Do what you can and trust your team. We learned that last week.
Boy we had a blast at out baseball tournament last week. Our boys showed a lot of determination, integrity, and ingenuity. They even trusted their coaches.
On our first day of the tournament, we lost two games. One was close, the other we got mercy-ruled. On the next day of pool play we won both games. Decisively! Going into bracket play then we had a 2-2 record, but with 25 runs scored in the previous day's play, we got a second seed.
What got us there was doing what we could do. We don't have a lot home run hitters. We have a few boys that hit triples and doubles. But on Thursday, when everyone got up to the plate to swing, they tried to drive the ball over the fence. Being all tight and primed for power, they lost speed and agility on the swing. On Friday, we told the kids, to stop trying so hard to hit the ball over the fence and just get on base. Somewhere, maybe one of the kids, said, "yeah, jack a single". And that became the rallying cry of the weekend. "Jack a single."
With that philosophy, our kids got on base, and even hit a few homers. Down 11-4 in the fourth inning on our first bracket play game, one of our boys jacked a home run when the bases were loaded with kids who all jacked a single. Then two more kids got on base, and another boy jacked a 3-run homer. We were tied. Going into extra innings, our pitching shut down the other team. In the bottom of the eighth, we get on first. Another jacked single. Our next batter at a 3-2 count gets a hold of the ball and drives in the winning run. All because we were jacking singles.
Sometimes we want to see our boys be stellar. For them to stand out among the rest by dazzling us. But these boys accomplished all that, by taking the skills they had, trusting each other to knock them around the bases, and to do what they could do. No one needed to be the star. They all did it together. Just hitting base hits rounding the bags.
For us adults, there seems to be a valuable lesson here: do what you can and trust your team, your friends, and your family to share the burden and help make the most of every little contribution. We don't need to do it all, all by ourselves. We have a team. And we if ever think we don't have a team, that we're in this life all alone, just look around, there are others looking to join and share the burdens and jack some singles together.
