Tag: opportunities

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Clocking Out

Once again, it’s time for the timeless. At least for this season.

Yes, baseball has finally returned with all its glorious rituals. The crack of the bat. The sounds of the organ. Even that slight bit of hope beating in the hearts of all Colorado Rockies fans … and destined to last all of three innings.

But it’s not about winning, right? (At least, not if you live in the Denver area.) Like any good show, it’s about stepping outside of normal life for a while. You leave behind a hurried world and enter a reality that works to its own rhythm, where outs matter more than hours. It’s a place where time doesn’t run out, only chances.

But that may change in 2023.

Next year, for the first time, Major League Baseball may add a pitch clock.

“It is something that remains high on the priority list of ownership,” commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN. “We have a great game, but historically, I think the game was a little crisper the way it moved along.”  

One could argue that maybe less off-the-field drama and fewer lockouts would do more to bring fans back to the game. But hey, that would be petty.

It’s not an unambiguous argument. Pitch clocks have been part of the minor leagues for a few years now (typically giving the pitcher 20 seconds to make his delivery) and when first introduced, they did shave about 11 minutes off the game. But as Baseball America notes, that didn’t last. Even with the attempt to push the pace, the time crept back up again … in fact, Double-A and Triple-A games are now 12 minutes longer than they were before the pitch clock was introduced.

Pretty crisp, huh?

Mind you, I’m not a total curmudgeon. Baseball has been tinkering with itself since the very start. It’s altered the pitch count, the strike zone, the lineups, the gear. Most of the changes have become second nature by now. Some remain controversial, like the now-universal designated hitter or instant replay. (Everyone who believed replay would cause less arguing about an umpire’s calls has never watched an NFL game.)

But the object should always be to make a better game. Not just a faster one.

No, baseball doesn’t have the relentless march of a rigorously timed (and just as long) NFL football game. It’s a different game with a different lesson. Football is about seizing the moment before it slips away from you, making use of your time … and possibly staring in despair when you realize there’s some situations you just can’t come back from.

Baseball teaches hope.

Any at-bat may be the one that turns it around. Any pitch may be the one that snuffs a rally. No matter the deficit, if there’s even one out left, there’s a chance – a forlorn chance, maybe, but a chance. And every fan, at some point, has seen that chance fulfilled.

It’s a more patient view of life. One where things take as long as they take. Where you can always look for another opportunity and strive to make up for past mistakes.

That sort of forgiving outlook doesn’t have to stay between the white lines. It’s a kinder way to live with each other. And with ourselves, too.

Baseball, like life, happens best when it’s not pushed. Let the story tell itself again, with all its quirks and curiosities. On the field and off, leave room for hope to happen.

And with that, I’ll wind up.

I might even do it in less than 20 seconds.  

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Making the Break

We’re near the end of a year. So I suppose it’s fitting that we’re at the end of an era, too.

Lee Mendelson died on Christmas Day.

In a way, the timing is weirdly appropriate. Mendelson, a television producer, was part of the power trio that created “A Charlie Brown Christmas” along with creator Charles Schulz and director Bill Meléndez. With its unexpected success, the three would continue to make special after special for years, taking the already beloved Peanuts gang into the stratosphere.

Schulz died in 2000, Meléndez in 2008. And now, with Mendelson’s passing, I’m left a little speechless. So let’s take a moment of silence – maybe accompanied by a talking trombone – and reflect on failure.

After all, Charlie Brown is the most famous failure in the world. He never kicks the football, never wins the baseball game, never gets the little red-haired girl.  But for one brief moment, the “Peanuts trio” was at risk of surpassing him.

Schulz, Mendelson, and Meléndez easily could have gone into history as the men who broke Charlie Brown.

That sounds like hyperbole. But Mendelson already knew that producing a Charlie Brown piece was not a guaranteed success – he’d been shopping around a documentary on the little round-headed kid for months without a single bite before getting the opportunity to do a holiday special on an insanely fast turn-around time. And the choices that the three men in creating that special – well, if it had fallen flat, you could have pointed to any of those decisions, or all of them, and said “Good grief! What were they thinking?”

Things like using real child actors and no laugh track.

Or hiring a jazz composer to do the soundtrack.

Or giving the most popular character, Snoopy, no lines whatsoever.

Or making the climax of the entire show a reading from the book of Luke.

Production finished just 10 days before air time – which Mendelson would later say was the only thing that kept it from being canceled by the network executives, since it had already been scheduled.  It seemed as weak and spindly as Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

You know – the tree that just needed a little love?

Today, of course, the whole thing shines as bright as Snoopy’s doghouse. It’s mandatory viewing, year after year. It had been taken to the breaking point – and held.

My brother-in-law understands that sort of thing very well. Once, while helping with a home repair, he explained his basic philosophy: “You can’t fix something if you’re afraid to break it.”

That’s a vital lesson. And a hard one.

Because boy, do we love to play it safe.

It’s easy to do what you know. After all, a lot of risks fail – that’s why they’re risks. Nobody wants to be the one who gets burned, gets laughed at, gets left with nothing but empty hands and painful memories.  It’s tempting to keep your head down, do nothing, believe in nothing, risk nothing.

And of course, that’s a path that leaves you with nothing.

Everything worth doing involves some kind of risk, whether it’s as spectacular as a television program or as personal as falling in love. (C.S. Lewis famously said that “To love at all is to be vulnerable.”) It doesn’t have to be a stupid risk, mind you; there’s no medals given for playing in traffic. But when the stake is worth the gamble – when you’re not afraid to break it –  that’s when lives can be transformed.  That’s when the song gets written, or the job gets taken, or the family begun.

That’s when memories get made.

Thank you, Mr. Mendelson, for making some of our own.

For you, and for all of us, it was a lucky break indeed.