Competing

We only lost 4 games that season. We played about 70. Unfortunately, we lost 2 of those 4 games in the Ontario midget softball championship. Two one-run losses to a team from Sarnia and that was it. We lost the championship.

What really hurt was that Sarnia got its two runs during the only time it rained in the whole game. It’s tough to throw a rise ball when it is wet. As a batter, I didn’t get a hit in the whole series and left 9 players stranded on base in the final game.

I don’t like losing and I was devastated for the whole winter. Thoughts of what could have and should have been plagued my mind. I went through each of the two final games and agonized over never being able to deliver the key hit.

As they say in sports, wait until next year and next spring found me on the ball diamond again. However, this time I not only was a player, I coached a team of boys under 11.

Almost all of them came from Edithvale Public School, and most of them were buddies who lived in the neighbourhood. All of them were playing on an organized team for the first time, but they were all proud of to put on the sweater of our sponsor, the Rotary Club of Willowdale.

I’d love to say that we coached this team to a league championship. We didn’t. We didn’t have a prayer.

One of the teams had gone around scooping up the best kids from several schools. They were very good, so good, in fact, that they won the Ontario Squirt Championship that year.

In spite of our excellent pep talk, when we played them, they beat us 50-0. I didn’t slip in an extra zero. They beat us 50-0, but something happened to put my whole attitude about competition in focus.

The pitcher of the team, a kid by the name of O’Callahan, would have pitched a perfect game if it hadn’t been for Umberto. He was a big Italian boy who got close to a few too many plates of spaghetti. Let’s just say he was stocky.

Umberto came to bat near the end of the game. He liked to crowd the plate, so his belly was over the inside corner. O’Callahan let a pitch fly. It soared towards the plate and promptly hit Umberto in the stomach. It bounced halfway back to the pitcher like a gymnast on a trampoline. Everybody, including Umberto, laughed as he trotted like Babe Ruth towards first.

In spite of the lopsided score, I realized that every kid on our team had fun playing softball. It was time for me to look at how I was playing it.

Until that point, winning meant everything to me. Suddenly my focus shifted. The object of the game was to play it with passion and do my very best. That is all that could be expected of me. If I did that, winning would pretty well take care of itself. And I would enjoy the game even more. Instead of spending negative energy on beating the opposition, I would be using all of my powers to become a better player.

I have been able to apply this to other areas of my life. I don’t try to compete. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to win. I do, but it allows me to appreciate the excellence in others and myself. I don’t have to be THE best. I only have to be MY best. So instead of racing against others, I am following the road of my destiny and enjoying the trip.