Jose Ledesma, looks forward to a nice long career in baseball and in life, as he works hard on and off the field. (Photo by Ariadni Aguilar)

By Ariadni Aguilar

The Passaic Indian Baseball team has been on fire this season and it is due to the teamwork and hard individual work of each of the players. However, one of the players almost did not make it to the field this season. Jose Ledesma, junior, was looking forward to his final year of playing baseball, representing PHS and making us all proud. However, after feeling a little dizzy, just two days before practice, doctors found a microscopic tumor on his cerebellum.

Jose was devastated because baseball was his life and he wanted to play more than anything. The thought of not being able to play again was horrible. Tests did show that the tumor was benign, but if it grew doctors would have to perform surgery to remove it.

An avid viewer of sports, Jose said, “Usually when you see stuff like that on ESPN, people don’t come back from that. Going through that at a young age, it made me look at the bigger picture and see that there are things more important than baseball.”

Doctors monitored Ledesma’s tumor for more than a month and the symptoms subsided. He was cleared to return to Passaic’s baseball team after missing the first 11 games of last season because the tumor did not grow.

Because he was forced to be away from the team and sport that he loved, Jose was much more appreciative of the time that he had on the field. “Every opportunity I got to be on the field, I was just appreciative of it,” said Ledesma.

Coach Diaz said of Ledesma, “He is a model program kid” because he is a quality student and one of the Indians’ three captains.

Now that it seems that Jose Ledesma is out of the woods, he can concentrate an hundred percent on his game, which in turn will help the team. With dedicated students like Jose on the team, the Passaic Indians should have a bright season this year.