Why This Game is Important

When I was a kid, I was in trouble quite frequently. Not REAL trouble, but the kind of trouble where you get your card pulled in kindergarten for not napping during nap time, continuously talking during instruction, and not generally following instructions. 

Teachers and doctors alike constantly told my parents that I had some form of ADHD and that I needed to be medicated. I find this idea to be a cop out for the majority of cases, because it is difficult to handle a young boy who has boundless energy. Thankfully, my parents refused to medicate me and sought outlets for my, shall we say, spirited nature. 

Much of this retelling comes second hand, as I do not remember much of my childhood before roughly age 8. I think a lot of this is due to minor trauma, as my parents had a rough marriage when I was young. They fought frequently at the time and had not yet figured out how to constructively work through their frustrations together. That is a blog post for another time! However, I should say that Dana and Sherry are a true testament that if you care enough and want to make something work, you just figure it out and do what it takes. They have been married 30 years this week and just left the country to celebrate!

However, per the stories of Dana and Sherry Douglas, everything changed whenever they gave me a baseball for the first time. Many of my behavior issues went away. I finally had an outlet for the seemingly boundless vigor that I brought to the table. My parents recount the story of the first time that I played catch with my dad. I had loudly proclaimed that I wanted to be a pitcher. “Oh boy, not many kids end up being good pitchers,” my mom thought at the time. However, after a few minutes outside, my dad went inside and said to my mother, “Sherry, I think he might actually have something…” I didn’t necessarily have a legendary thunderbolt for a right arm, as legend goes, but enough to do a little something-something. 

I can remember in Little League, I spent the days anticipating going to practice for another chance to take some more groundballs, to be on the dirt, and just feel the joy that results from an uninhibited boy, glove, ball, and some questionably manicured grass at the local park. Games speak for themselves. I relished the opportunity to go compete, run, throw, hit, and get dirty! I owe a lot to Fred Deadman Park. That is the origin of my relationship with the game of baseball. 

In middle school, I started to learn the nuances of the game. How to attack a hitter, when to steal, what it meant to play for something that was bigger than me, a community and my teammates. 

High school, like many, was a remarkably formative time for me. I experienced most of the things that high school boys experience for the first time: young love, insecurity, hubris, etc. However, baseball was always the constant. It was my foundation. I had the opportunity to play for many quality coaches, to learn lessons that transcend the diamond, and to experience my first true bouts with adversity between the chalk lines. It was in high school that I first learned how to not be an idiot, to put it frankly. Going all the way back to those Fred Deadman days, I did not handle failure well in a game that throws an incessant barrage of failure into your face. It took a meticulous, relentless mentor to help me grow into a young man who could handle those moments in a semi-productive manner. I will always be thankful for the mentorship of Brent Whitlock and Greg Burgess. 

I ended up with the opportunity to play college baseball at Freed-Hardeman University, the result of a combination of good fortune and relentless work ethic. At Freed-Hardeman, I experienced more adversity and self-doubt than I had ever experienced, much of which was self-imposed and the result of poor personal decision making. It took me a long time to figure this out and to work my way through these difficulties. 

Now, I find myself inside the fence, but on the other side of the lines. For the last 5 years, I have been a coach, 4 as a head coach and 1 as an assistant. It is truly awe-inspiring what happens whenever you remove yourself from the competition and watch with a new perspective, from the top step of the dugout. It is even more remarkable what happens when, as a coach, you remove yourself from the top step and take up a spot on the bench (again, another blog post for another time.) There is a distinct perspective change, which reveals the true value of the game in my experience. 

That value of the game is the basis of my thoughts today. This beautiful game offers so much to those who are willing to open up and receive what baseball is trying to tell you. Regardless of the level of the game that one experiences, there are countless lessons to be offered that will be pivotal in the journey of self-actualization. We can run down the list and be here for days: commodities like servant leadership, courage, resilience, and joy, to name a few. 

However, from the mile high view, baseball’s true value lies in its avenue for becoming the person that you are meant to become. Typically, the largest life lessons are realized in retrospect, in my experience. Life isn’t a Disney movie. We don’t have a “EUREKA!!” moment live in action, generally. To grasp the lessons we have learned, we must reflect on the journey we have undergone, even if the journey is not yet complete. None of us are finished products, which is okay! But we can be the best version of ourselves that we are capable of being today, in this moment. I think that is what baseball does best. It forces us into the saddle, bucks us into the dirt, and then puts its hand out to pull us back into the saddle again, questioning if we have learned anything and if we are willing to implement what we have learned. 

It must occur through the basis of joy that this game offered us when we were in Little League so we are willing to take the lumps that we must endure to continue to play this game, because the bull don’t care how we feel or if it hurts our feelings. Do we have the courage to get back in the saddle? Do we have the awareness to realize we don’t have it all figured out? Do we have the resilience to be consistent, day after day, when the result is not guaranteed? Do we have the joy to find peace and smile in the adversity, because it is such a privilege to be tested? 

Do we have the courage to become the people that we are meant to become, through the most beautiful game on earth?