Words To Live By
I used to play baseball in my younger days. In fact, baseball felt like a true calling to me for the better part of my life right up until about the time that my mom died. Needless to say very little was the same after that but one thing that went very quickly was my capacity for being on a baseball field. It was no longer the challenges of the game that seemed difficult to overcome, but the empty space in the bleachers where she used to sit and watch. It was around that time that I moved on to playing guitar, and here we are today.
However, during the time that I was playing little league and starting to get more competitive, A League of Their Own was released. You’ve seen it I’m sure, and if you haven’t then you’re seriously missing out. Yes, it’s a little bit of a chick flick but it features one of Tom Hanks’ best performances that I can think of as grizzled, recovering alcoholic former all-star Jimmy Dugan who was loosely if not entirely based on hall of famer Jimmy Fox.
There’s a scene about three quarters through the movie where the star of the film, and of the Rockford Peaches Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis) declares that she’s quitting, and going home with her war veteran husband. She tells Jimmy that she has to go because it’s “just gotten too hard.”
He takes a deep breath and stares her down. Looking her right in the eye he says “Of course it’s hard. If it was easy, everybody would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”
And so it goes. In baseball, as in any endeavor that seems like an uphill battle – if you truly love it you revel in the fact that there are obstacles to overcome and bullshit to wade through. Kindergarten is for children after all and it only gets increasingly difficult from there.
So I say, try to persevere and persist in the face of whatever difficulties arise when striving for a goal because forever, since time and memorial, the easiest thing you can ever do is give up.
