Sunday Sneak Preview II

I’m pretty excited about this. I am very much still writing this book, but I want you to be excited about it too. So I’m offering up a sneak preview of the very first chapter “Play Ball!” to give you a better feel for what this book is going to be like (except for the fact that it will be much longer . . . quite possibly ridiculously long).

So, without further ado and with appreciation for the ado already behind us, here is a sneak preview of Chapter 1 of Diamond in the Rough: The Gospel According to Baseball . . . in print AND audio forms (yes, I know, it’s exciting).

Chapter 1: Play Ball!

In baseball, play is mandatory. There’s no escaping the obligation to play. You can live and breathe the game. You can bleed Cubbie blue or see Cardinal Red or sneeze Yankee pinstripes, but when the game commences, you are required by rule to play.

I’m not kidding. Each game officially begins when the big, bad masked umpire bellows, “Play ball,” not by tradition only but according to the rules of the game up to the highest level. Can we stop and think about this for a minute? The rules of baseball—of Major League Baseball—dictate that the person in charge, the one presiding over the action, ensuring all the rules are followed, and arbiting every single judgment call must henceforth command everyone involved to . . . PLAY. The official rule (5.01 At the time set for beginning the game the umpire shall call “Play.”) specifically states this must happen (the rulebook omits the “ball” portion of the imperative, but tradition encourages the ump to be specific about the nature of play they’re expecting). 

The umpires have their own union. They have well-negotiated rights about what they can and cannot be forced to do, but demanding all parties involved absolutely must play is not up for negotiation. Every single time we gather to play, we shall be reminded of this essential code of conduct. We are not here to work (though we work hard). We are not here to compete (we definitely do). We are not here to fraternize (but we will, even though the rules expressly forbid it). We. are. here. to. PLAY. 

Now, I know it’s painfully obvious that baseball players (note the name) do in fact play. But I want to be careful not to ignore the most obvious thing about baseball when setting out to apply the rules of the game to life outside the diamond. If I am to live the way I play baseball, then it is mandatory that I always, always, always play.

Or, I suppose, I should say I must always play ball. Because it’s not enough just to play in general. A life of play in the spirit of any old game might be spent in lackadaisical, lighthearted, aimless frivolity. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m somewhat of an expert at always playing, so following this rule absent any other stipulation would be no challenge and hardly worth setting before me. But I have, at times, found myself in desperate need of more specific self-direction. A life of play in the fashion of baseball is driven by purpose, passion, drive, and ferocity. Playing ball requires not only a sense of fun but a supreme focus as well. The baseball player dedicates the entirety of their consciousness, their will, and their effort to every portion of the game in which they are involved. Rather than expending their supply of joy and energy, however, a baseball player’s efforts multiply their riches to create joy and energy in abundance. To play at life the way we play baseball is to enjoy every second, every blade of grass bent under your feet, and each cheer and jeer from our fans and our detractors no matter the circumstances or the score. Real-life play is to sprint through every mundane detail on the way to successful completion of a task the way you would revel in every last excruciating step of an inside-the-park home run.

Not every home run, of course, requires a sprint. The big flies—the ones that leave the yard—allow us to take a victory lap and to bask in the medley of adulation, scorn, and pride in a job well done. That kind of play has its place in life too. (More on all of this, later.) And the games themselves are not all there is to baseball. Professional baseball players practice and prepare and strategize and recover and evaluate their efforts. It isn’t all fun. For every game, there is an ice bath, and for every walk-off celebration there’s a heartbreaking collapse. But every last bit of it, whether sprinting or trotting, spraying champagne or tossing back whiskey, taking infield practice or batting with the bases loaded . . . it’s all dedicated to the act of playing ball.

When it’s not ball you’re playing, but life . . . well, for one thing you might not get to use a bat. But you can bring the same playful yet intense purpose to any undertaking that you would to hitting a ball, be it base, soft, or whiffle. The question that remains is, how?

To consider how you might make playing ball a precept for living, let’s first consider what constitutes play in the spirit of baseball.

Play is fun.

I’ve always felt a certain defensiveness when I use the word fun as though I needed to justify having it outside of its designated time slots: recess, vacations, or “after you clean your room.” It’s like a generic authority figure lives rent-free in my mind, casting looks of dismay in my direction any time I get off task. As a prototypical Gen-Xer, I’m both happy and obliged to defy this authority figure, I assure you. Nevertheless, the expectation of an explanation still flares quietly in the background whenever fun appears to be the only goal. And lest you wonder as you read this paragraph and this book if the call to play is in any way an invitation to abdicate responsibility or urgency, let me remind you of a crucial distinction you might find helpful when your own internal authority figure side eyes you from the corner of your consciousness:

Play is not a category of fun activities. It’s an attitude that involves having fun doing the things you’re doing. There is no activity that is fun independent of the mindset you bring to it. I’m sure you can remember doing something that should have been fun, something that in most cases would have been fun, but for whatever reason was anything but.

I’ll never know if I liked the movie Reality Bites. I distinctly remember watching the film with about ten friends. While I don’t remember the exact details (I may have been or at least felt like the only one in the group who wasn’t dating anyone at the time) what I’ll never forget is the absolutely sour mood I was in. Like so many other movies in the ‘90s, it had a phenomenal soundtrack that I of course owned before even seeing the movie. The cast was stellar. In addition to the indefinably hot Winona Ryder, it featured two actors (Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawke)  I had been told by multiple people that I looked just like. I didn’t really see the Stiller thing, but I had Ethan Hawke hair at the time, so that made sense. But heading into a soundtrack-driven movie about a beautiful girl choosing between professional me and slacker me, I expected to love it. 

But I’ll never know, because my attitude sucked the day I watched it. I was really mad at someone, and we definitely spent a large portion of the movie bickering. I don’t know that anyone there could have enjoyed it all that much. Whatever I was doing that day, it wasn’t play. I had broken rule 5.01. The umpire shouted, “Play,” and I grunted, “Not today, Blue.” What a wasted afternoon. (I’m sorry, Winona.)

Play isn’t determined by what you do but by how you do it. Tell your internal work narc to take off. Besides, you’re not just playing. You’re playing ball. You’re engaging in the task at hand. You are following the rules, doing what you’re told, and chasing the objective. You are also, if the spirit of baseball is stirring within you, having fun.

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Play is voluntary.

Yes, I know the umpire mandates play at the outset, but the players aren’t forced to be there. This is a conditional mandate. If you are to enter the field of play, if you are to join the game, if you are to be considered one of us . . . you must play. Baseball isn’t a job you do, it’s a game you play. That is the point. Set aside from your mind the fact that you’re contractually obligated to be in the lineup (Can you imagine? What a dream!) and focus on the fact that you get to play.

Once again, I remind you that play is a mindset. What you are doing may be 100% mandatory and inevitable. You may have no choice but to do it. But whether you are filing your taxes or staring death in the face or encountering some other certainty Ben Franklin forgot to mention,, how you approach it is up to you. 

You don’t have to do any of this. You aren’t required to explore a life lived the way baseball is played. You don’t have to read another line in this book. Playing is not necessary. If, however, you choose to play your life away, you’ll find that even mandatory tasks can become things you decide to do in your way. You take out the garbage cans because you have to; you moonwalk while doing it because you decided to play.

This next illustration of what I mean comes with a warning, but I’ll save it until the end. Tom Sawyer convinced a whole host of his friends and neighbors and passersby to line up for their turns to whitewash the fence his Aunt Polly told him to finish.Tom had to paint it; everyone else got to. While most readers and teachers will say the point of this story was Tom’s lazy/entrepreneurial cleverness and people’s gullibility, there’s a simpler lesson: Tom could have had fun whitewashing the fence himself. It would have made for a crappy story, no question, but the possibility for a brand of fun that didn’t involve manipulation (of others anyway) was right there for him. Instead of playing other people for fools, he could have played ball and just had fun whitewashing the fence.

Okay, here’s the warning: don’t let your own personal Tom Sawyer (your boss, your boss’s boss, or your boss’s boss’s boss, or that dude who thinks he can become your boss if he fakes it ‘til he makes it, for example) coerce you into thinking you should work longer hours, take on additional responsibilities, or ignore an insulting raise (or the lack thereof) strictly for your love of this job (you should be grateful you even get to work here) or your commitment to “the team” (I mean, you’re a baseball fan, right? Ha, ha, ha, PUKE). The decision to play is for you. I encourage you—the spirit of baseball compels you—to approach every job as if it’s something you get to do in a style that is uniquely yours.This will help your sense of joy and your mental health. The minute it becomes a way for some person in power to extract more out of you while your guard is down is the moment it becomes a game designed for you to lose. Set boundaries. Play your game. Be grateful for the opportunity to do what you do, but don’t lose sight of the truth that you deserve that opportunity. Your name is on the lineup card for a reason. 

Play is Unscripted

Baseball is an adventure. It has a ton of rules, and they can be very specific. The rules for pitching, especially with runners on base, have always been more mind-numbingly anal than I could ever understand, and, after the rule changes of 2023, they’re even worse.(Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to use pitch clocks.) But within that intricate network of rules lies an infinite trail of possibilities that never get repeated in the same way from game to game, from season to season, or from generation to generation. To play ball is to do something new every time in a way only you can choose to do it.

Play begins with the pitcher standing in the same prescribed spot (with some latitude along the pitching rubber), facing a catcher and a batter in their well-defined boxes, knowing there is no other option but to pitch the ball. But where exactly? How fast? With what spin and from what arm angle? How long should each stop in the windup take, and for how long can the baseball be concealed from the batter’s sight? All of these questions and more must be answered by opposing pitchers hundreds of times a game. Batters, baserunners, position players, coaches, managers, even teammates on the bench all possess the freedom to toy with a million little variables in the way they go about the business of play.

You might think that I, as a writer, enjoy that same kind of freedom every time I sit at a keyboard or put a pen to paper. Obviously, people in creative roles in creative fields have a much easier time seeing the playful, adventurous, free nature of their work than would a person mopping a floor, flipping a burger, swinging a hammer, or entering numbers into cells of a spreadsheet, right? Not necessarily. Not this writer.

I spent many years working for a college in Chicago writing fundraising letters, among other things. I faced the same challenge in that job as you would in any marketing, sales, or any other business role in which your tasks, however creative, are repeated on a regular basis. That challenge is having to say the same thing over and over and over again while making it sound fresh and new. The audience might change and the circumstances may vary, but the core message is on repeat. As a writer, I have often arranged words in brand new ways and felt like I was doing the exact same thing I had done the week before. Without a spirit of play, it is entirely possible to create new things in the same old boring way. And you can spend your life doing that.

Work very often follows a script. Businesses run on systems. Days follow routines, and routines turn into ruts. I think the difference between work and play, in this regard, is that we understand work tasks will by their very nature need to be repeated. I’m doing this thing until the purpose for which I’m doing it again requires that action to be repeated. When we play, we can be going through the exact same motions, but the sense of why we’re doing it takes on an entirely different energy. When I play, I’m doing this thing for the sake of doing it and enjoying it. For all I know, I may never get to do it again, so I better make this one count. 

Any act, be it entirely creative or incessantly mundane, can be achieved through play in a way that makes it new, vibrant, and original—not because the task itself or the work it produces is necessarily different, but because you are. You make your experience what it is simply by being a part of it. The fact of the matter is, the results produced by a person who is just working might turn out exactly the same as that of a person who plays through the work. But the joy, the experience, the spirit you feel when you play ball at whatever you do? You ensure that for yourself, whether or not it shines through in your work, in your relationships, or in your leisure activities.

But you know it will shine through, right? You can tell when the person making dinner is playing. You can see it on the plate when the food is served. You can feel the joy at play in the hearts of everyone involved the second you walk in a room. A person at play is fun to be around. A family at play enjoys each other’s company. A person isolated in play appreciates every last silent moment, and the next person to encounter them will instantly recognize the difference.

Play yields results . . . but that’s not why we do it.

Okay, that’s it! I’m headed back to work on more, but please . . . let me know what you think!