Thomas,
I believe you said you'd written this story based on memory from quite a while ago, but please realize that my critique will be written as if this were a turned-in story on a sports desk.
First, your lead (first or first few paragraphs) is probably embedded/summarized, at least somewhat, in that headline. That gimmicky-ness, distinction, the thing that makes Venditte different, interesting, or special is where the story lies.
Focus on that, and forget about how he may, or not, love kids (at least until you are, perhaps, much further down into any story about him). You don't really know that he loves kids just on the basis of the fact that he signed a bunch of autographs. For all you know, that may just be a team-mandated/required part of the job of a minor-league baseball player (this is often the case), or Vindette might, in fact, consider it such, himself. But even if he does, that's probably not why you're writing a story on him. That's my point.
So, you need to find another, more succinct way to write, at/near the top, what your story is really about: Vindette's ambidexterity as a pitcher, no less.
That begs the question, pretty high up, by the way, about whether his ambidexterity is strictly for baseball purposes, or is it really just a fortuitous if somewhat unusual thing that's pretty natural for him? For example, can he write with both hands equally or almost equally well? Does he write with one hand but do almost everything else with the other in his daily life? These things do happen, sometimes. Or, like a lot of things relating to parents/sports, is this something Dad developed purely for baseball and it's not applicable at all to the rest of his life?
In the paragraph that starts out with how Venditte became "infamous," I don't think that's the word you're looking for. You should say that he "gained notoriety" or became "famous" rather than infamous, because that word implies something wrong, bad, illegal and/or unnecessarily negative that I don't think applies in this case.
You could have set up from a visual from the at-bat that switch-hitter Ralph Henriquez had against Venditte as the basis of your lead, perhaps. See it again in your head, imagine it, write and paint that picture of what you saw and what the players, spectators were feeling/sensing about what they were seeing in that instance for your reader.
That would have been a much more graphic presentation, and more applicable to your purposes for writing in the first place, than talking about how much Venditte likes kids, especially as that was something you may have just assumed, anyway...
When I first looked at the story, it had Venditte's name spelled two different ways. That is what's known in journalism classes as a Gross Factual Error, and GFE's are not forgivable. You make one, you get an F on the assignment, especially as they apply to names. Get them right. That's a cardinal rule, and you should always check them. (The one time you don't ask somebody named John Smith how to spell his name, you'll find out later that it should have been Jon Smyth, or Smithe, or something like that). Ask for spellings of first and last names, and spell them back, doing it phonetically, even, and especially, if you're on the phone.
That section you have about the Venditte Rule probably would have been made into a nice little sidebar, and perhaps could have been expanded upon and featurized a bit, in an actual newspaper. For your purposes, though, a good summarization would have been better.
In general, you've got the background/history of Venditte's career a little backward. Typically, you'd put the more recent stuff (say, from 2009, then the rest of his minor league play, then college draft info/highlights, then high school, etc.), in that order.
In other words, as in most cases of journalism you want to try to make things as current/updated as possible, building backwards from there. That won't necessarily always be the case, but usually, that's what you should do.
And yes, you should get quotes -- from Venditte, his family, his coaches, perhaps an umpire at a game he pitched in, an opposing switch-hitter, the scout that brought him to attention and perhaps, followed him while he was in high school or college. Getting a media rep for one of his teams, so that you can address the player's uniqueness from that angle, and discussing whether it brings on any particular challenges, cautions or concerns, or even, opportunities for his team in terms of publicity could even be good...That CBS Evening News instance is a prime example of something that could have used more discussion and some expansion, the better to get a sense of how often (or not) that type of thing happens, and how it may skew his actual pitching stats line.
This was a good effort by you, but my general thoughts, as presented on that other thread, are that you would do well to focus on basic spelling, sentence structure and comprehension because if you improve all that, the rest of your writing will just naturally become better, too, and then you can focus more on learning the style aspects of writing that come later, with time and practice.
Time is on your side, Thomas, and I envy you that. But work on the basics first. Then, I have no doubt you'll be great when your time to shine comes because your initiative is great. That's something that is valued, has always been valued, and should always be valued, in journalism, and usually, it can't be taught. For the most part, people either have it, or they don't. Take heart in that and grow from there.
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