Up next in the category of Bad Ass of the Year, Jaydin Goldenstein is a 16-year old three-sport star at Holyoke High School in Colorado. In a small-town school with 200 students, Goldenstein was already a god among boys, but just in case it wasn’t clear to the rest of his classmates, teammates and neighbors, he solidified that status in a baseball doubleheader against Wray High School.
Needing to win both games to win the Lower Platte League, Holyoke sent Goldenstein to the mound for Game 1 and he pitched a no-hitter, striking out 10 and walking 2. In the second game, Goldenstein switched to shortstop and hit four homeruns to complete the day’s sweep of Wray and win the league title. Oh, and he did all of this only two days after he sat by his mom’s bedside as she died from a stroke.
“After my first eight years, I didn’t want to have anything to do with her; I didn’t want to even accept her,” said 16-year-old Jaydin Goldenstein, whose mother left his life when he was in third grade.”So, I was saying goodbye to someone I didn’t know. But, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be alive.” (Via The Denver Post)
Goldenstein’s mom was 35 when she passed away, and her son had ignored her for almost a year because of her drug use and criminal past. However, as kids these days often do, he learned of his mother’s stroke via Facebook.
That night, Jaydin was messing around on Facebook when he saw a notification about his mother. “She had tried friending me before,” he said, using Facebook lingo. “But I never accepted it.”
“I was planning on living my life not talking to her, and just hope that she’d get clean,” he said. “It just kind of hit me, now she is dead.”
Goldenstein’s teammates, coaches, and even opponents praised him for his performance and his ability to handle himself with poise and dignity through not just one tough time, but a series of heartbreaking events that no child should have to deal with. Basically, he’s a bad ass and everyone knows it.
https://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/934052406
Anyone else a little disappointed with the lack of game footage? I would have liked to have seen him mowing down batters to a Rage Against the Machine song and then exchanging a solemn glare of respect with his father after he hit his fourth homerun. Someone get Disney on the phone.
