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Michael Pitt

Biography

Michael Pitt has "known since I was five and would hear my Mom talk about her experiences as a nurse that I would one day be in medicine," he writes. And from a young age he has practiced medicine of a rather different sort: Michael is a self-taught magician. He remembers performing on the pediatric floors of his mother's hospital.

His hobby soon morphed into a business, and by the time he was 12, Michael was performing magic four nights a week in a restaurant. He still performs at corporate and charity events.

Michael hopes to use magic to reach his patients on a personal level. He feels that good communication is essential in the practice of good medicine. "I wish to treat children, not diseases," he writes. "This is the primary reason that, unlike the vast majority of my pre-med classmates, I chose to major in English as opposed to science."

Michael has spent much of his free time working with children. He coached soccer and basketball for the YMCA, and volunteered in a kindergarten music class at an elementary school and at a summer camp for children. He also volunteers with adults, spending a year as a conversation partner for a Korean exchange student as part of the English Language Institute.

Along with many academic and community awards, Michael is an honorary inductee in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. During the 1998 season, he caught Mark McGwire's 57th home run, which broke a 68-year-old National League record. It wasn't luck: Michael had snuck under the tarps in the bleachers to a spot where he thought McGwire was likely to hit it. But Michael returned the ball to McGwire, despite cash offers for the instant memorabilia, because "that ball belonged to McGwire," he wrote.

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