Daily Diary - January 30th 2016

The Perfect Game

Each Saturday I will be sharing writings from the books I have published.  Today’s is from one of my favorite topics “baseball” and how it relates to life. This story came from my first book in 2008 called “The Perfect Game”.  

As the author of this book, it is my goal to send the message that at times we all fail. I have failed many times, sometimes miserably. By coaching the sport of baseball, I have been able to look at the substance of this game and what makes it special. “Special” is often a hard word to define. I believe the word “special,” when it comes to the sport of baseball, refers to the difficulties of the sport.

The amount of failure that a player deals with in the game surpasses any sport, in my opinion. Often, you hear coaches make the statement, “You can be successful 30 percent of the time and make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame.” That 30 percent they are referring to is going three for ten at the plate or at bat. The player who has a career .300 average often makes it to the Hall.

Players are challenged at every level of baseball to handle their emotions and continue to push for excellence in a sport that they are failing in 70 percent of the time. The character that young men and now women face with softball is very valuable in how we are able to proceed in life. I mention many times throughout this book that I have found the most valuable things at the bottom of failure. That is when the metal meets the road – the place where we are forced to make a decision. When life brings us to this place of breakdown, we must choose to continue to fight the fight. Eventually, it becomes joyful to stand in the face of adversity and achieve victory. This is what the Word of God teaches us. Jesus faced certain death at the cross and continued to push forward through the struggle and the pain to achieve the ultimate victory for us.

As individuals, we are challenged to be victorious. Life and sports prove to us over time that real victory can only be understood when the risk and the consequences of failure are highest. Therefore, we must proceed, knowing that we are to consider it all joy when we fall into certain trials, as it says in the Word. Through the trial, we can find the depth and quality of victory.

It has often been my goal for players on my teams to struggle and break. When they break down, they become moldable and humble. When they get back on their feet, they are changed. I have had several players make it far into college and professional baseball. The foundation that it took for them to get to that place was found at the bottom of the breakdown. At the time it is often to challenge them and watch them fail as the difficulty of the game pushes them to the bench. I have watched them struggle and succeed.

I have found myself having to stand in the gap against players’ parents who do not want to watch their sons fail. Oftentimes, these sons choose to quit and blame other factors for their failure. Even more often it is the parent who makes the player quit, sometimes right before the breakdown that was necessary for breakthrough. The bailout of quitting due to this reason only sets individuals back from really growing in character. Breakthrough in character is ultimately what we as coaches should be trying to achieve. When a player gets back up and achieves victory over the sport, he takes with him the value that it takes to become a man.

In God’s Word, it says that all fall short of the glory of God. We have failed since the beginning of time. The first failure came in the garden with Adam and Eve. Jesus showed us how to achieve victory in the face of failure. We can fail and rely on His grace to move forward. That is the place where we find ourselves.

In my mind, the game of baseball is the perfect game. Failure is inevitable in this sport. The situations players face throughout a season will force them to make a decision of what they will do with that failure. The choice is ours as coaches to educate them with the truth and the foundation, both found in the Word of God. When we place that solid foundation in front of players expecting the failure to happen, they have the opportunity to fill their lives with the response that will determine their future, on and off the field. The responsibility that players eventually grasp is their own, not that of the coach or the parent. A player can be changed forever with the foundation developed in sports. Baseball leads the way.

The game of baseball has always been unique. We have viewed it in this country as GREAT! I believe this view of the sport comes from down deep in the heart of people, the place where they failed and pushed through, the place that victory and overcoming failure change us forever!