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Baseballer Ted Williams and golfer Sam Snead--legends in their sport and heralded as masters of their swings--used to kid each other about whose job was the more difficult. Williams often declared, "Hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sport." In an article in Golf Digest, Williams recalled telling Snead that the golf ball is "just sitting there all pretty, snow white, smiling, teed up, everybody's quiet like a church." By contrast, he explained, baseball hitters face fastballs and curves from all angles with fans screaming. "Yeah, I know," said Snead, "but when we hit a foul ball, we got to go out and play it."
In 2003, Gary Mihoces of USA Today led an investigation to determine the "10 Hardest Things to Do in Sports." The study concluded that the ten most difficult things to do in sports, counting down to the most difficult, included skiing downhill at eighty to ninety miles per hour, stopping a soccer penalty kick, riding in the Tour de France, running a marathon, landing a quad in figure skating, returning a 130 mph tennis serve, hitting a golf ball long and straight, pole vaulting at heights in excess of fifteen feet, driving a race car at megaspeeds around a track without injury, and--with a nod to Ted Williams--hitting a baseball thrown at ninety miles per hour and beyond.
In The Physics of Baseball--a title that proves there's a publisher for nearly any book--retired Yale University professor Robert Adair observes that a fastball thrown at 95 to 100 mph reaches home plate in about four-tenths of one second. Four-tenths of one second. Since the batter takes about two-tenths of a second to swing the bat, he must commit to the swing when the ball is about halfway to the plate--having observed the sphere for about the same time it takes a man to voluntarily blink his eyes, the same time it takes a car's airbag to inflate. Midway through his swing, when the ball is about fifteen feet from the plate, the batter has little chance to adjust his aim. Which explains the difficulty of hitting a curve ball, since about half of a breaking pitch's deviation occurs in the final fifteen feet.
Patience, please; I'll get to the point in a moment. Consequently, major league batters--rather than react impulsively to the pitched ball--must instead largely mentally anticipate the trajectory, velocity, and placement of the pitch to successfully hit the baseball; while the pitcher, of course, attempts to confuse the batter's expectations. Little wonder, then, that ballplayers are paid millions of dollars to fail at the plate seven out of ten attempts. So, what's the point? Just this. Life, like batting a baseball, demands anticipation, intention, focus. Scripture describes this quality as "moral excellence" in 2 Peter 1:5. The ignoble will always win the battle of the impulse. May your purpose, your resolve, be secure. And don't swing at bad pitches. How might you describe the difference between "reactive" and "proactive"? How would you describe yourself? As reactive or proactive? How essential to a proactive life is a purpose, a theme, a creed, that transcends the mundane? How would you describe your purpose, your theme, your creed? |
