Your relationship with baseball heavily depends on the love that you put into it. We discussed different ways to show your love for baseball in my last blog post (link here). As you grow and strengthen your love for the game, the game will reciprocate that love back to you far beyond your playing days through those additional experiences that others, who didn’t put the work in, will not have.
Baseball’s biggest way of reciprocating its love will be through the lifelong values it provides you. First, baseball will help you build a work ethic that translates to parts of life not even remotely connected to the game. It takes an immense amount of time, focus, and intent to continue your playing career. By prioritizing extra reps, focusing on your strength training, and spending more time around the game to watch and study it, you will grow a strong worth ethic that you will hold yourself to on and off the field.
That work ethic grown through baseball will make you more effective and dependable in your career, hobbies, family, and anything else you wish to pursue. Even the smallest things, like making a meeting on time, are positively impacted by your baseball experience.
The game will also teach you other very important lessons along the way. It will teach you to be patient, appreciate the moment, and that failure is a part of life. For example, controlling what you can control is the biggest lesson I took away from baseball, as uncontrollables can fog up your mind as a pitcher. Realizing and judging my actions based on what I can control brings me peace in my life on and off the field.
As a pitcher, I could throw a perfect slider on the black and still end up giving up a double. I had to give myself slack in those moments when the result wasn’t there but I executed my controllables to the best of my abilities. It taught me how to control my attitude, actions, and effort, along with developing healthy affirmations when the results don’t line up with the controllables.
Along with the lifelong values, the game will provide memories that will last a lifetime. The time you spend with your teammates and coaches on road trips, bus rides, rainouts, early morning lifts, late January practices or late nights in the hotel is priceless. If you ask any former college baseball player, they’ll tell you their college memories hardly come from the games or the stats they accumulated. They’ll remember the personalities of their teammates and the time they spent with them outside of the lines.
Your work ethic, the lessons you learn, and the memories from your playing days are all ways the game will love you back as an individual, shaping you to be a strong, well-rounded human. But, in my opinion, the most important way the game will love you is by impartingthe perspective and love for the game that you can share with the next generation.
While it was really hard to leave my playing career behind, it has been so rewarding coaching athletes of all ages on how they can love the game. At the youth level, it’s showing them the fun and joy the game presents by just being around it. It’s about creating a base love that they can build upon as they progress into their teenage years. For the high schoolers I coach, it’s teaching them the nitty gritty of the sport: how to compete, communicate, respect each other, have confidence, and all the intangibles it takes to play at the next level.
Do you need to be a coach to share your love for the game with the next generation? Of course not. Parents, relatives, volunteers and others can be a positive influence. Young aspiring baseball players are very impressionable. Seeing a college or high school athlete who sets a good example of how to love baseball could positively impact their desire to love the game.
In the end, baseball is a balanced relationship: whatever you put into it you will get back. You don’t have to be a player that earns All-American accolades, plays professionally, or gets a significant amount of playing time in college. If you give he game the love it deserves (as discussed in the last post) will grow into a powerful relationship that will last a lifetime.
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