Steven "Steve" Butler had his heart set on a career as a baseball pitcher, but a sore arm that wouldn’t heal prematurely ended his dream.

Steven "Steve" Butler

Today, Butler is the new sports director in the Pinecrest office of the South Dade YMCA, 12685 Pinecrest Pkwy. (S. Dixie Highway) and looks forward to working with youngsters and "providing opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be available to them."

His duties include putting together team rosters and schedules, ordering uniforms, marketing the program to the community and assisting in fundraising.

"I love it," Butler said of his new position. "One of my goals was to have a job that I enjoyed, where I would wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work, and this is it."

Butler said his position at the YMCA will allow him to continue working in sports and working with kids, something he has enjoyed doing all of his life.

"Sports is something I’ve always been a part of," he said. "When I was playing sports, in the summer I would always coach at camps and whenever I was on traveling teams, we would always give lessons to younger kids wherever we were. It’s something I’ve always done and something I’ve always enjoyed doing."

Butler, who stands 6-feet-four-inches tall and weighs 265 pounds, admits to being something of a sports nut and said he has a special affinity for baseball.

"I’ve just always been drawn to it, ever since I was 5 years old," he said. "I was always able to throw hard and hit the ball a long way."

Butler, 24, grew up in the Pinecrest area, attended Perrine Baptist Elementary School and Westminster Junior and Senior High Schools, graduating in 1993. His high school baseball exploits were good enough to earn him a scholarship to Florida State University where soreness in his arm developed. He transferred to Northern Illinois University near Chicago, where he graduated in 1998.

"I just got tendonitis in my elbow and for some reason I just couldn’t throw hard anymore," Butler explained. "I went from throwing a baseball at 91 miles an hour to throwing at 85 miles an hour and that just didn’t cut it any more. I went from being a prospect to a non-prospect very quickly."

Butler said he hopes eventually to coach baseball on a high school level and will "help out" at his high school alma mater, Westminster, this fall and spring.