Aimee
Dawson Batts has a name for baseball. He also has a sweeping curve and can hit for power.
What he does not have, is a left arm.
But that hasn’t slowed the 12-year-old from North Carolina, who turned heads at the Baseball Youth NYBC All-Star Challenge over the weekend.
Batts went deep in the home run derby — he bats lefty, swinging with his lead hand — and pitched in the East’s 8-4 win over the West at Baseball Heaven in Suffolk County.
“He adapts well,” his mother, Erica Batts, told MLB.com. “As long as he wants to play, we’ll do it.”
“If he can’t play ball, he’s miserable,” his grandmother, Susan, said. “But as long as he’s out there playing, he’s happy go lucky. That’s his life: the ballfield.
Batts was born without his left arm but was hitting balls off of a tee by the time he was 3-years-old. His mother doesn’t like when he pitches — “it just gets me nervous,” she said — but he manages to do it anyway, keeping his glove behind him on the mound and barehanding throws back from the catcher. If he needs to make a throw while manning first base, he tucks his glove under his chin, yanks his hand out of the glove, then grabs the ball and makes the toss.
