Pick a Player Up

My 16 year old brother flew into Atlanta a few weeks back, and my life was temporarily consumed by what I will call “athlete drama”. He plays little league baseball for a travel team and was part of a week long world series. During the series of games, I learned a lot about baseball. Things I completely missed while focused on getting cute in blue and red for a Braves game or hanging out in the upper deck Chop House. Keeping up with the ones you love requires more focus that knowing just the score and current inning. In fact, I downloaded an app to get a better understanding. Yes, they have an app for everything.

Game Changer the App

One concept of the game really stuck out to me. It’s the idea of being “picked up” by your teammates. It is defined as below.

pick me up link here.

When one player makes a mistake or fails to do something he tried to do, he may ask another, "Pick me up." Or said in praise of his offensive teammates by a pitcher who allowed more runs than he wished: "The guys picked me up with a lot of runs today. I'll have to improve on that outing and get better."^[5] "I just told him, 'Great win for us and thanks for picking me up,' Jones said. Jones had inherited a three-run lead for the ninth -- and allowed four runs to put the Tigers a run down. But with one out in the Tigers' ninth, and with runners on first and second, Cabrera ripped the first pitch from left-handed closer Brian Fuentes far up the rightfield gap."^[6]

This really “hit home” for me because I am making big decisions in my life and not all of them have been the right ones. In the throes of my consequences, being picked up has been essential. I am hoping to find my way, and support is the only way I survive. For the past 6 months I have been consumed by applying to graduate school. It is a very right now process, and I have self-inflicted a great deal of stress in my life. In  asking myself the tough questions, I am sometimes at a stand still.

The tough questions:

What is it that I really want to do? How can I make a difference? What is my purpose? How can I use my experience to achieve my goals?

I could go further into the positions, statistics, or rules and how they all play a part, but I choose to focus on my team. Whether it be my family, friends, GMAT tutor, life coach, or insurance agent, I am surrounding myself who have a common goal to win (succeed) in life. By focusing on improving and contributing to my team, I know that beyond the tough questions is an awesome and fulfilling existence.

My close quote: “Everyone has something interesting about them, something beautiful about them.  And you have to figure out what that is. The thing that they’re really, really passionate about” -Matt Mullenweg founder of WordPress – Found in PandoMonthly Fireside Chat here.