I was thinking awhile about a theme I might do for this blog. Every blog needs a theme, right? While contemplating I realized a couple of things 1) Only my wife thinks I am funny, she laughs at every joke I say...One of the reasons I am madly in love with her 2) I am ok at writing and 3) I am pretty sure that I think I am cooler than I really am. In realizing that I decided to try and implement all three of those things: I will try to be funny, I will write every week, and I will tell you cool stories about how cool I am.
My wife actually gave me the idea for this post. I like to tell stories about when I was younger. A good story is about 40% true, and the rest is either exaggerated or completely false. So, I thought that I could write stories about when I was younger, and pull lessons that I learned from those stories, hence the blog name "A Lesson Learned." When I say younger that could be any story before today...right?
The title of this post, if you didn't know, is from a famous movie, Sandlot. This movie is awesome. This part of the movie is when the only other baseball team in the movie rides their bikes up to the "Sandlot" to challenge Benny "the Jet" Rodriguez, and gang, to a baseball game. A few not so kind words were exchanged between Ham, the fat catcher, and the leader of the other team. Ham, along with so many other names, calls the leader "you pee drinking crap face." I personally wouldn't know what to say back to that except, wow.
The reason I chose this as my title was because I LOVE this movie. It reminds me a little bit of what me and my gang were like when we were in Elementary, however we were even more into baseball. Smalls, the main character, says that summer they lived, and breathed baseball. To us it was a lot more intense. We WORSHIPPED baseball.
Although we had a whole lot of guys that we would run with, there was three of us that particularly loved baseball, and that was Rhett Palfryman, Chris Benson, and myself. The Braves were our favorite team, because, well who else would be our favorite team? Chris (my uncle who is a year older than me) and I were Chipper Jones guys, while Rhett was a Fred McGriff fan. I could go on for hours telling you story after story about how much we loved baseball. In fact I already have to my wife, bless her soul. However, telling you the stories would pull away from the "lesson learned," and quite frankly this post has gotten pretty long. Real quick though, I used the word "worship" above for a specific reason. When I say we worshipped baseball, this is not one of those times I am exaggerating. Rhett and I went to the same church for four years. Every Sunday during the main service we would write down the Atlanta Braves lineup, positions, and circle our favorite players. DURING CHURCH! We would then compare notes afterwards... If that is not worship I don't know what is. We would play baseball all the time. If we weren't playing real baseball, we were either pretending, or playing some made up form of baseball. The ONLY time we took a break was Super Bowl Sunday when we would play tackle football in my room, on our knees, while watching the Super Bowl. Those days were awesome, and it wasn't just awesome that we played so much, it was awesome because we were awesome at baseball.
All three of us were always on the all-star team. When I was 11, I was picked first overall in the city league draft to the Dodgers (we took third that year, I could tell you everyone on the team). This talent lasted all through Junior High for all three of us. It wasn't until High School that my talent started to plateau. I have looked back on it for a long time, and wondered why that had happened, and lately I have realized something. It stopped being fun for me. I was playing for the recognition, and to have my stats look good. I realized that because I have started a baseball team for old people, and it's fun again. I lost sight of why I played baseball, and what made it America's past time. It is just so stinking fun!
I have learned a valuable lesson, that when you stop loving something, and you are doing it for the wrong reasons, it starts to lose its purpose. Not only does it lose its meaning, but your performance starts to either plateau, or degrades. When you start to feel that plateau remember why it is that you started it in the first place, and try to focus on that. That to me was "a lesson learned."
My wife actually gave me the idea for this post. I like to tell stories about when I was younger. A good story is about 40% true, and the rest is either exaggerated or completely false. So, I thought that I could write stories about when I was younger, and pull lessons that I learned from those stories, hence the blog name "A Lesson Learned." When I say younger that could be any story before today...right?
The title of this post, if you didn't know, is from a famous movie, Sandlot. This movie is awesome. This part of the movie is when the only other baseball team in the movie rides their bikes up to the "Sandlot" to challenge Benny "the Jet" Rodriguez, and gang, to a baseball game. A few not so kind words were exchanged between Ham, the fat catcher, and the leader of the other team. Ham, along with so many other names, calls the leader "you pee drinking crap face." I personally wouldn't know what to say back to that except, wow.
The reason I chose this as my title was because I LOVE this movie. It reminds me a little bit of what me and my gang were like when we were in Elementary, however we were even more into baseball. Smalls, the main character, says that summer they lived, and breathed baseball. To us it was a lot more intense. We WORSHIPPED baseball.
Although we had a whole lot of guys that we would run with, there was three of us that particularly loved baseball, and that was Rhett Palfryman, Chris Benson, and myself. The Braves were our favorite team, because, well who else would be our favorite team? Chris (my uncle who is a year older than me) and I were Chipper Jones guys, while Rhett was a Fred McGriff fan. I could go on for hours telling you story after story about how much we loved baseball. In fact I already have to my wife, bless her soul. However, telling you the stories would pull away from the "lesson learned," and quite frankly this post has gotten pretty long. Real quick though, I used the word "worship" above for a specific reason. When I say we worshipped baseball, this is not one of those times I am exaggerating. Rhett and I went to the same church for four years. Every Sunday during the main service we would write down the Atlanta Braves lineup, positions, and circle our favorite players. DURING CHURCH! We would then compare notes afterwards... If that is not worship I don't know what is. We would play baseball all the time. If we weren't playing real baseball, we were either pretending, or playing some made up form of baseball. The ONLY time we took a break was Super Bowl Sunday when we would play tackle football in my room, on our knees, while watching the Super Bowl. Those days were awesome, and it wasn't just awesome that we played so much, it was awesome because we were awesome at baseball.
All three of us were always on the all-star team. When I was 11, I was picked first overall in the city league draft to the Dodgers (we took third that year, I could tell you everyone on the team). This talent lasted all through Junior High for all three of us. It wasn't until High School that my talent started to plateau. I have looked back on it for a long time, and wondered why that had happened, and lately I have realized something. It stopped being fun for me. I was playing for the recognition, and to have my stats look good. I realized that because I have started a baseball team for old people, and it's fun again. I lost sight of why I played baseball, and what made it America's past time. It is just so stinking fun!
I have learned a valuable lesson, that when you stop loving something, and you are doing it for the wrong reasons, it starts to lose its purpose. Not only does it lose its meaning, but your performance starts to either plateau, or degrades. When you start to feel that plateau remember why it is that you started it in the first place, and try to focus on that. That to me was "a lesson learned."
These pictures are already labeled, and unfortunately Chris is not in it...However, he did look a lot like Andrew, so just pretend.
This is hilarious! And I like the addition of the picture - very sandlot-esque.
ReplyDeleteoh cute...I remember when you started not being good at baseball....it was when you got fat!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout-outs! You should start keeping up our blog that I haven't used in 9 months.
ReplyDeleteMan Josh you said it perfect!! Baseball is fun and when it ain't you suck!! And Yes I santion 100% the validity of the childhood story becuase I was there a good 98% of the time. Buffalo Butt Breath!
ReplyDelete