You can make a difference this summer.

In a short time, spring will turn to summer and kids everywhere will revel for three months vacation.

Hopefully, those kids enroll in various summer programs to occupy their time. Baseball was always my passion. My summers were spent in dugouts and on fields. My coaches and my dad were my daily summer mentors.

Fortunately, I grew up across from a baseball field. My dad would come home from work on nights I didn’t have a game and say, “Lets hit a bucket of balls.”

We’d stroll across the street and he’d toss me pitches until the sun went down, or the mosquitoes sucked too many pints of blood from us to continue. My mom would sit on the front porch and watch ball after ball disappear into the night sky. I can’t envision what summer is without baseball.

The day came where I had enough of pounding away at my weathered body, and I decided to cross the lines as a coach, handing down some of the lessons I’ve been so lucky to have acquired.

For those of you who haven’t experienced this feeling, watching the lessons you’ve taught executed is a potent feeling.

It was so powerful it drove me back to school after several years spent in a cubicle. I just couldn’t get my fix as a desk jockey/ part-time coach. For me, bliss occurs in the dugout, orchestrating the chess match that is a baseball game. If that meant a few more years of school and another degree, so be it.

My No. 1 goal in life is to be happy. My No. 2 goal is to inspire others.

This is where memories are formed and lives are crafted — on a sweaty, sunny afternoon where Gatorade, sunflower seeds and field dust are plentiful.

If sport isn’t your passion, you can make a difference as a tutor, camp counselor, or life guard. If you are not a hands-on person, you can always be a fan.

Some of my best memories are of my grandfather and little brother cheering me on at baseball games. My brother was still a little guy and couldn’t say “Jimbo,” so he just said “Bo.”

So whatever your passion may be, I challenge you this summer to channel your energy into helping out some young person somewhere. Surely you’ve made it this far in life with the help of someone else; this summer make it a priority to open a door for someone else.

Pay some of that knowledge back to a youth culture that needs leaders.

Let’s give young people something to look forward to — a sense of family and a passion to pursue.

A better life to live.