I was driving home the other day and the thought of pride came to mind (big thoughts to end a day, I know). I started to laugh, 1) because I was racking my brain about as big of a concept as it gets at the end of a long day, and 2) I have an unshakable memory about pride from my playing career. This memory is such a great example of the marriage of high caliber character qualities and blatant tomfoolery of the baseball world.
When I first got to USD, we had a hitting coach that instilled a round of our batting practice on the field called the “Pride Round.” The idea was that you get four swings and we were to evaluate the result of our fourth swing. If it was a quality, “hard contact” we earned another swing and could stay in the batters box until we had an unfavorable result. We had to have pride in our work.
School is in session.
Naturally, you can see the dynamic this created. With five hitters in a group, you’ve got four other idiots standing around the “turtle” (portable batting net that’s rolled around home plate) cross checking your interpretation of which hits were worthy of winning another swing or not.
“Get out! Have some PRIDE!” came from around the cage with laughter as hitters crush balls on a line into the gap.
Soon our sense of pride (along with the fun of the joke) turned the Pride Round into a game of seeing how well you could hit a ball and still choose to end your turn because it wasn’t good enough.
The result? Fun, aggressive swings that drove balls out of the ballpark weren’t good enough for our sense of pride. And, so the memory goes.
Though this was a joke-like example, I guess I’m realizing that this is how I view everything I do. When you’re guided by idealism two things happen:
- You disappointingly miss your goals.. every time.
- Everything you do is great.
Think about that. If you are confident enough to endure the honesty of #1, you can enjoy the results of #2 in anything you choose to do. There isn’t a greater perspective that I could share with you, and I could only hope that you take it on.
“Have some pride.”
Logan Gelbrich
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Monday’s Workout:
4 rounds for time of:
10 Back Squats (155/105)
400m Run
