To Coach and Disciple
The Atlanta Braves' highly touted pitching prospect Mike Soroka made his major league debut last night. Technology's tools which have debuted themselves since the last time I watched baseball with much intensity added to the experience of admiring Soroka's command. Superimposed graphics helped me follow the sweep of his breaking pitches and chart their pinpoint location just at the edge of the hitters' strike zone.
Watching Soroka and fellow 20-year-old phenomenon Ronald Acuna, Junior excel along with 21-year-old Ozzie Alblies is an interesting experience for this middle-aged fan paused at mid-career. Sure, there is some crankiness as I wonder how they can be so good so soon, and even more whether they have anything approaching the wisdom to understand how blessed they are. If I can see that I sometimes took my skills and my job for granted at twice their age and in a counseling field that prizes perspective, surely they do. How will they handle it when windows of opportunity close because of factors not entirely in their control?
I get more than a chance to release such mini-rants from watching this particular team, however. Because youth predominates right now with the Atlanta Braves, I'm grateful for the chance as Keith Olbermann put it in Ken Burns's Baseball documentary series, to join or rejoin the game midstream. Whatever I've missed in life or between baseball's white lines doesn't matter so much because new opportunities to marvel at today are still coming. The very absence of old heads on young shoulders that I may occasionally complain about as I watch Soroka, or Acuna, or Albies 100% engaged in the present moment without distractions from regrets or contingencies is an opportunity for me to do the same. After all, as I often quote with Lamentations 3:22-24, God's mercies are new every morning. The Bible's book of Lamentations has five chapters, The Skit Guys remind me because there is a time to finish lamenting.
More than technology's tricks and the in-the-moment exuberance of the Braves' young stars energize memories of last night's game through today's sometimes stupefying routine experiences. I admire the twentysomethings from afar, but an interview with former Brave Chris Reitsma helps me see what internalizing baseball's rejuvenation can look like. From the stands during Soroka's performance, Reitsma doted on the prospect he worked with on the team of Canadian juniors. Offered a chance to take credit for events playing out on the field by the interviewer's reminder that both pitchers featured a changeup, Reitsma pointedly declined. He made a joke at his own expense that someone with his 6'4", 240-pound frame would best be remembered for the softest thrown pitch. He then emphasized the differences between the changeup he threw and the one Soroka developed according to his own gifts and timing. What I taught him, concedes Reitsma, was the mindset.
As more of a Reitsma than a Soroka at this point in life and career, I can still participate in rather than ruminate or philosophize about the coming-of-age process. Like Reitsma, and as pointed out in Richard Rohr's Falling Upward, positioning in the second half of life can relieve me of the impetus to take myself and my role so seriously. As he did, I can volunteer the ironies and the jokes in my own expense in order to make clear to anybody I influence that I can't do everything, and never could. Once more Reitsma-like, I don't have to grasp at every potential similarity and twist it into a copy of my own experience, my own style, in order to acknowledge an impact. Third, with Reitsma, because I am not preoccupied with projecting perfection or foisting an exact copy of myself on to the next generation, I can truly listen and wait for opportunities to teach mindset rather than technique. I can, still in development myself, play the long game of cultivating trust as people I might influence shared their thinking and strategies with me. From there, in God's timing and as He is the acknowledged One Who sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7) and stirs it whichever way He will (Proverbs 21:1), be used to steadily, subtly, influence thinking.
Finally, Braves' manager Brian Snitker also mentored me as a mentor, even in the process of watching a baseball game that was fun in itself. Snitker was asked why he removed Soroka from the game after only 80 pitches, even with no signs of fatigue or distress. Snitker seemed able to experience the world from the perspective of his charge. He explained to the media after the game tha these weren't just any 80 pitches. Soroka, the skipper believed, had been through an intense emotional experience in his first game, and in New York. Just as Snitker intuited that his young charge put more behind each toss than would a more experienced, accustomed pitcher, so the perceptive guide would avoid unhelpful, standardized comparisons in favor of individualized empathy.
Watching Soroka and fellow 20-year-old phenomenon Ronald Acuna, Junior excel along with 21-year-old Ozzie Alblies is an interesting experience for this middle-aged fan paused at mid-career. Sure, there is some crankiness as I wonder how they can be so good so soon, and even more whether they have anything approaching the wisdom to understand how blessed they are. If I can see that I sometimes took my skills and my job for granted at twice their age and in a counseling field that prizes perspective, surely they do. How will they handle it when windows of opportunity close because of factors not entirely in their control?
I get more than a chance to release such mini-rants from watching this particular team, however. Because youth predominates right now with the Atlanta Braves, I'm grateful for the chance as Keith Olbermann put it in Ken Burns's Baseball documentary series, to join or rejoin the game midstream. Whatever I've missed in life or between baseball's white lines doesn't matter so much because new opportunities to marvel at today are still coming. The very absence of old heads on young shoulders that I may occasionally complain about as I watch Soroka, or Acuna, or Albies 100% engaged in the present moment without distractions from regrets or contingencies is an opportunity for me to do the same. After all, as I often quote with Lamentations 3:22-24, God's mercies are new every morning. The Bible's book of Lamentations has five chapters, The Skit Guys remind me because there is a time to finish lamenting.
More than technology's tricks and the in-the-moment exuberance of the Braves' young stars energize memories of last night's game through today's sometimes stupefying routine experiences. I admire the twentysomethings from afar, but an interview with former Brave Chris Reitsma helps me see what internalizing baseball's rejuvenation can look like. From the stands during Soroka's performance, Reitsma doted on the prospect he worked with on the team of Canadian juniors. Offered a chance to take credit for events playing out on the field by the interviewer's reminder that both pitchers featured a changeup, Reitsma pointedly declined. He made a joke at his own expense that someone with his 6'4", 240-pound frame would best be remembered for the softest thrown pitch. He then emphasized the differences between the changeup he threw and the one Soroka developed according to his own gifts and timing. What I taught him, concedes Reitsma, was the mindset.
As more of a Reitsma than a Soroka at this point in life and career, I can still participate in rather than ruminate or philosophize about the coming-of-age process. Like Reitsma, and as pointed out in Richard Rohr's Falling Upward, positioning in the second half of life can relieve me of the impetus to take myself and my role so seriously. As he did, I can volunteer the ironies and the jokes in my own expense in order to make clear to anybody I influence that I can't do everything, and never could. Once more Reitsma-like, I don't have to grasp at every potential similarity and twist it into a copy of my own experience, my own style, in order to acknowledge an impact. Third, with Reitsma, because I am not preoccupied with projecting perfection or foisting an exact copy of myself on to the next generation, I can truly listen and wait for opportunities to teach mindset rather than technique. I can, still in development myself, play the long game of cultivating trust as people I might influence shared their thinking and strategies with me. From there, in God's timing and as He is the acknowledged One Who sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7) and stirs it whichever way He will (Proverbs 21:1), be used to steadily, subtly, influence thinking.
Finally, Braves' manager Brian Snitker also mentored me as a mentor, even in the process of watching a baseball game that was fun in itself. Snitker was asked why he removed Soroka from the game after only 80 pitches, even with no signs of fatigue or distress. Snitker seemed able to experience the world from the perspective of his charge. He explained to the media after the game tha these weren't just any 80 pitches. Soroka, the skipper believed, had been through an intense emotional experience in his first game, and in New York. Just as Snitker intuited that his young charge put more behind each toss than would a more experienced, accustomed pitcher, so the perceptive guide would avoid unhelpful, standardized comparisons in favor of individualized empathy.
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