Everybody Gets A Fast Ball Once In Awhile, Smile And Swing

A lot can be learned by interacting with a baseball pitching machine. The best lessons taken from baseball or a softball pitching machine actually have very little to do with baseball. Poised in front of the plate with balls flying by at 70 miles an hour offers itself to insight and awareness. Everyday a hundred issues fly past every normal working stiff. Decisions are constantly being made every minute. Should I have decaf with artificial sweetener, should I scratch my nose before putting down the donut, should I call Teddy back, take the stairs or elevator, use blue ink or black ink, wait until I’m in the bathroom to readjust the equipment, run to catch the cross light or wait? Facing baseballs tossed by a machine is a great practice and perfect metaphor for life.

A major league baseball player knows that whenever he goes to the plate, the pitcher is trying to strike him out. That’s the nature of the sport and the way to play it. The batter doesn’t waste time griping about why the pitcher is a slider, or why he’s making it hard to hit a homerun. The batter isn’t angry because the pitcher is throwing fast balls and change ups without telling him. The batter won’t feel sad because he thinks the pitcher doesn’t like him. It’s how you play the game, the objectives are clear and the positions well defined. A batter strikes out after swinging the bat at three balls in the strike zone. Is the batter mad at the pitcher? Gosh {no|darn no way|. In fact he probably admires the pitcher for doing his job so well and is mad at himself for not doing better. The man with the bat made his decisions, to swing hard, to bunt or to watch the ball go by. If he grounds out or goes down swinging, he goes back to the dugout, disappointed, but knowing he will swing again. He doesn’t point the finger at anyone else or make a bunch of excuses, or feel like the pitcher was being unfair. He took his swings and he will live to play another day.

For most people life is not as black and white or as oppositional as baseball. Life is much more like facing a batting machine. The pitching machine cares about nothing. It doesn’t care if the person with the bat is black, white, purple, tall, short, or shaped like a gourd. The machine just keeps throwing pitches. It doesn’t care if the batter zings it out of the park or fans the air.

That is the way the world is for most people. Things are coming at them a million miles an hour. Is it time to swing, pass or duck? If they get hit by a pitch do they run out to the mound and pick a fight with the mechanical arm? No, they do not. A mechanical bean ball is not personal. Life is just throwing things at them. They can spit and holler, argue and weep. It won’t help, but they can do that if it comforts them. The real energy needs to go into stepping back to the plate and facing the next ball, watch it come in and decide whether to swing or pass.

America’s past time has much to offer all of us. Baseballs basic rules can become rules for living. Swing or pass, it’s nothing personal. In the game of life, we’re always at the plate and there are no strike outs. That is what is cool about life is; you can just keep swinging.

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