Hitting 300 (Bot9 #300)
I remember having two goals in my baseball life: hit .400 in high school and .300 in college. In my senior year of high school, I ended up hitting well over .400 and accomplished the first goal. The key for accomplishing the goal in high school was recording my results from each day in a journal and letting my mind be free of my current average (sounds crazy now with GameChanger being so prevalent today, but, hey, this is what life was like in the ‘90s). Once I figured out how to release my mind from the constant math problem of calculating my average, I was able to concentrate on hitting and experience success.
As I moved into college ball, it became harder to release my mind from my production because it is linked to playing time. That’s just what it is at the college level. It wasn’t until my senior year when I was able to settle in well enough defensively and offensively to earn an every day starting position. Once I did, I used the journal idea again and was putting together a nice season. Until…
Because everyone had experienced a challenging season in terms of weather in the Midwest, we had the opportunity to go play Wichita State, the #1 team in NCAA baseball at the time. As we headed down to Eck Stadium to play, I was in a nice groove at the plate, but I didn’t know my average at the time. That is until I was announced as a hitter and my average was flashed on the scoreboard. I was hitting .300 and, because it was getting close to the end of the year, my goal was in sight. Because I was playing well and feeling good, I stepped into the box with a ton of confidence. We had already shocked the Shockers by putting a run up in the first, and I had the opportunity to drive in more runs with the guys who were on base. I immediately ripped a fastball only to have it caught by future major leaguer Casey Blake, who then doubled off a runner to effectively end the early rally. My average slipped to just under .300 and I ended up going 0-for-4. Once I knew my average, I was so focused on the number that I never found the freedom to get my average above my college goal and ended my senior year of college at .296.
In Mike Deegan’s blog, he said that Jeff Mercer, the head baseball coach at Indiana University, told his team, “You have to have a goal outside of the result. It is the job of every person in our program to be the best version of themselves. Whether you played in the game or not, the responsibility is to be the best version of yourself.” I wish I had heard these words as a high school or college player. For a long time, my goals were always based on an end result. A batting average, a job, a title, a destination. I didn’t have any inclination of what my best self was or how that might impact my success as a person.
When we started Bottom of the Ninth, we didn’t have a destination in mind. We just wanted to bless the baseball community with a baseball-themed devotional. It started with blessing our Valor Baseball community and grew to bless hundreds of baseball people across the country who also desire to integrate faith into their game. It may have been the first project I had ever undertaken with no clear destination in mind.
For the first couple of years, we worked and toiled asking others to write for the devotional. It was a weekly struggle for us to produce the piece via email. We didn’t have anywhere to house all of the content and we had to save all of the emails in order to document our progress. Somewhere around 2013, I chose to use the Bottom of the Ninth platform to engage my writing muscles more consistently. Those efforts eventually ended in a couple of books about coaching baseball through a Christian lens. A couple of years later, we were able to chronicle all of the emails on a website. And now today, we celebrate hitting the 300th edition of Bottom of the Ninth.
While destinations are important as they provide direction for the journey, the journey is what matters. It’s who you become in the midst of journeying towards the destination. Even when you don’t know where you’re headed, just showing consistency and doing the same things over and over again bring incredible growth. The goal has always been to encourage baseball coaches in their journey and to help people build baseball brotherhoods rooted in Christ’s teachings. While I don’t know where Bottom of the Ninth will eventually go or how long we’ll continue to write it, I know writing consistently has transformed my life and I will continue to keep my weekly calendar reminder open as I continue the journey towards my best self.