Step Up to the Plate . . . NOW

Editor’s Note: I’m probably going to take a few days off from Substack heading into Father’s Day weekend (free preview through Saturday). I’ll return with full vigor on Monday, but for now, I wanted to give you another glimpse into what I’ve been writing for my book.

Step up to the plate. It’s not optional.

Clichés come in two forms: there’s the type that isn’t true—too simple, reductive, archaic, ridiculous, narrow-minded, provincial . . . you get the feeling they caught on because they were catchy. It takes one to know one. Simple as pie. It’s always the last place you look. (Well, of course it’s the last place you look; you stop looking after you find it.) What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Then there’s the type of cliché that became popular because it was absolutely the perfect way to phrase an idea, the best metaphor imaginable, so much so that it comes to mind by instinct without the slightest bit of conscious thought. And that’s the problem with a cliché when it’s true. We don’t even think about it when we really need to think about it.

Step up to the plate is one of those clichés that is one-hundred percent true, but we render it simplistic to the point of uselessness when we ignore its context. We say, “step up to the plate,” to mean it’s time to face a challenge or to take advantage of an opportunity or however we might choose to frame it. And that is what it means to step up to the plate, but there’s one problem that misses the point altogether:

We use Step up to the plate like it’s a choice. It’s not. Not at all.

In baseball, when it’s your turn to bat, it’s your turn to bat. Sure, in basketball, football, hockey, and soccer, you can pass the ball to someone else. In basketball, you can decide you don’t have a good look or the matchup isn’t favorable or you’re not feeling it; that’s okay, someone else can take a shot. In football, the person with the ball often has the option of passing to someone else, running the ball forward, running/throwing it out of bounds and trying again right away. If I’m playing soccer, I can get rid of the ball whenever I want—I could do the same with the puck in hockey if I knew how to skate. In golf, the entire game is up to you, a senseless myth that makes it the perfect metaphor not for life but for late-stage capitalism. But even in golf, you choose when you swing. The ball is stationary. 

But when it’s your turn in baseball, you have no choice. You don’t even have the ball—on offense, no less! You must stand in the batter’s box while someone else holds the ball and pitches in your direction and, if you don’t swing, yet another person decides if the pitch was a strike or a ball. Your opinion doesn’t count. 

It won’t even be fair. The game is designed to put the person stepping up to the plate at a disadvantage. There is no game clock. The lifespan of a game is measured in the defense’s ability to get batters and runners out. 

It always happens. The defense in baseball, like the house in Vegas, always wins.

People tend to think about the sport as a battle of offenses—who will score more runs? But the nature of offense vs. defense in baseball is similar to man vs. beast in bull riding. The winner is the one who fends off defeat the longest. Offensive victories are memorable because they’re so relatively rare. Every inning of baseball is another bull ride. Unless it’s the final inning, both defenses will inevitably record three outs. The game will end when the winning team’s defense repeats that feat 9 times, also inevitable. The matter in question isn’t whether a defense can reach that goal; the question is, can they do it more efficiently than the other team’s defense? This is the environment in which you, a batter, step to the plate. You’re probably going to fail.

There is no minimum number of successes guaranteed to an offense in baseball, not even incremental ones. In every baseball game you play, there’s a decent chance you’ll score no runs and a very real albeit slim possibility no one on your team will even reach base safely. An offensive player can have a perfect day at the plate, but an entire team can have a perfect game on defense—that’s not really on the table for an offense.

On occasion, pitchers toss immaculate innings in which every pitch is a strike and the result of every at-bat is a three-pitch strikeout. There are no perfect innings for hitters—they all end either by virtue of three outs or because the remaining outs have been rendered moot by a score that has become final. 

When you step up to the plate, you face a losing proposition . . . but you dare to defy the odds.

Stepping up to the plate means taking your turn because the time has come. You must deal with the challenge hurtling toward you independent of your control. You cannot pass. You cannot wait. In this moment, you cannot transfer responsibility to anyone else. You may strike out. You may hit a homerun. You may get lucky. You may crush the ball directly into your opponent’s glove. You may approach the challenge in any way you see fit, but you have to do it now. In that there is no choice. 

In that sense, stepping up to the plate isn’t so much facing a challenge as it is fulfilling a responsibility. I wish I could say I look at things I absolutely need to do as though each one is my turn in the batting order—no second thoughts, no hesitation, just walk up there with a bat in my hands and take care of business. But throughout my life that hasn’t been the case. From mundane assignments to crucial deadlines, from the simplest of tasks to the toughest of conversations, I balk (to borrow another baseball term). I turn into Hamlet, obnoxiously overthinking the slings and arrows and watching outrageous fortune slip away as I ramble about it all in iambic pentameter. More plainly put, sometimes I know I have to do something, and I freeze. I just don’t do it. I turn into a spectator, hoping someone else will step up to the plate when it’s clearly my name in that spot in the scorebook.

I know how I want it to go, how I picture myself succeeding in life. In my head, it’s all very dramatic.

I remember standing in our living room on October 15, 1988. I was thirteen. The Dodgers and the A’s had just commenced the World Series and were about to conclude Game 1. The Cubs were four years removed from their last postseason trip and one year away from their next. I was old enough to form strong opinions about baseball and young enough for those opinions to be quite dumb. My stance on the matter was that if the Cubs weren’t in the World Series, that World Series deserved a boycott. So I refused to watch, as if my stubborn opposition could change reality (in truth, I didn’t even have the authority to change the channel). But I stood on the outskirts of our television’s viewing radius like a protestor without a picket sign, my heart hardened against what must have been a joyous occasion for the Californians cheering on their respective teams.

Little did I know my heart was about to melt . . . and then it would explode in the very best way a non-Cub victory could ever make it.

The Dodgers were down a run in the ninth, 4-3, and Dennis Eckersley (the very best closer in the game) was on the mound for the A’s. The game was over. Mike Davis was batting, and the pitcher’s spot was due up. Some guy named Dave Anderson was standing in the on-deck circle. Kirk Gibson, the soon-to-be-named NL MVP and the Dodgers’ only serious offensive threat, had injured both his left hamstring and his right knee in the NLCS against the Mets. He was hurt so badly he wasn’t even on the field for the pre-game introductions. So when Mike Davis drew a rare walk from the typically surefire Eckersley (who was probably pitching around Davis to get to an easier out), I still had zero emotional investment in the outcome of this game that may as well have been decided five minutes before.

And then I heard Vin Scully say, “And look who’s coming up!” above the televised thunder that was the crowd’s reaction to seeing Kirk Gibson hobble out of the home team’s dugout.

Okay. This thing just got interesting. I dropped the tough guy act and watched. Gibson could barely walk. In the regular season, he had stolen 31 bases—the guy could run. But on that particular night, Tommy LaSorda could have outraced him. As the at-bat unfolded, I should have been embarrassed for the guy, and I would have been if I weren’t such a giant sucker for this kind of thing. I may have been thirteen years old, but I was still an inch or two shy of five feet tall—I had always been short. I had always been shortchanged, overlooked, discounted, and dismissed as a shrimp. My favorite superhero was Underdog. So this guy who was broken from the waist down squaring off against the best relief pitcher in the game who just happened to be a former Cub in the deciding moment of the inaugural game of the World period Series period? Oh, he had a new fan in me that night.

Still, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Charles Barkley swing a golf club (it’s probably not all that different from how it would look if you put roller skates on a giraffe), but that’s pretty much what it looked like when Kirk Gibson tried to swing a bat without the full use of either of his legs. He worked the count to 3-2, managing to foul off one of the pitches with an exit velocity of about 12 mph.

He had squibbed it down the first base line and started to run, and it was horrifying. He could barely get out of the batter’s box. On the ball that sent the count to 3-2, Davis stole second base. He could, theoretically, score from second on a single, but that wouldn’t matter if Gibson couldn’t make it to first base. My heart sank a little bit watching him struggle. The slightest motion looked like anguish. There didn’t seem to be any possible way this would work out for the Dodgers. But . . . what if? 

What happened next prompted Jack Buck to proclaim, “I don’t believe what I just saw,” on the radio, but I didn’t hear that. To tell the truth, I don’t remember hearing the TV broadcast either. The 3-2 pitch tailed over the insight part of the plate, and Gibson sort of leaned away from it, then slung the bat along almost like a hammer throw . . .and he clobbered it. You knew the moment he hit it as the camera zoomed out and tilted up to show the fans standing in the outfield pavilion that a game-winning souvenir was headed their way. Then I saw Tommy LaSorda streaking out of the dugout with his arms held high as if he were being carried by his team and then Gibson, ambling awkwardly around the bases, pumping his fist repeatedly as he approached second base, and finally ushered in by his stampeding teammates back to the plate where his impossible at-bat had started nearly seven minutes prior to his triumphal entry into history.

It was Gibson’s only trip to the plate in the entire series. And it was enough. The Dodgers took the World Series 4 games to 1. I had transformed from disgruntled Cub fan to rapturous Dodger celebrant, and I was on the verge of tear-soaked glee.

We like to think of stepping up to the plate in life like we’re Kirk Gibson secretly telling Tommy LaSorda we’re ready to pinch hit in case he needs us. We’re ready, despite the excuses swelling up in our knees and hamstrings, to step up in the most critical moment of the biggest game against the strongest opposition and the harshest odds to deliver the most amazing outcome in the most dramatic fashion possible. For whatever reason, I’m waiting, but when the moment comes I’ll step up. 

But that’s a fantasy, isn’t it? I think life is probably a lot more like a Little League game, at least for me.

If you’ve been to enough kids baseball games, you’ve seen me out in the field personified by a ten year old. Every so often, there will be a kid who stands in the on-deck circle with the bat in his hands, the batting helmet on his head, and his feet set in the dirt like it’s cement that has dried while he waited. He’s frozen in fear, refusing to walk into the batter’s box. His coach comes over to encourage him to no avail. His parents approach the chain-link backstop sending fierce motivational whispers of urgency his way. 

It’s awkward for a moment that feels like an hour, but every person willing to be honest about it knows exactly what the kid is going through. We’ve all been there. I certainly have. 

Finally, somehow—maybe they hold him by the shoulders or caress him by the face—someone reaches him, locks eyes with him, and connects with him soul-to-soul to siphon just enough courage from their heart to his. He dislodges his frozen feet from the dirt’s icy grip, shuffles into his spot in the batter’s box, and possibly even hears the roar of applause emerging from the crowd of parents and friends who’ve been poised in anxious anticipation to support him through this moment. 

The true outcome of the at-bat will not be written in the scorebook, and it won’t be televised. On paper, you’ll probably see the letter K scrawled in pencil indicating he struck out. But that third strike will have been an insignificant footnote to the main story, even if it lacks the drama of a World-Series walkoff. At a time when the smallest demands felt like too much, he overcame paralyzing fear and stepped up to the plate.

That is what I must do. That is what we all must do, not just in the big moments, but every day. When the smartphone sings its siren song to beckon us away from the task at hand, we must resist. When we think about things that require no thought and get lost in the fears and fantasies that could be, we must face responsibility and determine what will be. We must not be spectators in our own game of life. Whether everything is on the line or everything seems too boring to trifle with, we need to recognize it’s our turn. We need to realize there are some people watching, cheering . . . standing. Summon the courage from their hearts to yours and step up to the plate. Come strikeout or glory, in your commitment to take a stand when it’s your turn, you will be victorious.