Strategies for the Game
Why baseball and Penn aren’t so different
By Andrew Jones
Down a run in the seventh game of the World Series, bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, full count and you’re up to bat. For a large majority of American youth, this is the situation that we have dreamt of for as long as we can remember. As this year’s baseball season is coming to a close, I want to pay tribute to our national pastime.
Baseball — the only sport where the unique mix of team-play is combined with a constant heart-stopping battle of wills; where any one of the players is constantly on the verge of being crowned a hero or condemned a failure depending on fractions of inches and split-second timing, where there is no time limit or clock, and the game isn’t over until the last out; where a perfectly hit ball can mean failure and a badly hit one can mean success; where a 160-pound rookie can overpower a 240-pound veteran; where coaches still wear their team’s uniforms; where hundreds of variables must be considered by each player during each pitch; where the regular season is actually important, and only the best teams can move on to the playoffs; where each stadium is uniquely shaped and plays differently, and where it’s not a sprint, but rather a marathon to the finish.
While you can force a metaphor out of almost anything, you don’t have to search far to find the similarities between life at Penn and baseball. As another beautiful season comes to a close this month, we can look to The Game for inspiration.
For example, while you may not be person with the highest I.Q. at Penn or the pitcher with the hardest fastball, you need to be able to stick to your unique strengths, whether it’s your creativity, or your tricky curveball. And you need to be able to find your niche within a team or society, which could be the left-handed specialist reliever, the middle infielder who fortifies the defense but can’t hit the ball very far, or a teacher who has a caring heart for inner city kids.
Even though your luck may change, in the long run, your success depends on your persistence. Nothing comes for free — even the most skilled individuals sometimes never make it to the big leagues because they don’t carefully nurture their talent.
People try to cheat their way through baseball and life, but, as we have seen recently, enhancing your résumé in untruthful ways, will eventually get you caught and mar your career.
Life can be a game of inches; sometimes you can’t control those inches so it is best not to worry about the small uncontrollable things in life. And when you’re in the race for the pennant, you can’t spend your time worrying about the other teams. You can only worry about your own performance.
It sometimes happens that you can’t go for the personal glory of a home run but need to sacrifice your at-bat and move a runner into a good position.
Don’t forget to work with your peers and take advantage of the unique mix of viewpoints around you. Your teammates can be your greatest teachers. And there are always going to be coaches and veteran players who have been around longer than you have, so listen to their wisdom and advice when you’re lucky enough to get it.
You have to look for your pitch; you may not be able to hit the sweeping curveball, but when you get that fastball up and down the middle, you need to be able to take advantage of good opportunities.
And again, it’s not a sprint, but a marathon; everyone loses sometimes, but it’s about how you can bounce back from the loss when you go out the next day and try again. There’s always the next game or the next season, and you’ll always have another at-bat. You may not always be projected to win the league, but who cares? Do it anyway – strive to beat your critics’ expectations. There will always be doubters in the crowd, but you can’t let the them bother you; you have to go out there and play your game.
As we go through another year at Penn, whether it is your first or your last, and as we approach the prospects of meeting new people, trying our hand at new scholarly subjects or clubs, or shoot for our dream job, we should remember a quote from Babe Ruth, the most famous player of them all — “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”