LJ baseball: Completion

By Ed Piper

One thing that can be said about the La Jolla High baseball season just finished, the team roster stayed intact and the players Coach Gary Frank selected completed the year.

I was on more than one team on which, as the schedule progressed and the inevitable bumps occurred, one player here, another there dropped off and no longer remained with the squad.

Completion.

There's something about the saying, "Once you start something, finish it." We're teaching our grandkids that. If you join a team and the boredom or hard times come, as they always will at some point, don't bail out. Don't quit. Stay the course.

Nobody's jumping with joy after the Vikings' 1-11 (league), 6-22 (overall) records. Everyone, including the moms and dads who have to endure the silent or difficult drives home from the games, or dinners at home, wished the numbers had come out better.

But that's life. Sometimes the most valuable lessons are learned when the PPR cameras are elsewhere, aimed at players on other teams. How do you respond to adversity? How do you keep it about group and individual goals when the chips are down? Contributing to a team ethos; working everyday at your skills to improve; practicing those social things that build strength and resilience, like getting outside yourself to pick a discouraged teammate up, give a word of encouragement, catch someone doing something well so that you can compliment them.

The trend is all against the latter points: The world of AAU basketball, showcase baseball, ESPN, Hudl highlight videos, all of this emphasizes self, self, self. How hard can you throw a fastball? Can you throw hard enough to put it through a brick wall?

But missing are the group values of cohesion, leadership, not yielding to peer pressure, being a solid person of integrity with grounding so that even when the others go out and do something you know is wrong, you don't go do that, too.

I wish I were writing a column about the Vikings' league championship or CIF run. But, on the other hand, much or most of life is about living in the humdrum, the boring, the unglamorous--which is not the same as mediocrity.

In our marriages, how many times do we have peak moments that hold the emotion of our wedding day or another major milestone? Not very often.

But the other 99 percent is spent in the day-to-day, grinding-it-out glory of belonging, being part of something that is bigger than ourselves. Being dedicated to the other. Self-sacrifice. Love. Not doing it for the group because we will, in turn, benefit individually.

What am I smoking? Nothing.

I call again for our young people to think before forsaking their school athletic teams for travel or club teams that prevent our participation at school. Why? Because you're not going to be in high school after your four given years. The fun and connection of those years are fleeting.

Parents and mentors, don't push your kids or charges to strive inordinately for individual success in AAU, showcase, or other endeavors outside school athletics. Let them enjoy their friends and the building and renewal of friendships with real people.

The travel/club sports circuit is a meat market, when you get down to it. Those people are not going to be there for you or your family when the young athlete is no longer a promising prospect. When she or he gets hurt.

At its extreme, the non-school sports world is like this: I had a girl student during my two decades teaching in the juvenile court schools who was a promising boxer. Being dual-culture, Mexican/American, through her parents, she was eligible for participation in the Mexican Olympic development boxing program.

Her coach, seeing her dedication and promise, told her she should quit my school short of completing her high school diploma so that she could work more in his boxing program.

That is just plain wrong. And even worse was the complicating factor that she already was experiencing brain "freeze" at the age of 17 or 18 from all the punches she had already absorbed. I haven't seen her in five years or so. I pray she is doing better than back then. She is a valuable commodity as a person, with unique qualities and gifts. She's more than a piece of meat.