Going 0 for 3
Okay, this may seem like a cop-out since I'm basically just copying and pasting an editorial I wrote back in the days of Your Village News. However I was reading through some of the articles that I have clipped and kept in a scrapbook and was struck by just how much I enjoyed this particular piece. (I know, it's that egomaniac side of myself that I referred to in my last entry showing through.)
Then the other day I saw an ad featuring some Major League Baseball player (might have been Justin Morneau but it was definitely one of the Minnesota Twins) talking about how he struck out 178 times (or something like that) and sometimes felt like quitting. Instead, he persevered and ended up setting a club record for home runs last season.
Anyways, I decided to print the editorial here (and since I've since heard that Your Village News is no more and since I'm making not dime one off publishing it here, I think I'm okay to do so) even if just so anyone who never got a chance to read my stuff in YVN can do so.
Warning: It's about baseball... but not really.
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O for 3.
For the average baseball player, going 0 for 3 in a game is a disappointing day.
On April 15th, 1947, Jackie Robinson went 0 for 3 against the Boston Braves in his Major League debut for the Brookyln Dodgers.
Over the course of 151 games during the rest of the season, Robinson rebounded from those first three hitless at-bats to hit .297, and led the league in stolen bases. Both of those stats helped propel Robinson to the first National League Rookie of the Year.
There’s a lesson to be learned from that story alone. All too often, the old adage of “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” has been replaced by “if at first you don’t succeed, cut your losses and give up”. Robinson wasn’t discouraged by his first day in the Majors and went on to have a fine season.
But Robinson wasn’t a typical ballplayer in 1947 and his major league debut wasn’t at all similar to the other players who were called up to “the bigs” that year. When Robinson took the field on that April day sixty years ago, he wasn’t just beginning a great baseball career.
Of course, everyone knows that Robinson’s major league debut broke baseball’s colour barrier. The fact that Robinson went hitless in his first is a statistic that has been mostly lost to history. What people remember is what those three at-bats represented. And maybe there is something we can still learn from Jackie Robinson’s first day in Major League Baseball.
He may have walked back to the dugout after each at-bat having failed in his attempts to get his first major league hit, but with each trip to the plate, he succeeded in doing his part to change the world.
Nearly everyone in the stadium wanted Robinson to fail, not simply in those three at-bats but in the game itself. Through the 1947 season, he had to deal with racial taunts, brush back pitches and unfair play. He received hate mail and death threats.
But, just as he rebounded from that 0-3 day, Robinson persevered and had a successful 10-year career in the Majors. He was a six-time All-Star, an MVP and batting champion in 1949 and hit .311 with 137 home runs and 197 stolen bases.
But more than that, Robinson opened the doors for other African Americans to take their rightful place on the rosters of Major League Baseball Teams, beginning with Larry Dobie of the Cleveland Indians, later in the 1947 season.
All too often, people look only at the results of an undertaking, and not the effort that went into it and the long-range success that may come from the minor failings. Jackie Robinson accomplished more simply by walking from the dugout to the plate on that first day, than he would have had he hit a home run.
Sometimes you must take a look at the bigger picture to see that sometimes, just having the courage to try something is a bigger accomplishment than the tangible results.
Sixty years later, the legacy of Jackie Robinson continues.
