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| You can be a kid for as long as you play baseball - Cal Ripken |
On some level these mental musings are an annual recurrence,
but these days they are also the result of a change in perspective that often comes
with age. Whatever the root, I’ve reached
a point where, like others before me, I am convinced that referring to baseball
simply as a sport is to do it a grave and unforgivable injustice.
Baseball isn’t just a sport or a game, nor is it simply a pass
time or even a welcome diversion from the daily grind. Yes it’s all of those things, but for anyone
fortunate enough to see below the surface, baseball, at its finest, is far, far
more than that.
This conviction renewed itself for me as I watched another
so called “meaningless” game this past weekend.
It happened unexpectedly, as things often do in baseball, when second
baseman Ryan Goins pull off the hidden ball trick. While some observers viewed the move as childish,
I instinctively knew that they had completely missed the point. Not a surprise.
For me it wasn’t childish at all, it was childlike and
there’s a huge difference.
It was one more example of how, even as adults, we can
sometimes channel our inner child. If a
major league player, with all that the job entails these days, can still have
fun and can still play the game like a kid then there’s hope for all of us.
From my perspective it was a beautiful moment, one of those gems
that baseball so often presents. It was
a simple act yet it served to remind me that even when things seem at their
most bleak, something positive and uplifting, even fun, can still happen, just
as it can in life.
That play has been a favorite of kids on sandlots and
community ball fields since the beginning of time but how often have we actually
seen a major league player, an adult, do it?
In a flash, as I watched this play out on TV, I was
transported back to my own childhood for one brief shining moment. Once again I was standing in the warm sun. I saw myself at the plate awaiting a pitch that
I was convinced I would, but probably wouldn’t, make solid contact with. In that moment I was reminded of going to my
right to backhand a short hop and fire across the diamond to first. What a feeling.
All this revealed itself to me as I watched a “childish”
play unfold. Suddenly I was reminded of
the ability of baseball to keep us all young at heart even as we plod through
the responsibilities and difficulties of daily life.
Other memories came back as well. Memories of a time when, as a handful of 30
or 40 somethings, we decided one day that we wanted to whip together a local
ball league and give the game one more whirl.
No amount of time was spent planning this adventure or worrying about
details. We felt like kids again and just
like kids we simply wanted to play ball.
That was all that mattered. A few
phone calls later and we were running the bases again.
At the field balls and bats appeared from countless duffle bags
and backpacks as if by magic, and here’s the kicker, everyone, every single
person, younger and older, male and female alike, all had their own gloves at
the ready. Think about that, people who
had not played ball in years, decades in some cases and many who had never
played any sort of organized ball, still had their trusty old gloves ready to
go. It was that easy to get a game going
and it was amazing.
The importance of that little peak into the human psyche
didn’t register with me at the time, but it does today. It whispers to me about the magic of this
game. How special it really is.
Anyone fortunate enough to have ever played, ask yourself, who
throws out their baseball glove when they stop playing? I still have mine. I haven’t run the bases in over 20 years but
I know exactly where it is in my closet.
I know I’m not alone.
At ballparks across North America fans can been seen in the
stands wearing their glove in the hope of catching a foul ball or homerun. By and large those aren’t newly purchased
gloves fans are wearing, they are cherished memories stitched from
leather. Our gloves are special to us because
the game is so special. At some level,
whether consciously or subconsciously, we all know this to be true.
We know instinctively that for every ball that old glove has
trapped in the past, or missed for that matter, the most important thing it
caught and still holds safely in its pocket is something far more important. It serves as a reminder of our youth and of a
game that was, and is, much more than just a game. That worn old piece of
leather is a tangible, physical reminder of so many things.
Baseball keeps us young at heart. It’s also one of life’s great teachers and in
many ways it truly is a metaphor for life.
Baseball, by its nature, teaches us about success and
failure. It teaches us about pride, humility,
frustration, joy and sadness. It allows
us to experience, if only fleetingly, unbelievable happiness or crushing defeat. We learn all of this in a way that permits us
to experience these valuable life lessons safely within the confines of a
ballpark on a warm summer day.
Consider that even the best hitters in the game fail far
more often than they succeed. Consider
as well that the best pitchers can dominate a game one day only to be rocked
and sent to the showers the next time out. We’ve all seen it. Some of us have lived it.
What other game is so fundamentally an individual sport
wrapped inside a team sport? You win or
lose as a team without a doubt, but more often than not the game exists and is
played on an individual level.
Baseball teaches us the importance of working as a team
while understanding that more often than not we have only ourselves to depend
on when it matters most. It teaches us
that we are largely responsible for our own success or failure, all the while carrying
a certain responsibility of our role in the success or failure of those around
us. Baseball teaches us these lessons with
every missed catch, with every strikeout and with a little luck every crack of
the bat when one is perfectly squared up.
Baseball also teaches us to think. The game is as much about what’s between the
ears as it is about pure skill or athleticism on the field. Baseball differs from most other sports in
both pace and design of the game. While other
sports tend to move past at the speed of a runaway freight train baseball
unfolds in a far more contemplative fashion.
Every advance in play lends itself to re-calculation and
planning. It allows the time to unveil
new opportunities and to present a wealth of options for both the offense and
defense to alter their future fate. It
also allows, thankfully, for the mental machinations of countless “managers” relishing
every moment from the bleachers.
While most other sports are akin to checkers, baseball, as
has been said by others, is far more comparable to a masterful game of chess. A chess game played out on soft green grass
and under a bright blue sky.
Consider how many times during a game we are reminded that
even if the odds are stacked against us we can, if we persevere, find a way to
come out on top. We learn that lesson each
time a batter steps to the plate, badly outnumbered and staring down 9
opponents hoping to stand between him and success.
Baseball is a place where even the least likely individual
can be a hero on any given day and where the best in the game can fall far
short of expectation.
A place where failure is commonplace but success and victory
can, and sometimes is, snatched directly from the jaws of defeat.
We all participate in this game, either actively on the
field or passively in our seats, without ever knowing how long it will last. The game itself, as it is with life, carries us
on a journey for as long as is necessary to come to its inevitable yet unknown
conclusion. It isn’t governed by
arbitrary deadlines. It doesn’t suddenly
stop at a predetermined point in time or with a predetermined result. The game is far too important for that.
Baseball is a place where hope lives for as long as that final
out has yet to be recorded in the books and for as long at the grass continues
to grow beneath a player’s feet. Just as
in life.