I don’t think I’ll be playing at this guy’s age

Earlier this week I was able to cross one off of my bucket list.  I got to play in a real baseball game.  Real pitching, real bats, the whole deal.  I was invited to fill in for a team in a 35+ men’s league, and it was awesome.  I hadn’t played in a live baseball game since 1993, (which I wrote about in this post from 2010), and the bad taste in my mouth left by that game and my actions afterward had hung around for the past 21 years.  More than anything, I just wanted to get out on a field and play.  At least that was what I thought.

 But once I got out there under the lights, I there was something in me that wasn’t content with just playing.  I wanted to show these guys something.  I wanted them to look at me and think, “no way that guy hasn’t seen live pitching in more than two decades.”  I knew a couple of these men fairly well, but most of them I had never met before.  What would their first impression of me be as a ballplayer?  And why did that matter?

In the coaching I do, I always want to help young people understand that their value comes not from what they accomplish.  Achievements are great, but they do not define us.  And yet, now that I was back on the field, I felt this need to prove myself.  Or at least, to not completely embarrass myself.  Why is that such a struggle?  Where does that need come from?  Culturally, why is it so hard for us to separate our worth as human beings from our resume or win/loss record?  In the athletic world, why are so many Coaches out there coaching kids in order to prove their worth to themselves or others?  It’s a dangerous place to be.

In Genesis chapter 1 we see God creating…culminating with the creation of human beings.  And we see that before the man and woman had done anything at all, God declared that humankind was “very good”.  We are part of that very good creation, and nothing we do can add to that goodness.  Nothing our players do can add to their (or our) inherent value.

There are a million reasons that we find ourselves in the performance trap — feeling like we must accomplish great things in order to feel good about ourselves.  None of it leads anywhere; that’s why it’s called a trap.

When we can play freely and help others to play freely, everyone wins.  We play better and enjoy ourselves more.  We bring joy to others.  We are a fountain, rather than a drain for the people around us.  We really do have nothing to prove.

So that fact that I went 0-3 with two strikeouts and misplayed the only fly ball I had a chance to catch doesn’t bother me.  At least not too much.  I got to play a game of baseball and that is a huge gift.