Yesterday was Father's day. A Chapin family tradition when my Grandpa Chapin was still alive was to take him to a baseball game for Father's Day. In the past 6 years Mike has always played at least 2 games on Father's day. Usually in a tournament. That means you have no idea when you are going to play so you spend your entire day at the baseball field. What a treat.
Yesterday I got an extra special lesson on Father's Day. (Plus my daughter made me pancakes.)
I coach a local Junior Legion (17 and younger) baseball team. The team is full of great young men. Going into yesterday the team was 2-6 and several people on the team were struggling with making the jump to the next level of baseball. Yesterday we won 2 games.
In sports nicknames are commonplace. Some of the players joined the team and brought nicknames with them for example Billy, T-Magic, T-Dog, and PattyWags among other names were already in place. Others have been given nicknames like The Thing, The Flying Dutchman, Nickel and Charlie Brown. Some (Logan, Brayden, and Phil still need a new tag. Yesterday's lesson came from four people. I could really use more examples in addition to the four that follow but I wanted to stick to players with nicknames as examples. (It is a thinly veiled player protection plan.)
Let's start with the All-Star, Shrimps. he came into the day with a .267 batting average. By his standards he was having a bad year, in baseball terms he was in a slump. Yesterday he had 6 hits, 2 doubles and 9 RBIs, slump is over. Hooray for Shrimps! He isn't washed up at 17. Nobody thought he was washed up but nice to see him back on track.
Next player batting ninth playing right field, The Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman had never had a hit in legion play. In his first at bat he got what many would consider a "cheap" hit with a blooper over second base. I didn’t consider it "cheap," I considered it exciting. It was his first hit. Makes up for the fact earlier in the season he hit one hard off the pitchers shin that resulted in an out. But the Flying Dutchman wasn't done. In his next two at bats he hit a hard ground ball up the middle (avoiding the pitchers shins) and a laser to centerfield. Three htis. Hooray for the Flying Dutchman. Everybody is excited, Make room on Cloud 9 here comes the Flying Dutchman.
The next player is Charlie Brown. I will admit this nickname has had trouble sticking. Charlie Brown had one hit coming into the game and overall he was struggling at the plate. Yesterday the official scorekeeper gave him 3 hits. He also reach base on two errors. I am sure at the Brown house (some think that looking like Charlie Brown runs in the family) they are talking about Charlie's 5 hits and they have a very good case. Not everything came up roses for Charlie, an error in the field and a large base running gaffe gave us some "coachable" moments. Charlie admitted his mistakes and will learn from them. Charlie now realizes he belongs at this level. The coaches knew it all along.
What a feel good story.
You are likely thinking hey Dave where is the lesson in all this. Keep reading.
T-Dog, is a good baseball player. Maybe not at Shrimp’s see you in college level but certainly he belongs in this league.
What is T-Dog doing while everybody is celebrating the success of Preston and Brayden getting their first hits of the season, while the Flying Dutchman and Charlie are having big days? What is T-Dog doing while Billy and Nickel are having their best days of season? The team won twice. Everybody had a great day, right? Everybody is smiling, correct? Well...
We had a bad inning in the field and T-Dog's errors let to several runs for the other team. When the inning was over T-Dog sat on the end of the bench looking at ground. As the coach I got to walk over to one of my sons best friends and tell him I was pulling him from the game. Clearly this isn't the kind of moment that leads a person to be a volunteer coach. It was terrible.
I told T-Dog he was coming out and as he continue to stare at the ground and he acknowledged that he heard me. Ouch.
Let go talk to the Flying Dutchman he is on Cloud 9.
I give T-Dog a lot of credit he celebrated for his teammates and seemed happy for all their success. But he had a tough day.
But that isn't the lesson. In order to understand that lesson you need to know more about T-Dog.
I had always been told he was a great fielder by his former coaches but this season he struggled at times and I couldn't figure it out. Why is everybody telling me how great a fielder he is?
Then last week at practice we only had the younger players at practice because the older players had a senior league (19 and under) game. Shrimps, Billy, T-Magic and the other veterans were gone. It was just T-Dog and the junior players he had been playing with year at our practice. And T-Dog was on fire. he caught everything. It didn't matter how poorly the throws were t-Dog caught them and finally I saw what other had been telling me about T-Dog's fielding.
I found out first hand T-Dog is a good fielder. He has all the skills. He just needs to get used to his new teammates. Between that practice and the games I told T-Dog exactly that. I told him he needed to warm up with only the veteran teammates.
Later during the game I walked back over to T-Dog and reminded him of what I saw at practice and told him I knew he could do it.
So what did I learn? A couple of things really.
First, if you having a great day that doesn't mean everybody else is having the same great day. Don't expect everybody to be doing cartwheels just because you are finding success.
Second, improvement is hard work. Just because you have the tools needed, you understand the problem at hand and have an action plan in place it doesn't mean everything is going to be peaches and cream. More often than not it takes time and perseverance.
When the day was over the player I learned the most from and was the most impressed with was T-Dog. It reminded me of an e-mail I got from a friend, Mark Powell, a week ago.
"The most important reminder is why do we play this great game of baseball? To look good and go 4-for-4. How is God glorified in that? I would submit going 0-for-4 knowing that you gave your best effort with the right heart and are willing to give Him the glory even when it is not the result we want is where He wants (us). That is much harder thing achieve than getting 4 hits in a game!"
The quote from Mark was sent to me before the practice where I saw T-Dog's talent. Little did I know that Mark's advice was going to come into play so fast.
Makes me wonder. What advise did I get today that I will need to apply next week. ( I guess I learned three things.)
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