The Blog An imaginary conversation with an imaginary Little Leaguer who just threw an imaginary tantrum after imaginarily striking out
An imaginary conversation with an imaginary Little Leaguer who just threw an imaginary tantrum after imaginarily striking out
Thursday, 02 June 2011 12:54
Hey, come here. Look at me. LOOK at ME! My eyes aren’t on the tops of your shoes. Don’t give me that look. Listen, kid, you’re going to see thousands of pitches, maybe hundreds of thousands of pitches, if you’re lucky you’ll see as many pitches as your heart desires. Eventually, they won’t let you play anymore and you’ll have to live out your unrealized athletic dreams vicariously as a coach.
Nevermind that.
Now, there’s one true thing about each and every pitched ball that will come your way. You can’t control it. All you can control is your reaction to it. Don’t mind them, I’m talking to you here. See, each pitch has violence and chaos in it. It’s up to you to provide peace and order.
Chaos.
Order.
Follow me?
That ball out there is behaving according to complex laws of physics, meteorological factors and minute variances like, like…the length of that pitcher’s fingernail, and those changes and movements happen so quickly it’s impossible for even the most advanced computer in the world to calculate. Only finely-honed human minds and bodies can do what you just failed to do.
No, no, no! Don’t pout. Don’t you dare pout! See, that’s just what I’m talking about. You need peace. All you can control is yourself. If your mind is not restful, if negative thoughts cloud your receptors, you’ll never accomplish the impossible because that’s what you just tried to do, that’s what Jimmy’s trying to do right now, that’s what hitting a baseball is, accomplishing the impossible.
Watch this pitch. Just, just, put that down and watch the pitcher pitch!
Did you see that? What did you see? Yes, yes, it was a strike, but besides that, what did you see?
No. You saw nothing. You saw a blur, a blip. From the pitcher’s hand to the catcher’s mitt you’ve got half a second - that’s right half a second – to figure out of it’s high or low, inside or out, hittable or not, and that’s just location. You have to think about rotation, is it a curve, a slider…a…a knuckleball! What’s a knuck-…Don’t worry about it, kid. If I catch you throwing a knuckleball you’ll be doing laps all day.
My point is, what you just failed to do is hard. If you’re great, I mean really great, you’ll succeed a third of the time. Which means two thirds of the time you’re a failure. You can’t let that bother you. It will disturb your mind. You need peace.
Let me tell you, kid, the world is filled with elements we don’t understand and can’t control, there are obstacles and surprises at every turn and we’re never going to be able to respond to them exactly as we’d like, indeed, even if we did there’s no way of saying what we wanted to happen would be the best thing that could have happened.
It’s like the Buddha said: Life is Suffering. At least that’s one translation, but another way of reading the original Sanskrit is: Life is Dissatisfaction. That is to say, our earthly search for perfection is a fool’s errand, we’re never going to find it, but we can’t stop looking, and as we look we must always be aware of the disconnect between our conscious and sub-conscious selves because without understanding the nature of transcendence we’ll never come to grips with the disappointments we suffer in this physical world as they threaten to disturb our inner calm. You see-
What are you doing there?
Quit jumping around like that, I’m trying to explain something.
‘But, but’ what?
OK. Fine. Go pee.
You’re sitting next inning!