165

In 1970 I was an All-League shortstop at St. Bernard’s High School in coastal Los Angeles. I say this as reference and not as brag. Taking the counsel of my two main mentors I decided to play two years of JC baseball in order to ‘get bigger and stronger’. I stood 5’9” and weighted 165 pounds. Despite being named MVP my second year at LA Pierce College, my physical stats remained, unfortunately, unchanged. I will never forget the anguished turmoil of deciding between the hard work of summer school in order to qualify for the baseball scholarship offered by Loyola or working a night job to pay for rent and make the payments on my Mustang. I walked away from baseball and said hello to the real world. I was 20. 

Fast forward to this morning, some 46 years later. The shock of seeing that in print, 46 years? OMG, is a touch unsettling but my reason for the back-story is that I get to coin one of the most used and abused sports cliches known to retired athletes. 

For after this mornings set of Super Eights, I stood on the bar scale in the locker room and hit a milestone, I was at my college playing weight. 

I laughed aloud at the paradoxical irony in this and meekly made my way to dress and face the real world - now so different than it was in 1972. 

I say paradoxical because as much as I thought I had the world figured out in 1972, what the 46 years that followed proved was that I knew nothing at all. The things I thought important weren’t and the things I thought unimportant would be shown, sometimes dramatically, sometimes painfully, to be anything but. 

Unwittingly I mentioned it to the small but courageous group in our dojo, the ‘it’s not about winning, it’s about the dedication and discipline to doing everything right in preparation, on the path to victory that counts’. 

Like getting up at 0430 to get to the gym, saddle up and execute a protocol considered to be monstrously difficult. Super Eights are indeed a beast, fire and fang. I congratulated the team on their work ethic, bravery and dedication. I pledged my presence and continued participation throughout the summer session, when typically attendance shrinks as the temperatures rise. Our’s is a commitment to the team, a sincere “I will not let you down’ battle cry. 

But should we fail at the championship, the goal, or the game, please know that I have offered to you my best. We have worked hard, we have bled, we have suffered for the sum of our parts and should we fall short of the dream, it is not because we could not find the focus, desire or meaning, it was because some one else did it better. In that there is no shame, again paradoxically, it is the only place where true winning truly is found. 

Sometimes kids find this out early. Many never do. It is way easier to be a fair-weather fan and cheer mindlessly when wins are the only thing that count. 

The lessons learned from the practice of continual improvement, of teamwork, and a relentless attention to detail, the mental aspects of any game or sport provide far greater juxtapositional benefit than merely a victory. 

I must forgive myself for the foolish choices I made as a kid. I must also be grateful I had the opportunity to experience them, to learn their important lessons and apply their morals in modern circumstances. Like today. I took me 46 years to figure that out. 

Seems the big lessons always balance out on the scale of evolution.