Baseball and Life

Pre-season football is three games in, and the anticipation of the regular NFL season is already eclipsing the current baseball season. That is the way things are now. Football trumps baseball. So be it. Moreover, my beloved Orioles are 578 games out of first place.

But I was watching the Little League World Series the other night (which speaks to many things, such as my complete lack of any type of social life) and watching those boys play was a real delight and got me thinking about baseball, particularly what I can learn from the game and apply in my own life.

When I was a kid my brother, friends and I would spend most summer days at the baseball diamond at St. Edwards church, right across Mitchellville Road and conveniently tucked between Pointers Ridge and our neighborhood of Amber Meadows. We would play all day. One of my lingering memories of that time is sitting under the trees waiting for a storm to pass so we could continue play.

To me, principles that apply to baseball easily apply to life.

1. NO EXCUSES.
Do not blame teammates, umpires, coaches, fans, or the position of the moon for your performance. Take responsibility for what happens on the field. Stand up, make no excuses, refuse the excuses that others might offer you. Excuses get in the way of learning because mistakes are denied. Be accountable. Remember you are not expected to be a perfect performer. No one is. Baseball is not an easy game to play.

2. PLAY WITH HONOR.
Always hustle, run out every ground ball and pop up, encourage your teammates, especially after an error, bad pitch, or a strike out, carry yourself with pride and dignity. Do not in frustration throw equipment. Do not ridicule another team or an opposing player's name, physical appearance, skill. Do not taunt. Do not distract an opposing player with low-level antics. Be positive with teammates. Never ridicule or criticize your teammates. They need your encouragement the most immediately after they have made a mistake. Show your teammates, your opponents, the entire world the values you hold dear by how you play.

3. BE RELENTLESS.
As Jimmy Valvano said, never, ever, ever give up. Never Yield. Regardless of what the scoreboard says, you are never defeated unless you give up, unless you go belly up. No opponent can make you do this. Giving up is something you do. Regardless of what the scoreboard says, no opponent can extinguish the flame in your heart or crush the intensity of your will without your consent. Never surrender.

4. SLAY YOUR OWN DEMONS, THEN SLAY DRAGONS.
Ignore those things outside your control: the judgments of umpires, the conduct and ability of other teams, the weather, your amount of playing time, the final score (this is a tough one). Do not show frustration or disappointment. Do not allow your opponents to gain joy from your inability to cope with self-pity. Do not throw equipment or whine in anger or slump your shoulders. Such behavior impresses no one. Maintain your poise. Learn, prepare, and focus on the next event. We cannot change the past. Instead, we should focus on the next action with determination, joy, and resolve.

5. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THOSE THINGS UNDER YOUR CONTROL.
Your effort, your attitude, your commitment, and your approach to the game are under your control. Be enthusiastic, play with great effort, conduct yourself appropriately, meet this opportunity with great joy. Listen to your coaches. Be alert, play smartly, know the signs. You are always accountable. How you react to situations and circumstances reveals the person you are and the person you might become.

6. PLAY THE GAME ONE PITCH AT A TIME.
Focus on the current pitch. If you are a pitcher, what are you throwing now and where? If you are a fielder, what are you going to do if the ball is hit to you? If you are a base-runner, what are you going to do on a fly ball, line drive, ground ball, to the right side, to the left side? If you are a batter, what are you trying to accomplish on this pitch? If you are on the bench, how are you helping your team be successful?

7. FOCUS ON BEHAVIOR, NOT OUTCOMES.
The results of your performance are not fully under your control. The other team may be very good, or very bad. The bounces may go your way, or not. But your behavior and approach are under your control. At the end of the game, you, perhaps only, know whether you gave 100%, whether you did all you could to help your team. Those players who did are winners, those players who did not are losers, regardless of what the scoreboard says. Winners take care of the things within their control, enjoy their participation, and are justifiable proud of their effort. Losers make excuses, lose their poise readily, wallow in self-pity, and surrender at the slightest sign of adversity.

8. THE BEST PLAYERS ARE THE BEST LEARNERS.
Players who are coachable are always trying to learn more about being successful ballplayers and people. They listen and apply what their coaches and teachers suggest. Are you coachable? If you are, you are a winner. If you are not, you are a loser, regardless of what the scoreboard says.

9. BE A JOYOUS WARRIOR!
Be enthusiastic, positive, give 100%, understand that relentless effort in the pursuit of excellence is its own reward. Win with humility, lose with dignity.

Trevor Hall -- New Album and Free Concert on September 3

California-based reggae artist Trevor Hall signed a record deal with Geffen Records in his senior year of high school, and has toured with artists such as Steel Pulse, The Wailers and Ziggy Marley.

His new album features appearances by Matisyahu ("Unity") and Krishna Das ("My Baba"). You can catch him live when Trevor Hall headlines WTMD's free First Thursday concert in West Mt. Vernon Park on September 3rd.

Check it out

http://wtmd.org/

Chris

My Who's Who Essay

OK, so recently I was invited to be placed in Who's Who. I said sure, and they sent the following request via e mail:

In order for the editorial staff of Who's Who to get to know you and gauge your biographical information, we ask that you answer the following question: Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?

Oh man, did they have any idea who they were speaking with? I think not.

Here is what I submitted. I assume I will not get into Who's Who this year.

Dear Editorial Board of Who's Who:

My life is full of significant experiences. I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, reducing their carbon footprint by 50%. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in beer, a war-weary veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Orioles.

I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after work and a shift in the local neurosurgery ward, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless poker player.

Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear.

I don't perspire.

I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration.

I bat .400.

My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. Dogs love me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair.

While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery.

The laws of physics do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami.

Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down.

I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a Mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. But I have not yet been placed in Who's Who.

Thank you.

We Are Stardust

Now this is cool. Glycine, an amino acid (a building block of proteins), has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space. According to news reports, microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles from Earth, in January 2004.

Tapping back over 20 years into my college biology courses...Chains of amino acids are strung together to form protein molecules in everything from hair to the enzymes that regulate chemical reactions inside living organisms. Scientists have long puzzled over whether these complex organic compounds originated on Earth or in space. The latest findings add credence to the notion that extraterrestrial objects such as meteorites and comets may have seeded ancient Earth, and other planets, with the raw materials of life that formed elsewhere in the cosmos.

As Carl Sagan wrote, (and I am paraphrasing) we all have a bit of star dust in us.

It's Real -- The Daily Fight

In a really unfortunate turn of events, photos of Josh Hamilton have surfaced showing the Texas Rangers outfielder drinking heavily in an Arizona bar. The pictures were taken in a Tempe bar last January and show Hamilton apparently having a pretty good time with a bunch of women, none of whom are his wife, and slurping whipped cream off the “torso” of a young woman.

Hamilton released this statement talking about the drunken incident:

“I’m embarrassed about it for my wife Katie, for my kids and for the organization,” Hamilton said. “I’m not perfect. It’s an ongoing struggle, and it’s real. It’s amazing how these things can creep back in. But I am human and I have struggles.”

“If I think I can have one drink, I think I can have two, and then it snowballs to 10 or 12,” Hamilton said. “As soon as it happened, I called my support staff — Katie, the organization and MLB — and told them what happened. I was open and honest about it. People with an addiction can make a mistake.”

This story hit me pretty hard. I was at an airport waiting for a flight when the story came up on ESPN, and I let out a fairly audible “oh no.” I was inspired by Hamilton, a top MLB prospect who spiraled down into addiction to crack and alcohol. His addiction was so severe that he actually bounced a check to a drug dealer, even though he was making millions.

But he seemed to have caged his demons and turned his life around. He was on fire last year in the majors. And at the 2008 Home Run Derby he was incredible. His story appeared to be one of redemption and spiritual awakening. We’re America. We love a comeback story, and that’s exactly what this was. It was a sure bet to be made into a Disney movie.

Josh Hamilton slipped at least once and may well slip again. That's the awful truth of life with addiction. Make no mistake about it: every single day is a fight, a terrible, endless fight that is never won. "Once more unto the breach," every day. Consider a life lived one day at a time, one hour at a time against a disease that smothers your heart, corrodes your soul, chews away at your self-confidence and destroys families, careers, you name it. Rust never sleeps.


If you've fought the demons of addiction or if you've had a friend or family member fight the fight, you won't judge Hamilton. You'll pray for him and his family.

Addicts have good days and bad days. On the bad days, the demons creep into their brains, sapping their strength, fight, everything.

We knew this last summer when everyone was writing and talking about Hamilton's heroic fight. His drug and alcohol use almost killed him. There was the morning he knocked on his grandmother's door. He knew he'd hit bottom when she didn't recognize the sad, wasted figure in front of her.

To come from there to do the things he did last summer was almost incomprehensible. Yet somehow, we knew it was just round one of the fight.

Somebody once asked me how many chances an addict should get. Three strikes? Six strikes? I couldn’t answer, but a man next to me snapped “As many as he needs.“ It reminded me of a passage in the bible – and I know I am not getting this completely right – where Jesus is asked how many times should we forgive somebody who wrongs us, how many chances should they get? Jesus replied “a thousand times a thousand,” or something like that. JC was a pretty cool dude, and his response really rocked those Pharisees on their heels.


Hamilton seems like a good and decent man, even though he has put his family through hell and was forced to admit a slip in his sobriety. He'd admitted it to his family members and to Major League Baseball months ago. He did it quickly and apparently set out to get his life back in order.


He plays for the Texas Rangers, but it's a stretch to call him a teammate. Hamilton lives apart from them after games. He can't go the places they go, so he returns to his hotel room, usually won't set foot in a bar, won't be around his teammates if there's alcohol. He typically doesn't even have money in his pocket. One less temptation.

His slip will be national news, and some people will feel duped by his feel-good story. These are the people who simply don't understand that addiction is a disease, not a choice.

These stories frequently don't have happy endings. An NFL general manager once said that there was about a 90 percent chance that a player with a substance-abuse problem would have a relapse. To this particular GM, the report was a mandate to not give addicts a second chance. Why waste time and money on someone who was going to end up disappointing you?


Josh Hamilton may end up a statistic, too. This might be the first of many slips. Then again, he may have been lying to us all along. We just don't know. That's the terrible truth about addiction. God gave Hamilton amazing physical gifts but tested him in ways most of us can't comprehend.
Hamilton has done a wonderful job telling his story and detailing his daily fight. And he surely has helped at least a few people in their daily walk, including me. With his slip, he reminded us the fight will never be won. It’s real indeed.

Perseid Meteor Shower Was Awesome

The annual Perseid meteor shower last night was a really good show and worth getting up in the wee hours of the morning.

The Perseids are always reliable, and sometimes rather spectacular. I try to watch for it every year, regardless of where I am in the world. The only factors that dampen the August show are bad weather, bright moonlight, or city lighting. Unfortunately this week, as the Perseids reached their peak, the moon was high in the sky, outshining the fainter meteors. But it still beat the hell out of TV and was, for me, awe inspiring.

I did some research on the world wide internet and learned that the Perseids are bits of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The comet has laid down several streams of cosmic flotsam and jetsam, each in a slightly different location, over the centuries as it orbits the sun. Every August, Earth passes through these debris streams, which spread out over time. So basically it's us passing through a debris field. Pretty damn cool. Even more so when most meteors are no bigger than a pea. They vaporize as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating bright streaks across the sky.

Rock on you crazy, beautiful universe. And thanks for the light show.

Yes, We Really Were Born To Run

I read an interesting article the other day by the South African biologis Louis Liebenberg. During his first "persistence hunt," Dr. Liebenberg was working with bushmen in the Kalahari Desert in the early 1990s. Armed with handmade bows and arrows, the hunters had been stalking kudu. When a young stag split off from the herd, the bushmen ran flat-out after it.

The kudu moved quickly out of sight. Liebenberg, then age 30, hadn't done conditioning to be a long-distance runner, and he was wearing heavy leather boots as a precaution against poisonous snakes. And this was shaping up to be a hard run.

In persistence hunting, the trick is to trot almost nonstop in the heat of the midday sun, pushing the animal along so that it never has time to recover in the shade of an acacia tree. The Kalahari hunters have figured out how to play one critical advantage in a deadly game that pitches their survival against that of animals: Humans have an evaporative cooling system, in the form of sweat; antelope don't. When conditions are right, a man can run even the fastest antelope on earth to death by overheating.

But after 10 or 12 miles, Liebenberg was overheating, too, and by the time he reached the kill, he was so dehydrated he'd stopped sweating. The only liquid in sight was the stomach water of the dead animal, but his companions stopped him from drinking it, because kudu eat a leaf that's toxic to humans. If one of the hunters hadn't run back to camp for water, Liebenberg figures he would have died. He also figures the experience taught him the answer to an ancient question.

What Makes People Run?

Why do 11 percent of Americans and tens of millions of people around the world tie on running shoes and clock their weekly miles? The three most recent presidents of the United States have put in time as runners (and earlier this year, one candidate, Mike Huckabee, trained for the Boston Marathon while campaigning for the U.S. presidency). The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, is a runner. And beyond the vast army of ordinary joggers, it can sometimes seem as if the entire planet is trembling beneath the footfalls of ultramarathoners, Ironmen, and other endurance athletes.

What makes us run?

The answer, according to a controversial body of research, is that our passion for running is natural. A small group of biologists, doctors, and anthropologists say our bodies look and function as they do because our survival once depended on endurance running, whether for long-distance hunts like the one Liebenberg witnessed or for racing the competition across the African savanna to scavenge a kill. The prominent science journal Nature put the idea on its cover, with the headline "Born to Run." And in his book Why We Run, the biologist and runner Bernd Heinrich, Ph.D., argues that something exists in all of us that still needs to be out chasing antelopes, or at least dreaming of antelopes. Without that instinct, "we become what a lapdog is to a wolf. And we are inherently more like wolves than lapdogs, because the communal chase is part of our biological makeup."

Daniel Lieberman, Ph.D., first started to think about whether humans evolved for running as he was running a pig on a treadmill. A colleague, the University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble, happened to look in. "That pig can't keep its head still," he remarked.

This was an observation Lieberman admits he never made in months of running pigs. Bramble invited him next door, where a dog running on a treadmill was holding its head "like a missile." The conversation turned to the nuchal ligament, a sort of shock cord stretching from the back of the skull down the neck. It keeps the head from pitching back and forth during a run. Dogs have one because they've evolved for running. Pigs don't.

Lieberman and Bramble were soon digging through bone collections. The skulls of chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, showed no evidence of a nuchal ligament. But skulls of the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, did. "We had one of those epiphany moments that happen occasionally in science," says Lieberman. Much as chimps were built for life in the treetops, the two scientists began to ask if humans were built for life on the run.

Anyone who has put in some miles knows how good running can feel, once it stops feeling bad. But beyond the way it feels, medical evidence also suggests that humans are built for endurance exercise. In response to a good training program, for instance, the left ventricular chamber of the heart can increase as much as 20 percent in volume. The chamber walls thicken, too. So the heart fills up faster and pumps more blood to the rest of the body. The coronary arteries also change, dilating more rapidly to meet the body's demand for oxygen. Endurance exercise won't make anyone live forever. But it seems to make the cardiovascular system function the way the owner's manual intended.

In the skeletal muscles, increased blood pressure causes new capillaries to emerge. The mitochondrial engines of the cells ramp up to consume energy more efficiently, helped along by an increase in the production of various antioxidants. These changes in the heart and extremities together typically boost the maximum amount of oxygen the body can consume each minute by 10 to 20 percent. For men who used to become short of breath slouching to the fridge for a beer, VO2 max can increase even more. Lapdogs start to function like wolves.

More surprisingly, the brain responds as if it was built for endurance exercise, too. Everybody knows about the runner's high, that feeling of euphoria thought to be triggered by a rush of endorphins to the reward centers of the brain, usually near the end of a good, long workout. But researchers have discovered lately that exercise affects the function of 33 different genes in the hippocampus, which plays a key role in mood, memory, and learning. By stimulating growth factors, exercise also produces new brain cells, new and enhanced connections between existing cells, new blood vessels for energy supply, and increased production of enzymes for putting glucose and other nutrients to work.

People who exercise regularly perform better on some cognitive tests: Run more, think better, hunt smarter, eat better. Exercise also seems to buffer the brain against neurological damage, reducing the effects of stress and delaying the onset of Alzheimer's and other diseases. Most significant, exercise helps prevent and alleviate depression, which afflicts one in six Americans and costs $83 billion a year. In fact, studies suggest that exercise works as well as pharmaceutical antidepressants, and that the effect is "dose dependent"--that is, the more you exercise, the better you feel.

Running may also be the forgotten reason for many of the movements—the turn of a shoulder, the sway of a hip—we think of as most gracefully human. The lines of a Theodore Roethke poem come to mind: "My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; / Her several parts could keep a pure repose, / Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose / (She moved in circles, and those circles moved)."

To put it in the less romantic language of anatomy, it's the reason we are sweaty, hairless, elongated, and upright. It's also the reason, Lieberman and Bramble say, for the exaggerated size of the human gluteus maximus. Their studies show that our big buttocks don't matter much in walking on level ground, but they are essential for staying upright when we run.

Our legs have evolved for running, too, says Lieberman, and not merely in length. "Human legs are filled with tendons.

Chimpanzees have only a few, very short tendons. Tendons are springs. They store up elastic energy, and you don't use elastic energy when you walk—at least not much of it." But when you run, storing up the force of impact and releasing it as you kick off is essential. Smart runners know they can release that force more efficiently by using a springier gait, says Lieberman. "It's really about the jump."

Other scientists have begun to incorporate the "endurance-running hypothesis" into their research. Timothy Noakes, M.D., a South African physician whose book The Lore of Running is the bible of technical running, argues that misunderstanding human evolution can pose a deadly hazard to endurance athletes. British and American runners in particular have fallen prey to the notion that it's essential to stay heavily hydrated during a race. Runners have died of hyponatremia brought on by drinking too much liquid while sweating profusely, which diluted their blood sodium to a lethal level.

"Humans evolved not to drink much at all during exercise," says Dr. Noakes, chairman of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town. "If they had to stop every 5 minutes to drink, they would never have caught the antelope." The secret for modern runners, he says, is to drink just enough to minimize thirst. "The best runners in any culture are the ones who run the farthest and drink the least, and the bushmen are the classic example. Humans are built to become dehydrated. That's the point."

There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as our running—and nothing quite so savage and so wild.

I Don't Take Myself Too Seriously

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road."

Henry Ward Beecher,
Clergyman and Lecturer