Disappointment feels so much bigger when you’re young because you haven’t lived long enough to know that there’s always something else on the other side. In his story about a former football prospect who seeks a new identity on a baseball field, Jesse Dougherty elicits emotion from a normally taciturn type – the young male athlete – and conveys those feelings without tripping over purple prose.

Life After Football

Jesse Dougherty | The Daily Orange | April 5, 2015 | 1,647 words (7 minutes)