Little League
Generally speaking, I think sports are worthless. Activities that are little more than people running around in circles, back and forth, or directly into each other (depending on the sport, of course) for hours at a time strike me as pointless, if not downright ridiculous. And the amount of energy, emotion, and money spent on them seems to me to be extremely wasteful. If we were to pay teachers what star athletes make (and, presumably, vice versa), our education system would be spectacular. Probably worst of all, competitiveness is often extremely negative; some would argue that sports are a crucial part of a child's education because they teach the value of teamwork, but there are numerous ways to teach this value that do not involve a concept of "winner" vs. "loser". Yet when a school's funding dries up, it's typically the arts that are the first to get cut and athletics the last to go... and we wonder why children grow up to value competition instead of beauty.
One could argue that my bias in this matter is just a reflection of which activities I was most successful in during my formative years. Music and theatre always came more or less naturally to me, whereas most endeavors requiring physical speed or dexterity were a struggle, if not a complete failure. On the other hand, in junior high I ran track and played soccer, and by eighth grade had gotten pretty good at the long jump and was a somewhat decent fullback. But even then I preferred the creative and artistic activities to those that drove participants to prove that they (whether individually or as a team) were "better" than others. Of course, in college every activity was competitive, which may be part of why I couldn't stand being there.
Reflecting recently on the various sports I tried as a kid, I realized that I may have picked up one valuable lesson from involvement in a sport. One year I played Little League baseball on a YMCA team. Possessed of precious little eye-hand coordination, I only hit the ball once the entire season... and it went foul. So at some point during that year, I just stopped swinging. Most of the pitchers we faced were lousy, and I'd learned that if I just stood there and waited, I had a fair chance of being walked (or occasionally beaned). Then, at least, I'd have a chance of stealing a base or two, and maybe even scoring. In fact, my most glorious moment as an athlete came during the last game of our season.
Like many Little Leagues, we had a "ten-run" rule: at the bottom of any inning, if one team was winning by ten or more runs, the game was over. We'd gotten ten-runned in most of our games, so as the season drew to a close we viewed a game as a success if we actually completed it. When the last game of the season arrived, that was our only goal, because our opponent was reputedly quite good. Since so much time has passed, I don't remember all the details, even how old I was at the time (although I'm guessing I was 11 or 12), but I do remember this much: the team was from Louisville (Colorado), their jerseys were red, and we were down by 4 at the end of the second inning of that game.
During the top of the third, I got up to bat and patiently allowed the pitcher to walk me. Figuring we didn't have much to lose at this point, I took a recklessly large lead off first base and the pitcher attempted to throw me out. The ball went sailing over the first baseman's head and into a pine tree, so I strolled leisurely to second. On the next pitch, emboldened by having stolen a base before a pitch had even been thrown, I proceeded to steal third. Understandably flustered, the pitcher threw the following pitch over the catcher's head, so I stole home. After that, it was all over. Courtesy of the demoralized pitcher, every member of our team was either walked or beaned at least once that inning. And a couple of our boys hit home runs. All told, we cycled through our lineup two and a half times that inning, scoring 18 runs. Three outs later the game was over. That was the only game we ever won.
I'd been ridiculed all season for my inability to produce even a single base hit, but at the end of that game everyone agreed that my triple steal had been the catalyst for our first and only win. The rest of that day I kinda felt like a hero. I'd love to tell you that the lesson I learned from that experience was some Hallmarky crap like "never give up", or "good things come to those who wait", but it wasn't. See, the hero sensation didn't last. It didn't imbue me with sudden confidence, propelling me into subsequent success in other athletic pursuits. It just became a fond memory of the day I didn't feel like a failure. And suddenly the other day I realized that maybe I understand now why the euphoria didn't last: success achieved through someone else's failure is hollow.
I didn't get on base because I'd gotten a solid hit; I got on base because the pitcher's aim was lousy. I didn't steal three bases because I was fast; I stole three bases because the pitcher's aim was lousy. Someone else was failing, and I exploited that to experience success. In some small way, I'd been doing that for much of the season, but looking back only a single incident is memorable because the result was so absurdly different from the others.
Yes, I know: "it's just baseball... don't psychoanalyze it". But if the value of sports in childhood is the opportunity to learn teamwork, there must be a risk of developing negative values from the same experience. I couldn't help wondering, if I learned as a child that one way of feeling successful is to profit from someone else's failure, do I still do that now? For example, is that how I approach my career? I hope not, and I don't think I do. My job is to provide tools for making others' jobs easier, less repetitive, more intuitive, less prone to error... in short, more successful. I'm only successful If I'm contributing to the success of others. That's something I try to remain focused on, because the smallest of distractions from that focus could potentially trick me into thinking that somehow I'm the important one, and I'm not. My job is to support others. Without them, there's no point in having me there. That day can be a reminder to me that succeeding on one's own merits, especially when motivated by a desire to help others succeed, is true success. Exploiting others' failures to make oneself look good isn't sucess; it's hollow and it's fleeting, and will never bring the kind of fulfillment that we experience when our actions are motivated by the desire to foster the relationships that we value.
