The pitcher stepped
off the pitcher’s mound, so I stepped
out of the batter’s box and glanced over at the coach. The count was 3 Balls and two Strikes. Baseball players always have to get their signs
from a coach or the manager in situations like this, and even though I was just a young player, I knew that much.
I tapped my cleats
with the bat to knock off the dirt, the way the professionals do. It was then that I remembered I didn’t have
cleats, just tennis shoes. We won’t get
our baseball shoes until they issue the uniforms later this evening. I also became aware that hitting my foot with a bat was not a great idea.
The coach flashed me
the secret sign, he tapped his hat then his elbow then his hat
again. I got the sign. As I recall these
years later, I actually only had two signs to remember.
I think one was “swing and miss” and the other was “duck”. The other boys had more complex signals but
the coach didn’t have much faith in me.
After the game that
evening the selections for the Little League teams were being made. There were
a number of sponsors supporting the teams, supplying uniforms and some of the
equipment, like shoes with cleats. The
teams would soon be playing “under the lights” at Chillicothe Ohio’s City Park baseball
diamond. I hoped to be selected for the
Lynch Motors team, a local Ford dealer that provided really snazzy
uniforms. Snazzy was a word we used back
then, today’s equivalent of WOW, cool, rad, awesome, “totally” and other
adjectives. I’m a little out of date on these.
Dutifully following
the “swing and miss” sign like a professional, I struck out. The game was over
and it was time for Little League team selection. All of the boys in the sandlot baseball
program gathered around as the League organizers started going through the names of the players that had been assigned
to various teams. I knew many of the guys.
I could just see ME in this picture!!! |
When they came to the end of the list, I was
still standing there. Just me, and one other boy. "Looks like we didn’t make any team," I, master
of the obvious, said to him. To myself I said, 'I guess I don’t
get one of those beautiful uniforms that I had dreamed of, had wanted so very
badly.' My dreams of strutting onto the baseball diamond in my spotless uniform
were just that, dreams. A real disappointment.
A few years later, as I was at
football scrimmage in my freshman year of high school, I was lined up in the
right guard position. We ran a number of plays as the coach watched, carefully
evaluating the potential of each of us.
Later he called me aside and sat me on the bench. He told me that at a
weight of 110 pounds, that weight including my pads and uniform, I wasn’t really cut out to play right guard, or
any position on the team if you get right down to it. He suggested, as gently as he could, that I might find a great
position in the marching band. Another disappointment.
A couple of years
later I headed off for my screening for
the United States Air Force Academy. I had received appointments from two
United States Senators from Ohio, Senators Bricker and Bender. I was so excited
when I went to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton to take the physicals and
the interviews.
Why it would only be a
couple of years and I would be graduating from just the second graduating class of the Academy, and soon after that, wearing silver aviator wings, jogging out
to an aircraft on the ramp, ready to go.
But, as Dad would say, “Here again”… another disappointment. Dad always said "Here again" when he was about to repeat himself!!
I was small and underweight, a 16 year old boy,
so naïve about what answers they were looking for. I apparently didn’t convince the psychiatrist, a forty something year old doctor who probably had forgotten what it was like to be 16 and excited, that I really wanted a career in the Air Force. You
really have to know how to answer the questions these guys ask. I’ve always wondered about psychiatrists
anyway!
But this little
article isn't about failure it’s about success, it’s about victory, it’s about keeping up and keeping going,
expecting good and listening for guidance..
Let’s rewind, return
with me to those days where disappointment and discouragement seemed to have
the upper hand.
Hey, Get Your Dog Here!! Hot Dogs!! Pepsi! |
As the Little League
teams were formed and the rosters closed, while I was standing there feeling
down, no team, no uniform, no glory… a man came up and asked if I wanted a job
selling soft drinks and hot dogs at the games each evening. I jumped at the opportunity. Me, a job?? ABSOLUTELY!! As the season began I found myself at the games each evening, learning to
sell, preparing for a lifetime of selling, talking to girls in the stands, eating
free hot dogs and drinking sodas, all the while making some forty five cents an
hour. Not bad money considering all of the hot dogs I ate!! This, in contrast to the guys on
the baseball teams, granted, wearing those great uniforms, but spending the evenings swatting at gnats in the
outfield, maybe wishing they could have one of my mustard dogs and a cool
drink.
And about the
football team. I didn’t make the team
of course but I did get into the High School Marching Band, playing the
sousaphone, and loved every minute of it.
And that led to a place in the orchestra, the concert band, the
basketball band, and who could forget playing bass fiddle in gigs with “Jack
Armstrong and the All Americans” at such venues as the Jackson Ohio Apple Festival and Circleville
Pumpkin Show!! Well, okay, so it was just 2 electric guitars, drums, piano and my bass, playing small town Ohio "hits" like "It Must Be Jelly Cause Jam Don't Shake Like That", (Click here to listen to that old standard), and other favorites!!! Not quite Beatles level
stuff, but loads of fun.
While I didn't get
to the Air Force Academy, I did join the U.S. Air Force and, enjoyed my time
serving the country.
What valuable
lessons these early experiences were, how they gave me a perspective on being
open to opportunities that I had never considered. As I matured I realized that we are so much
better off if our plans are not so “fixed in concrete” that we may overlook even
better directions and opportunities, directions that are more suited for us,
more natural.
Young people can
shake off disappointment and discouragement as new opportunities open up, but as
we mature, disappointments seem more serious, more life altering, more devastating, and they can cloud our enthusiasm and defeat our positive attitude. Childlike optimism
is overtaken by the weight of worry, the “what if”, the “what will people think”,
“what will happen to me”, the downward pull of the “gravity of fear”.
How many times does it have to happen, I have often asked myself. How many times does God have to prove to me that trusting, listening for the inner voice, being open and receptive to His guidance will lead me into the path that is best?
How many times does it have to happen, I have often asked myself. How many times does God have to prove to me that trusting, listening for the inner voice, being open and receptive to His guidance will lead me into the path that is best?
The Bible,
a wonderful handbook of how others have coped with life’s challenges in years past, is full
of examples. Now nothing I have faced is
equal to being cast into a lions den like Daniel was, or being swallowed by a big
fish like poor Jonah, or being confined in a fiery furnace like those three
young servants of God, but the problems we face often SEEM that serious.
But one thing I have
learned. When we listen, trusting that
the BEST Way will open up for us, it miraculously happens. Isaiah had this advice about what
happens when we get ourselves, our will power, our sometimes stubborn, what my
Dad used to call “Bullheaded opinions” out of the way, and listen:
And thine ears shall
hear a word behind thee, saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it,
when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the
left." Isaiah 30:21.
And
Jesus said, about listening, “But thou,
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret
shall reward thee openly.” Matthew 6:6.
I can assure you, God is
talking to you and me right now.
How true! When one door shuts; another one opens that leads us to somewhere that might not be "better" (whatever that is)but will surely be different. Different is not necessarily bad, but is most likely well suited.
ReplyDeleteMusically speaking the Rascal Flat hit "Life is a Highway" sort of sums it up. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvsmRuRp4cM
Barry C.