Baseball, Anchors, and Standards…

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”  This old popular “proverb” indicates that with a lack of moral or intellectual structure, such as clear standards of rightness, you can become vulnerable to every passing fad, lie, or con artist. It seems like this is becoming an ever increasing number of people these days.  Without such structure you can be easily swayed, i.e. pushed about, compromising your integrity within your community contributing to making poor decisions or get taken advantage of.

Another analogy is that of a boat or ship.  You don’t just “park” a ship on the ocean, the wind and the waves will cause it to drift, and drift it will without an anchor.  The anchor and chain keep the ship in the desired vicinity regardless of all but the most extreme wind or wave action.  

The bottom line is that having principles that you 1) firmly believe, 2) are embraced as a normal part of your life, 3) with which you are united and use to anchor your life, and 4) can consciously choose to adhere to, gives you stability and resistance to manipulation.  

Often, however, we humans can tend to find such principles to be difficult, comfort zone encroaching, or just plain undesired.  We humans tend to alter such standards so that we can have “custom tailored principles” that allow us to do as we please.  Many  usr such “custom tailored principles” as an excuse for NOT adhering to the principles that once were standard.

I came across a story in my reading that I want to share.  It was a story told by a baseball coach to a crowd of some 4000 coaches.  He walked onto the stage with a baseball home plate tied around his neck like a medallion.  He asked “do we have any Little League coaches in the audience?” A small number of hands went up.  He then asked, “do any of you know how wide home plate is in Little League?” A lone voice haltingly offered, “seventeen inches?”  “That’s right” the coach said.

He then asked for high school baseball coaches to respond and a larger number indicated that they coached high school baseball.  He asked them, “how wide is home plate in high school?  “Seventeen inches” someone responded.  “You’re right” the coach again acknowledged.

“How about college coaches?”  About half the room indicated they were college baseball coaches.  “Well, how wide is home plate college baseball?”  “Seventeen inches” the crowed yelled back in unison.  “That’s right” the coach said.

Changing his focus the coach asked “Back in Babe Ruth’s day, how wide was home plate?”  After a pause someone sheepishly yelled out “seventeen inches?”  “That’s correct” the coach responded.

He then asked “what would a Major League Baseball team would do if a big-league pitcher couldn’t throw a ball over a seventeen-inch home plate?”  He answered his own question, “they would send him down to the minor-leagues to develop his skills, or they would just outright fire him. They would never say ‘that’s alright buddy, if you can’t throw a baseball over a seventeen-inch target we’ll make the target bigger for you – maybe we’ll widen it to nineteen or twenty inches so it will be easier for you; and if that is not enough we’ll make it twenty-five inches wide’.”

He then asked a question, “what would you do if your best player consistently violated team standards regarding curfew, substance abuse, professionalism, ethics?  Would you hold those players accountable or would you widen home plate for them in order to meet the new standards that they are setting?”

The coach took the home plate hanging from his neck and turned it around to draw on it with a large black poster marker.  He then turned the plate around to show the audience a simple stick figure drawing of a house with a door and two windows.  He then said: “the problem with most homes today–and with many organizations–is people haven’t created and enforced standards.  We no longer teach our children, players, employees, or our members accountability.  It is so much easier for parents, managers, and executive directors to just simply widen the plate!”

“Today there are no consequences when people fail to meet standards.”  He picked up the home plate again and turned it around to continue marking as he spoke.  “Let’s face it,” he said, “we’ve lowered standards in education.” He drew on the plate with his marker.  “Has widening the plate helped our schools?  We’ve changed the standards in some religions.” He again drew on the plate.  “Has widening the plate helped our churches?  We have lowered the standards across the government.” Again he marked.  “Has widening the plate made our governments better?”

He then turned the plate around for the audience to see.  It was completely blackened out from his markings.  “When we fail to hold ourselves, our children, our players or our employees accountable to any standards then our future is indeed dark.”

Holding to a standard – a benchmark, a model, a level of quality, a principle or rule – requires exertion.  It requires some level of effort, energy, and even skill, and standards are (generally) only achieved through failure.  Think about it for a moment.  If the standard is to do X, then you have to learn about X, learn how to perform X, you ALSO HAVE TO MISS THE MARK so that you may learn how NOT to do X.  Learning and holding to a standard is somewhat difficult.  

It is much easier, requires less effort, energy or skill to just widen the plate by changing the standard rather than expecting the excellence required to live up to the standard.  It is easier to watch a standard be missed than it is to correct it.  It is more comfortable to ignore a problem than to correct it to adhere to an expected standard.  But this leads to the obliteration of the standard rather than to the elevation TO the standard.

And if you don’t even have a standard then, the opening adage applies: “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”  To rise to excellence you must know the standard, adhere to the standard, live the standard and enforce the standard.  You will then be closer to the standard than if you widen the plate to obliterate it.

Figure out what you stand for, adhere to that standard, live the standard and learn from your mistakes constantly trying to elevate your performance to your standard.