10.19.2005

The Striking Similarities Between Baseball and Life

Baseball has played a large role in my life. When people ask me to tell them about myself, I often begin by saying, "Well, I'm a Yankees fan from Massachusetts," to which they usually reply, "A Yankees fan from Massachusetts!?" As shocking as this is, it's not only true, it's well-justified. But beyond the devotion I have to any particular team is my admiration of the game itself. I would venture to say that baseball has unequivocally changed the way I view the world.

There's something about baseball. Something about the essence of the game that seems to fuse it with the world around it. To me, baseball is not like other sports, isolated from all other events. Perhaps it is the lack of a clock dictating the beginning and end of a game that causes me to view baseball and life in a similar regard. Baseball, much like life, does not begin and end when a buzzer sounds or when the clock strikes zero. There are a myriad of forces that determine the length of any given baseball game. I feel it would be foolish to suggest that this is not also the case with life itself.

Last night, Albert Pujols reminded me, along with countless other fans around the world, of another strong parallel between baseball and life. With his team on the brink of elimination, Pujols came to the plate with two outs in the ninth inning. The fact that he had gone hitless in his previous four at-bats of the game, and was a meager 3 for 14 against the opposing pitcher, Brad Lidge, did not seem to bother Albert. Instead, he sent a pitch far over the left field wall, resulting in a three-run homer that could potentially go down as one of the most memorable homeruns in baseball history (this will be determined by the outcome of the NLCS). In doing so, Pujols reminded us that in baseball, as in life, there are always second chances, opportunities for redemption, and above all, hope. Some people might read this and find my comparison of baseball to life downright idiotic. To those people, I say, "leave a comment."

To me, there is no player in baseball who exhibits this mindset of everlasting hope moreso than Derek Jeter. Yes, Jeter is a superstar, and I'm clearly not alone in my admiration for him, but what I see in Jeter is someone who plays the game hard regardless of the score, regardless of what he did his last time at the plate. He understands that in baseball, as in life, his time to hit will come around again. And if he doesn't succeed in his next chance, Jeter always shows up at the ballpark the following day with the same sense of professional dedication and determination. It's this component of Jeter's game that can be transferred from baseball to almost anything we choose to do in life. While we don't always know exactly when our next chance will arrive, what we can (and should) do is "play hard" regardless.

For those readers not too familiar with the game of baseball, it can be summarized nicely in one word: strategy. The strategy employed in baseball, as in life, is multi-dimensional. On the one hand, short-term goals are crucial; however, these goals should not be achieved at the expense of long-term goals, which always must enter the equation as any strategy is being formulated. A simple example of this is a manager's decision to either: pinch hit for his starting pitcher (in the National League, of course), which would presumably give his team a better chance of scoring (ie, the short-term goal), or leave his pitcher in the game to hit, thus diminishing his team's chance of scoring in the present inning but improving his team's chance of keeping the opposing team from scoring (ie, the long-term objective). This is a difficult decision for a manager, one he must make almost on a nightly basis. There are various factors that come into play each time the decision is made, but since I'm into the whole "brevity thing", I will not bore you with the details. Regardless, the essence of this type of decision is illustrated in life almost constantly. Do we sacrifice our long-term goals for short -term gratification? Does the recent college grad forego job hunting to travel around the world listlessly? The short-term would likely be sensational and/or extremely gratifying, but would it be so gratifying that he is willing to sacrifice such opportunities as work experience, which would improve his chances of getting into graduate school three years down the road? I, for one, would have an easy time arguing either side of this conundrum.

On a more fundamental level, baseball, much as life, is a collection of decisions. But it is not only the decision that matters in the end; it is the execution of the decision that ultimately determines our chances of success. And if we make decisions and execute to the best of our ability, regardless of external events (much like Pujols and Jeter do on the field), our chances of success, both now and later, increase dramatically.

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