Baseball was my first love in sports. I’d imagine I’m not alone here as America’s pastime is consistently one of the first organized team sports a lot of kids are exposed to. After years of backyard catches with my dad and smashing wiffle balls in the yard from an early age, I joined the BCC Rec Baseball league playing for the Cubs team coached by Gary Modjeska.
Like most youth sport coaches, Coach Modjeska was a team dad whose son Tyler played with us. We had a solid group that stuck together from coach pitch to machine pitch to kid pitch. Like youth sports should, we focused on the fundamentals of the game like looking the ball into your glove, proper baserunning, and of course having fun competing with your friends.
While I didn’t recognize it at the time, the attention span of 7-year-old boys is extremely short lived. To combat this, coach Majeska left us with a very simple message every time we took the field. He’d tell us before every pitch to ask ourselves:
“What am I going to do if the ball is hit to me?”
-Coach Gary Modjeska
This simple question was my first lesson in situational awareness. One of the beauties of baseball is the limitless variables a given pitch offers. A ground ball, pop fly, or line drive all require different reactions from the 9 players around the field. The number of outs, baserunners, and score also can significantly impact the decision of where the proper play on the field is. If you don’t have a plan or lull yourself half to sleep out in right field, you can easily be caught off guard and cost your team with an error or poor decision.
Simply put, this is a lesson on proper planning. Similar to baseball, the business world has limitless variables flying all around us. Office politics, market trends and competition are all things that can be swirling around in our heads when trying to breakdown the next decision. Additionally, it’s easy to fall into such a common work routine that we’re not thinking ahead of every single pitch. In my experience, the ball will be hit your way sooner rather than later. The deal you didn’t expect, the promotion you thought was out of reach, or the situation you didn’t foresee. A clear head and a plan when that happens helps you avoid mistakes and serve the team around you.
“What am I going to do if the ball is hit to me?”
