A-Town at the Bat: What striking out in softball taught me about life

I struck out on Tuesday night for the first time in my life. Like, ever. To be fair, I never played actual competitive baseball or softball growing up - just tee ball as a kid, rec-league machine pitch as a youth and Mormon stake softball as a "Young Single Adult." Nothing too serious. But I enjoy playing ball when I get a chance and I guess I subconsciously always took a sense of pride in never having struck out. To be honest, I'm not sure it crossed my mind very often; striking out was just something I had never done and never intended to do. Of course, I'm no Babe Ruth. It's not like I hit a home run every time I stepped to the plate, but, all things considered, I've been a relatively decent ball player for the past couple decades.

Let me give you some context of what happened to me the other night:

Per the rules and guidelines of singles wards in the LDS Church, I am to be exiled from, flunked out of and kindly asked to leave the singles ward if I am not married by the time I turn 31 in November. These congregations are intended for unmarried members of the Church from the ages of 18 through 30. As of right now, it seems very likely that I will still be single, come Thanksgiving. Thus, I have been preparing all softball season to say goodbye to YSA sports for good. Flag football will probably start up sometime in the fall, but I'll have one foot out the door at that point and I do not intend to play. This was it - my final hoorah - and I wanted to make the best of it.

This season, I was playing with the Union YSA Ward in Midvale as an alternating middle infielder/right fielder. My team got second place in our stake after a nice regular season, which earned us a spot in the regional tournament. This was a first for me, and was kind of a big deal. I had played 18 years of church sports and had never advanced to the postseason. I also got second place twice in men's volleyball and co-ed flag football during my time at Snow College (the prestigious "Intramural Champion" t-shirt always eluded me), but this was my first time ever participating in a regional tournament, so I was pretty happy about it.

The regional tournament, held at Salt Lake City's famous Larry H. Miller Softball Complex, was double-elimination, so we were scheduled to play Tuesday and Wednesday night, one way or the other. We lost our game on Tuesday night, which was too bad because I think we could have (and probably should have) beaten that team. Overall, we just didn't play well. We made a lot of mistakes and had trouble putting runners on base. I admittedly take a portion of the blame for that loss. Although I wouldn't say that I was a primary reason that my team didn't win, I certainly didn't help out very much. I consider Tuesday night to be the worst softball game I can ever remember playing, personally. Despite knocking in a run on a ground-out in my first at-bat, I flew out in my second at-bat and had a throwing error in one of the middle innings. On top of that, at one point, I was attempting to throw the ball from third base to first base and the ball pretty much only made it about to the pitcher's mound. My nerves must have gotten to me and I accidentally threw the ball about 10 feet short of its intended destination. Furthermore, the last of my three at-bats was something that I am not proud of.

Let me first say that the opposing pitcher was probably the best kind of pitcher you could ask for in this type of amateur setting - one that isn't particularly good, but throws the ball close enough to the plate that the ump could pretty much call balls or strikes either way. In stake softball, for some unknown reason, you only get 3 balls and 2 strikes before you walk or strike out, which makes things a little exciting if you get behind in the count. I grabbed a bat, took a couple mini practice swings, and stepped into the batter's box.

I took the first pitch, which landed several inches short of home plate. With the YSA ball/strike rules in mind, we'll call this "Ball Two." The second pitch was a relatively good "hitting height" for me, so I was looking to swing. To my surprise, I swung and whiffed, completely missing the ball. We'll call this "Strike Two." In retrospect, I think the pitch would have been a ball - I even asked the umpire whether the pitch was outside of the strike zone. (He didn't give me a definitive answer.) In came the third pitch, which I was resolved to hit. Disbelief set in as I swung and completely missed the pitch again. Strike Three. Down on strikes for the first time in my life. It wasn't the end of the world - and I'm not even sure that I was the first guy on the team to strike out in that game - but I was pretty embarrassed as I made the walk of shame back to the dugout.

We ended up losing the game by four runs, I think, and were relegated to the "Losers Bracket" for Wednesday night's game. I was sure we'd bounce back after Tuesday night's underwhelming showing in our next game, but I went home frustrated, disappointed and mad at myself. I had let my team down and, more importantly, I had let myself down. I knew I was capable of doing better, and I embarrassed myself in front of everybody. I even started thinking about that strikeout as being some morbid kind of analogy for my experience in singles wards - a valiant effort overall, but, in the end, a swing and a miss. (Too harsh? Yeah. Probably a little too harsh, but hey - that's how I was feeling at the time.)

I didn't want to stay in that foul mood, so - I kid you not - I went straight up to my room when I got home and spent the next 25 minutes pouting and looking up inspirational movie quotes.

Here's a good one:


After watching a few of these clips, I began to feel much better about things and I was determined to do better in our next game. (In my mind, it would be nearly impossible to do any worse!)

But then I started thinking: I went nearly 31 years without striking out a single time. I missed on a couple swings and caused, ultimately, an inconsequential out in one single game, and I there I was, feeling down about myself like I was some kind of poor excuse for a human being.

I was being absolutely unfair to myself by basically expecting to bat 1.000 with no fielding errors and zero losses in my whole career. That's ridiculous and unreasonable. Check this out: Right now, the player with the best batting average in all of Major League Baseball is Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros, who is currently batting with a .364 average. That means he only gets a hit 36% of the time. He has struck out 57 times in 427 at-bats so far this season (through 108 games), which means he - the best hitter in the whole league - strikes out 13% of the time. That's a little more than 1-in-10, meaning, in stake softball terms, that he'd strike out about once every five games. I struck out one time in my entire life and felt like a failure.

I think we are all occasionally guilty of expecting ourselves to bat 1.000 in life, as well. One thing goes wrong and, despite all of the success and progress do we have happening, we get depressed and feel like giving up because of a single mistake or a couple bumps in the road. Take it from one who knows - my life was never supposed to get to this point; I was supposed to get married when I was 23. That was the plan. Yet here I am, struggling to get girls to agree to second dates, most of the time. Sometimes it sucks. But I shouldn't let that a couple negative things overshadow all the other awesome stuff that I have going on.

I think I'm a good writer. I've done a lot of incredible things with journalism, including winning an award from the Utah Society of Professional Journalists for a piece I wrote for the Deseret News. I've had the opportunity to interview dozens of movie stars and celebrities through my ties with Salt Lake Comic Con. I think I'm a good entertainer and a unique teacher. I was recently hand-picked by my employer to travel to the corporate headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey. I just got promoted, and even though this new position is much more difficult than my last job, I'm four weeks in and they've just started having me help train new hires. The ladies might not be crazy about A-Town, but I don't think I'm hideously ugly and my mom still loves me. I've had fun traveling to 10 Major League Baseball stadiums, with Number Eleven coming up in Oakland later this month. I get to wake up every morning and take a nice, warm shower. I have a wonderful family and some great friends. I have more fancy socks than anyone else I know (#sockswag, am I right??). There are lots of things that I like about myself. And I'm seriously going to let something like dating problems or Gordon Hayward going to Boston or one stupid strikeout get in my way?? If those are the three worst things I am dealing with, my batting average in life has got to be like .875. Take that, Jose Altuve!

***

I hit a bases-clearing triple off the fence in my first at-bat on Wednesday night and was responsible for four of our seven runs in the first inning. Despite going on to lose, 21-20, in extra innings and watching as my YSA sports career came to an end, nothing could have made me happier in that moment than knowing that I had confidence in myself to come back from the strikeout on Tuesday night and make a big contribution in my very next plate appearance. I think it was probably the best hit of my stake softball career. I really thought it had a chance to make it over the fence. It wasn't a grand slam, but you know what? I had a huge smile going from ear to ear when I stopped at third base.

***

In the proverbial softball game of our lives, remember that even Mighty Casey struck out once. And although there was no joy in Mudville that day, the clouds will eventually part for us when we are called to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. Keep your chins up, my friends. Keep swinging, and good things will happen.

"Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you; it is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life." - Harold B. Lee

Never give up! Never surrender!

I got passed over for a promotion at work today. It was a writing position. Right up my alley. I defy them to find anyone more qualified for a writing position than I am. Yet they decided not to hire me.

This isn't the first time I've been passed over for a writing job. I've applied for those types of jobs all over the place over the past five years, including trying to get back to the Deseret News, where I feel I have proven my worth and my skills time and time again. This isn't the first time I've been passed over for a promotion at my current place of employment, either. I believe that I was certainly more than qualified for the other job, too, in their social media department.

This has been incredibly frustrating to me. They say that having a degree will open doors for you (not true). Likewise, they say that one door closes, another door opens (not always true). Why would I, with my abundance of relevant experience, my Bachelor's Degree in communications and my award-winning stint in professional writing, so constantly be overlooked? Similarly, why am I 30 years old and still absolutely single and alone? These are two pain points for me that I struggle with quite often. This was not the plan. I was supposed to be married years ago. I should probably have had like two kids at this point. I was supposed to have a solid career in journalism by now. This was not the way I pictured my life to go.

I don't think I'm an incompetent writer. Shakespeare I am not, but I don't think I'm terrible. I'm not a total loser. Ryan Gosling I am not, but I don't think I'm undateable. I'm certainly not the worst option out there. So why aren't things working out for me? What have I done to deserve this constant rejection?

An illustration

People occasionally tell me I should write a book. I appreciate the compliment, but I'm just not that kind of writer. I have never really written fiction, outside of any elementary school assignments. I remember writing a "Mission: Impossible"-type series in like fourth grade and I once attempted to create a science-fiction comicbook about me and some alien friends. I thought it would turn into a Nintendo 64 game at some point, but that didn't pan out. I think if I were to ever write a book, it would have to be a book about overcoming adversity because that's probably the only thing I feel like I know enough about to put together an actual "book." That, or Reality TV Mormons, as I am the world's leading expert on the matter.

Getting rejected so much sucks, don't get me wrong. But I do believe that it has taught me some valuable lessons about self-esteem and provided enough mental ammunition for me to keep trying when the times have been tough. Allow me to illustrate:

My entire department got laid off at Allstate, almost a year to this date. Facebook will remind me of the one-year anniversary any day now. There were a couple good things to come from that:

• I didn't like working in insurance. Boom. Done. Escape route.
• We were given a really good severance package. Boom. Done. Three-month paid vacation.
• They gave us Cafe Rio after they told us that we were no longer employed. We all refused to eat it, out of bitterness, at first, but we eventually gave in. Boom. Done. Free lunch.
• And they set us up with a free job hunting seminar. I can't remember what they called it. Something like an "employment transition workshop," I think.

I reluctantly went to the seminar (I didn't want to admit that I needed help finding a new job), but I'm glad that I did. It helped me realize that sometimes in life I am not the problem. That's not always a good or a healthy thing to think, because sometimes I probably am the problem. But in that case, getting laid off, I was not the problem. There was nothing that I, personally, could have done to prevent it.

Their words, not mine

I would hope that I was not the problem with this most recent failure in the workplace. I felt like I gave a really good interview for this writing position. I've been doing really well at my job recently, even being nominated by my peers and selected by management to fly out to our corporate headquarters in New Jersey next month. I was confident - yet humble, after getting turned down for the social media job that I thought they'd be stupid not to hire me for - so I went in with reasonably low expectations, but (let's be honest) I expected to get the job. I gave well thought-out responses, often prompting the interviewers to remark, "Great answer!" with the accompanying head bob and note-taking. I had wanted this particular job since I first heard about it, probably 6 months ago. I had always hoped that there would be another opening (or one like it) because, as I told them in the interview, it was in a position like this one where I could A) obtain the most personal growth and B) most help the company with my talents. I really wanted this job. Alas, they ended up choosing some girl neither I nor my supervisor had ever seen or heard of.

Here's the "constructive" feedback they gave me about my interview:

• They thought that I could have given a better answer for one particular question they asked.
• "Garbage," I say, because it was one of those questions where the interviewer is looking for a specific answer and they expect you to read their mind. I gave a good answer, I thought, and, when they told me what they had hoped that I would say, I agreed with them, told them that I understood why they'd say that and even gave them an example of their reasoning that I had mentioned in the episode of "Survivor" that I had watched the night before.
• They didn't think I was passionate enough about the position.
• "Inconceivable," I scream, because I remember at least twice during that interview when I told them that this was the job I had wanted for months. I told them that I hadn't applied for other jobs (that they pretty much hire anyone to do) because I always hoped they'd have another opening. I told them that I didn't care about a difference in pay or room to grow into a supervisor because that was what I wanted to be doing for our company.

Bouncing back: some words of encouragement

So I'm pretty upset, I'm pretty frustrated and I'm pretty disappointed. "Disrespected" was a word that came to mind earlier today. Now the question is: how do I bounce back from this? How do I keep my chin up and keep moving forward after being shut down in my two areas of expertise, knowing that, if they didn't hire me this time around, I may not ever be hired for these types of positions at this particular company?

Start looking for another job.

Yeah, maybe.

But in the meantime, what words of comfort can I use to console myself and to remind myself that, in this case (I am pretty sure), I am not the problem?

I have always loved this quote by Marvin J. Ashton, which he gave in a talk to single members of the Church in 1992:

Set your goals—without goals you can’t measure your progress. But don’t become frustrated if the victories don’t come quickly or easily. Remind yourself that striving can be more important than arriving. If you are striving for excellence—if you are trying your best day by day with the wisest use of your time and energy to reach realistic goals—you are a success, and you can feel proud of your accomplishments. [Italics added]

I also really appreciated a story by Dallin H. Oaks that I read in a new(ish) book compiled for young adults called We're With You. Elder Oaks talks about how he had a plan for his life that didn't quite end up the way he envisioned. He talks about how he had planned to serve a mission, which he couldn't because he was called away to war. He came home and got married, then figured that he and his wife would serve a mission later in life. That didn't happen as planned either because he was appointed as a Supreme Court Justice. He planned to serve there for 20 years or so and then serve a couples mission, but he was called to be a general authority just four years into that career. Then, suddenly, his wife passed away, which, of course was not something he had foreseen. He later remarried and is currently surviving (for life) as an Apostle. Says Elder Oaks:

How fundamentally different my life is than I had sought to plan! My professional life has changed. My personal life has changed. But the commitment I made to the Lord - to put Him first in my life and to be ready for whatever He would have me do - has carried me through these changes of eternal importance.

And another, just a few pages later, from D. Todd Christopherson:

The very details of our lives are of importance to God. He cares about all of it - words, works, even thoughts. His interest and love are infinite in this way, and He will respond to our hopes and pleadings and help us in everything, including matters that seem unimportant or insignificant to others or even to ourselves.

That's some good stuff.

Peter-peter-peter-peter... Quincy-quincy-quincy-quincy...

Anyway, I don't know why I felt like blogging about my little disappointment today. I don't know why I felt like sharing these personal thoughts with you people, most of whom barely even talk to me on a weekly basis. But I hope that if there is somebody else out there that is struggling with self-worth or needs a little motivation that you can take it from me - that you do matter, that you are awesome and that you can do it! It might not happen today. It might not happen tomorrow. It might not happen for seven years or maybe even longer. But don't give up on yourself. Hang in there. In the immortal words of Peter Quincy Taggart, "Never give up! Never surrender!"


One of these days, somebody is going to recognize my greatness, and that will be a glorious day. A glorious day, indeed. But until then, I think I'll go make myself a delicious Totino's pizza. Excuse me.

TO BE CONTINUED