Next Pitch! A Life Lesson from Baseball

Standing 6’3", my friend’s son, a freshman, looked even taller on the pitching mound. He finished his warm-up tosses and toed the rubber to face his first batter. On the first pitch, the batter hit a dinky, little pop-up right back to him. One pitch, one out.

The second batter lifted the next pitch into foul territory just in front of the dugout where it was routinely caught by the first baseman. Two pitches. Two outs. A great start to the outing.

Then, as can happen so quickly in baseball (and life), the wheels came springing off! A soft, bloop single here, an error on a routine infield grounder there, a batter hit-by-pitch, a dropped pop-up to the same teammate that let the earlier grounder get loose, a bang-bang play at third after a run-down in which the runner was clearly out but called "safe" by Blue (the umpire), and...well...you get the picture. A full order of batters (uh, that’d be nine) and a handful of runs later, what started out too good to be true ended up almost too ugly to watch.

Except for the beauty of one thing—a kid’s emotionless calm in the midst of the storm. Not one time did my friend’s son ever express any disgust or frustration over things that were clearly disgusting and frustrating. Certainly, he must have felt it on the inside, but he never let it show. Not a shake or drop of the head, not a negative word or look to a teammate, not even a firing of the ball into his own glove to release the tension. Just a quiet calm as he stepped back onto the bump (mound) to make the next pitch. Then, the next one. And the next one.

The next pitch...that’s really what it’s about...the next pitch. It doesn’t matter what failure (or success) we’ve experienced on the previous play. It’s all about the next pitch. Sometimes things go smoothly, other times they don’t. Often, many things happen that are completely out of our control, things that disgust and frustrate. But, it’s all about the next pitch. Then, the next one. And then, and only then, the next one.

So, let’s think that in our minds today...next pitch....next pitch...next pitch.

Therefore if any person is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have ceased, and behold, all things are constantly new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)