PLAY BALL!
An Opening Day-inspired ode to sports
It’s that time of year once again. Winter is slowly being pushed aside by spring sunshine, and the prospect of a long and warm summer — and the endless possibilities it entails — lies before us.
Perhaps no particular day encapsulates this optimism more than Opening Day. If, as I have often said, winter is made for indoor sports such as basketball, Opening Day marks the transition out of the gym and into the fresh air.
Couple this with the eternal optimism of everybody “being in first place”, and it’s no wonder that Opening Day is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s been like that ever since I was a little kid — although “Opening Day” in the Pacific Northwest usually lags behind MLB’s opening day by a couple weeks.
I remember one particular year in little league, our first 9 (?) games got rained out! Yet every Saturday I got up, watched “The Baseball Bunch” and hoped that our league officials hadn’t noticed the weather outside.
The weather outside:
Thus, sports taught me patience in the face of insurmountable obstacles. But that was far from the only lesson I learned by playing sports. Perhaps the most important lesson was learning how to be a gracious winner (or loser) and respecting the efforts of the opposing team. Now that I’m a little older, I think it’s vital that people learn these lessons early in life, which is full of the exact types of setbacks one suffers in sports. If you don’t learn how to lose the small battles, you’re NEVER going to learn how to lose the big ones.
Beyond the mental, sports provides a wonderful way to stay healthy. Movement is the foundation of health, and sports facilitates movement. I hated running up and down the court for what seemed like hours at a time, but there’s no doubt that this conditioning put me in the best shape of my life. Although now my focus has shifted from “DO EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME” to “let’s work on bending all the way over”, sports continue to motivate me to stay in some sort of shape, because I don’t want to let my teammates down.
And speaking of teammates, sports provides one of the greatest melting pots in American life. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve played thousands of games with and against thousands of different people — people who looked and acted in every possible way that humans can act. This provided a chance for me to learn how to approach and deal with various personalities — or who to avoid all together.
Perhaps what I loved most about sports is that it provided a way to gain acceptance on a new team. Do your job and do it well, and you earn the respect of your teammates. Brag about how good you are but fail, and the opposite occurs. Personally, I was the quiet “my play will speak for itself” kind of guy, but I understand that team chemistry is a funny thing. Sometimes you NEED that loudmouth braggart to loosen up the team. (As long as he can play!) Sports makes you realize that it really DOES take different strokes to make the world go ‘round.
As the year goes on, there will be disappointment. There will be heartbreak. There will be terrible injuries suffered by great players — injuries that alter the course of the entire summer.
But today, we put those things out of our minds and exhilarate in the possibilities that Opening Day represents.
And we remember that although we tend to focus on the results of the games, the lessons we learn along the way are much more important — lessons that last a lifetime and help us become a better person (if not a better athlete) each year that passes.
So when life throws you a curveball and you’re not sure how to react, just remember this sage wisdom from Nuke LaLoosh:
This is incredibly off-topic, but the news happens when it happens:
One at-bat, one homerun! (Sadly, that only ties it up)
Sports are also one of the last true meritocracies. At least at the higher levels, No one is on the team unless they can perform better than the next guy. Win or lose based entirely on your ability and effort. We naturally respond positively to that.