Is baseball played in the Fall?

I was heating up my lunch yesterday and someone asked, "is baseball played in the Fall?"

I laughed for several reasons, but more so because baseball has become a year-round passion of ours.

Note: I fully believe and subscribe to the school of thought that kids should play several sports. My kids play several sports. Baseball just happens to be the sport that we use for life lessons. Baseball is always, and I mean always, around us.

Yes, I replied, we play baseball in the Fall and we love it. But baseball in the Fall is unique for so many reasons. We don't usually keep that close of an eye on the scores. We emphasize fundamentals and the process -- not the outcomes.

Fall baseball has become how I'd like to treat all of baseball. I follow a number of youth baseball organizations and they tout their success winning tournament after tournament.

To some extent, I just don't care if you won that tournament or not. I care more about developing the person and the ballplayer. Are we giving our kids enough of the tools to succeed on the diamond and in life? Granted, I'm "just" a little league coach, but I take that opportunity seriously.

Build the kid. Encourage them. Challenge them. Praise the process, not the results. That is what Fall baseball is all about.

When you create something bigger, your failures are given context

The first chunk of my life was dictated for me. I went to school and I was told what to do in school. I got a job and I was told what to do at that job. I went to college and I was told what to do in college. I found a better job and I was told to do in that job. My success in those different contexts was some milestone, goal, or achievement that was given to me by those different contexts. I didn't have to think about what the goal was - it was merely given to me. In some sense, that's great - I appreciate that someone was training me. But the problem is that no one told me that I was merely being trained. Without necessary communication and context, I kept drifting through the days thinking another goal or milestone would magically appear. Well, it didn't. And it took me a few years to figure this out - more than I'd like. What did I learn in the process? That you must set those goals for yourself - even if those ...

The More Good Days than Bad Days Principle

There are seven days in a week, about 30 days in a month, and 365 days in a year. Not all of those can be good days. No one has 7 perfectly good days. Likewise, I've never gone through an entire year without a single bad day. I have two reactions to that: The first reaction is the whole "control what you can control" thing. You can control your effort and your attitude. And that's absolutely true. But sometimes a day is so bad that no amount of effort or attitude will fix it. The second reaction is that, in any given week, if you have 4 good days and 3 bad days, you're still winning. Even if you have a few "meh" days, but the good ones are still outnumbering the rough ones, I think we're in a good place. The same goes for our practices with our little leaguers. We've had some truly rough and awful practices. The coach's didn't show up with patience, the kids didn't show up with their attention spans, a...

My body failed - what's next? How to fix it.

My body is f*cked. What's the best way to proceed? Well, that's a tad complicated to answer - we're all snowflakes (translation: no, it's not that you're soft, but you are uniquely injured ). There aren't many worse feelings than knowing you are forever physically limited. And if you fit into that category: I am sorry. But here's the key: you cannot, and should not, feel sorry for yourself. It beats the alternative (you know, not having a living, breathing body with flowing, pumping blood). In this vein (pun intended), our goal is to use what we have. It's to work with the hand we have been dealt. It is to not stop at the first sign of danger - it is to see the danger, acknowledge it, and then move the fuck on. You are not on this earth to sit still. You are not on this earth to waste away. You are not on this earth to do anything other than to inch closer to your potential. And so yes, there have been moments where...

inthedougout

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