Kevin Pillar: Leading the Youth

The K Zone

January 13th  2017

Kevin Pillar

Interview by Mike Duffy


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I was very fortunate to meet the Blue Jays center fielder, Kevin Pillar a couple weeks ago when he came to talk to my schools baseball team to speak some words of wisdom. His main theme was not just about hard work, but the friendships you make as a kid and how they impact your life. He started with a speech he previously gave to the Blue Jays minor league prospects the other week down in Florida while doing a rehab assignment. He said he tried to give the prospects a new feel about what’s important. Kevin said, “Being dedicated and getting your school work done are all the things that our parents teach us since we were little kids. But I wanted to share that sounding yourself with the right people is just as important.”  He goes on to say, “I had to find people that wanted the same things out of life that I wanted because we will pushed each other to be as good as we could be on and off the baseball field.”


Before taking questions Kevin touched on the idea of sacrificing for you dream. Kevin said, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you all have to be squares and not enjoy your personal life but there are sacrifices that are needed to be made to get to where you wanna go in what ever you want to do. It’s pays off. I still sacrifice a lot to take advantage of my rare opportunity to work 10-15 years and never have to work ever again after it.” He believes that being able to retire at such a young age, he would be able to go back to some of the things he sacrificed as a kid and still do them; for instance he loved snowboarding. His sacrifices have really paid off because The Blue Jays have gone back to back years with a game left to win which would land them in the World Series. He has also been a Gold Glove nominee back to back years as well. His superhero like ability to catch some of the hardest hit balls at odd angles has earned him the fan given nickname  Superman!


After that he talked about how you should never be happy with you quality of playing because as he said,  “If you ever get satisfied with how you play, someone younger than you is going to take your job in this game, I was that guy. The moment you become complacent is the moment you become expendable!” I asked him how does he bond with his teammates and he simply put it, “WIN.” Also playing Xbox at the Hotel.


 

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