The Journey

You know how there are some people who tie everything in life to baseball?

Something unexpected came up - "they threw me a curveball." She totally rejected him - "he struck out."

So I'm going to kind of do that right now a little bit. It all began when I was driving home from a wedding this past Sunday night and kind of wanted a little quiet (or relaxed music), so it was clutch when a music radio station actually had a talk radio segment.

This guy was talking about rejuvenating yourself and things about that topic and the first caller gave his opinion on how he views life. His basic premise was that you have goals, and then when you reach them, now what? Life doesn't stop, there's always something else. The host then gave an example - you are looking forward to getting married, and then it happens, where do you go from there? You have to go along the journey, and these goals are not stop signs, but rather just something along the way.

Then he said how things can happen along that journey, perhaps unpleasant things, but we must keep in mind that there is much to follow (hopefully) and obviously to keep things in perspective.

Now, obviously, this is where the baseball wheels in my head began to turn. Lets look at two scenarios - doing well, and not doing well.

You're just mashing. You are 8 for your last 15, just mashing out there. Well, unless you're planning on hanging up the spikes, you better stop celebrating and start keeping things in perspective. It's just 15 at bats. That's just a few games worth. Chances are you got a ways to go to the season, let alone the career.

Now let's say you're struggling. Hitless in 10 at bats, 6 of them being strikeouts. Seems like a few miserable trips to the ballpark, but that's just a little bump on the road. The key is to simply learn from it and move on. You can't get caught up in one of those. Just get back on track and you'll barely remember that little hiccup.

I'll finish up with a personal story. Coming off a decent freshman year at the collegiate level, I was determined to really break out sophomore year. I did a lot of extra cage work, and couldn't imagine what kind of start I would get off to. 0-15. I don't think I had a slide like that during my freshman year, and this is how I open up my sophomore campaign. I got very frustrated out there. I got back to the bench, I slammed my helmet down, I wasn't happy. After games, I didn't want to go to dinner with the guys, I just went to sleep. Well, I began to notice how major leaguers don't show emotion after at bats- most of them do realize that it's just a small hiccup. (Note: I end up with 70 some odd at-bats in my 23 game schedule, they have like 600 in their 162 game schedule. Sometimes we amateurs can underestimate the hiccups.) I just focus on staying relaxed now, no matter the situation and just have fun playing. Well, I started hitting a bit, and from then on hit .356, finishing at .284 by years end. Junior year coming up, time to do big things. Just one more step further along the journey.