beside a volunteer who got a placement within the Capitol, and during the ceremony he was right behind the podium. A fine spot! He had some amazing photos, both of the dignitaries and other celebrities as well as of the crowd on the Mall… the latter being the most impressive. He works in the Senate, which helps explain how he got such a nice placement. I could tell he was extremely excited to have taken part in this event, and proud to have had the opportunity to assist. Two girls sitting behind me were also chatting about travel in Europe… so that kept me pretty well occupied between the Bowie State station and my stop at Odenton.

My car was still in its front-row spot upon my return, and traffic getting back to Russett was just as easy as it was in the morning. Total walk distance: about 10 miles. My feet were a bit sore, but moreso just from nearly 20 miles of walking in a three-day span. They didn’t hurt; rather, they were just getting tired. Being an engineer, living in suburbia, and the excuse that it’s winter & I don’t like gyms… that definitely doesn’t afford the greatest of opportunities for exercise. Sitting down for a bit to type this all up, though, I feel great now: I almost want to go out and walk some more… indeed, my legs feel like the need more movement; not less.

Overall, I’d summarize the entire Inauguration in almost the same way I did in an email to my dad…
- There were a lot of people;
- There were even more people than a lot;
- People (citizenry & officials alike) were in amazingly great spirits;
- My legs have gotten a hefty workout;
- It's nice to be in a warm(ish) place again!