“With my mom just being the sole parent figure in my life, I was always told, it kind of ties into baseball I guess, when I was growing up you know I didn’t have the ‘aggression’ I needed to play or didn’t have the ‘anger’ side of it I guess and that will probably be because I didn’t have a father figure in my life, really ever. My parents separated when I was 2, my dad was non existence after that. So I guess kind of dealing with that, and all the baggage that came with that will probably one of the harder things I’ve had to overcome. Especially when you’re younger, making allstar teams, making select teams is all about who you know, who your parents know and who your dad is and all this stuff, and not having a dad probably hurt me at some points in time because I didn’t make a lot of the select teams when I was younger, like I said it’s all about who you know, who your friends with. Yeah probably just dealing with that, I guess just separating the personal baggage that comes with an unstable father I guess you can say but at the same time my mom did so much for my sister and I, she made it seem like that even though you only have 1 parent, that’s what normal was, that’s what seems like it was to our sister and I because she was so involve in our lives. What I kind of said to a lot of people, not having a dad kind of showed me things. Instead of thinking, ‘oh having bad cards dealt to me, being like that sucks.’ I kind of take it like now I know what to do, now since I’ve had that parent that was like that, I can kind of look at it being like, now I exactly know not what to do and eventually someday in the future, hopefully, I’ll be the father that I never had and to be able to learn from his mistakes and learn from of his actions of what not to do.” – Liam Stroud, Retired Baseball Pitcher. (4/7)