Committment

The past few days this word has been ping-ponging around in my head.  It’s something I take very seriously.  I am a firm believer that the one thing we have is our word.  We have control over it and we should stick to it.  If you can’t for some unforeseen reason, just man(or woman) up, apologize, and work it out.

I bring this up because of my baseball team.  You see, my JV players have not had a game since April 25th.  Almost two weeks.  We are a month and a half into the season and we have played three games.  Now, we have had bad luck with weather this spring.  Seems like it has rained every Tuesday and Thursday for the past month. 

So that leaves us with nothing to do but practice.  And practice.  and practice yet again.  My twelve players though show up everyday ready to get better.  Even in the face of other schools cancelling games on us or unwilling to make up contests, these kids work hard to improve.  They don’t complain.  They just put their heads down and ask “what’s next Coach?”  Committed.

This team is a dream to coach and I love showing up to the field each day, but enough is enough.  How many grounders and fly balls can you hit before boredom sets in.  I have resorted to putting my outfielders in the infield and vice versa.  Hopefully my two games on Fri. and Sat. we’ll get in.

Of course I can’t count on other shoreline schools to have the same commitment.  When the conference AD’s get the schedules set, it is a two year rotation.  These games have been booked since ’07.  Our past two games have been called off at the last moment because of  “other commitments”   One school straight out lied to my  Varsity coach’s face on Monday saying “yeah, we are all set for tomorrow, we’ll see you at your place.”  Then they called on Tues and said we never had a JV game scheduled.  Bull S**T!!!!!!  They just cancelled it for a varsity make-up.  Then yesterday we were told today’s game was off(regardless of the rain) because theydidn’t have a field, something about a middle school game at the same time.  Really?  You just found this out yesterday?  C’mon!!!!!

Now I have to go back to my kids and tell them the bad news.  I do know thought that they’ll shake it off and just ask “what’s next Coach?”  Great kids.

So, I beg of you, when  you commit to something, do it.  I made a bet with one of our varsity captains last week.  If they won by 10+ runs, I would take his yoga class.  Well we won 24-0, therefore downward dog for me.  Do I have time, not really.  But my word is my word. 

Committed to life, work, friends, family.  That seems right to me.  Maybe not that order, but maybe we could all focus on these to make life better.  Then again, I could just be ranting because I haven’t had a GAME IN TWO FREAKEN” WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!