Just completed another season playing baseball. It is still a kick playing the game that I have loved since my youth. I got started playing baseball as an adult when Debsue sent me to Indians Fantasy Camp for my 40th birthday. I had been playing in some pretty competitive softball leagues in the NE Ohio area. But once I stepped foot on the hardball diamond and started playing that game again, I was hooked. That was twelve years ago.
I play with the Kent Mudhens in the Roy Hobbs 47 and over league. I have kind of made my way along starting in the 38 and over and then retiring from that an moving up an age group. I also play in a 38 and over Cleveland baseball league as a part-time player for the Bay Bisons. We play from early May through August. We also play in late October, early November in Florida for a week.
Baseball is a tough sport. Kind of like golf, it tests your ability to accept failure. By way of illustration, about three weeks ago, I had a great game on a Sunday afternoon where I hit three doubles in a game in addition to a single and a walk. The sound of a solid hit just kind of sticks with you and I had three solid doubles in that game. My daydreams rehearsed those hits over and over again. Unit Tuesday that is when I played for the Bisons on Tuesday night. They hit me cleanup and I promptly went 0 for 5 with two double plays and striking out with the bases loaded. As if that wasn’t enough, I lost a fly ball in the lights in left field. A truly humbling experience.
Fast forward a week to that team when we played a much better team in the playoffs. We were tied 2-2 going into the top of the eighth (we were visitors). We got men on 2nd and 3rd with two out and our number three hitter up (I hit cleanup again – I guess they didn’t learn enough from the previous game). They intentionally walk our guy to face me with the bases loaded. The drama is further enhanced because the opposing pitcher and I played as teammates for eight years. He gets to one ball and two strikes and my instincts are just to put the ball in play, but he grooves one and I line it into the gap driving in all three runners and then I score also as the ball gets by the catcher. So now we are up 6-2 going into the ninth. Unfortunately, we could not hold the lead and lost 7-6. My teammates called me the “would-be hero”.
The following Sunday, our Mudhens team got absolutely clobbered 23-2 by a fairly mediocre team. I had never seen us so poor. We normally are a good team. I crowned my performance with a 1 for 5 hitting. My last at-bat was an embarrassing strikeout captured by my wife below. You can hear my little groan as I miss the last pitch.
Dan strikeout from Dan Quigg on Vimeo.
I have a hard time accepting failure. In baseball, I would fling my bat, utter a profanity here and there. Most times my teammates didn’t hear my response, but they certainly could see my reaction. Baseball like life tests the crucible of our inner fabric. We all fail, but it is how we learn and respond that tests who we really are. After a major business failure a few years back, I find I am a better person. I am much more aware of who I am. I also find that failure means that we take success much more in stride. I am not in any way saying that we shouldn’t strive for success. However, failure is really what makes us what we are.
I found that my failure makes me more pliable, more useful to God, and more sympathetic to others. God doesn’t shield Christ followers from failure. He uses failure to make us better people. Even the great hitters experience some failure. Winners of batting titles fail 2 out of 3 times. The game makes us good at striving for success but able to use failure to make us better.
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