Keeping your eye on the ball

I was 11 years old when a deceitful Little League baseball coach inadvertently taught me a painful lesson. It happened during pre-season team tryouts where boys demonstrate their skills to various coaches to see which team they’d be selected to play on. I was warming up with another boy on the sideline before the tryouts started. We threw hard ground balls at each other and difficult-to-catch pop-ups high into the air. I was a good athlete, particularly at baseball, so I didn’t have any trouble cleanly fielding the throws. True, I was warming up to fine-tune my reflexes and loosen my muscles, but I admit I had an ulterior motive – to show off and impress any coaches who might be looking my way.

It worked because one coach pulled me aside and whispered that he wanted me to deliberately “boot” the ball during the tryouts. Booting the ball is when a player purposely drops a ball to pretend to be bad at the game. He said he wanted me on his team and didn’t want any of the other coaches to see my skills and claim me for their team. I was flattered and did what he said. And he was right. None of the other coaches chose me.

Afterward, I went up to him while he was talking to a group of kids, presumably his players. I smiled proudly and said I was ready to play. I’ll never forget what happened next. He barely looked at me and even seemed annoyed when he gruffly said, “Sorry, I’ve already picked my team.” I thought I hadn’t heard him right. But he paid no further attention to me, like I was invisible. In a fog of disbelief, I could feel my heart sink. I was confused and the rejection stung. A lot.

I found out later that the bad coach (that’s what I started calling him, only in more colorful terms) had done this to other talented players because he didn’t want another coach – his main competition for the league championship every year – to select them. So I didn’t get to play on either of the top two teams but instead was relegated to a lesser team and unjustly labeled a player of limited abilities, a reputation I quickly debunked once the season started. Our gaggle of kids proved to be the surprise of the league, finishing in third place. In a Hollywood-quality finale, I had several key hits in a game we won against the bad coach’s team, knocking them out of first place along with any chance at a championship. After the game, I went up to the bad coach, ostensibly to congratulate him for a good season, but mainly to make sure he recognized me. Sweet!

If I’ve learned one thing from this telling episode in my life, it was to never again sell myself short – ever! There are those who would try to dupe us into a game of Whac-A-Mole where, every time we raised our head above mediocrity, we’d become the target of some who would smack us back down. Maybe it’s envy. Or misguided competitiveness. At the risk of sounding preachy, let me suggest that peer pressure may tempt us to dumb ourselves down to fit in with the crowd, to become part of the lowest common denominator. Maybe we’re on the job and we don’t want our co-workers to resent us for performing up to our capabilities. Or we try to fit in by using coarse language or behavior that should be beneath us. If you have a natural talent for writing or speaking and that’s the way you communicate, do it without embarrassment. If you’re a whiz at math or science or literature, put your foot on the accelerator and max out your potential. Artist?  If you’ve got the gift, be the best you can be. Hang out with friends who respect you for it; who are rooting for you. Of course, this isn’t an invitation to show off like I did as a young ballplayer before team tryouts. But it is encouragement for us to become all that God intended us to be; to use the talents He gave us to make the world a better place.