Inspired Living

Keep Pitching

I love baseball. It’s my favorite sport. My favorite time of the year extends from March to November, the full length of the baseball season. A couple of years ago I visited Cooperstown, the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was in heaven.

This passion for baseball began when I was 7 years old and saw Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals hit a home run and beat the Giants in extra innings. Ever since then, I have been an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan.

What I most love about baseball are the statistics and the stories. One of my favorite baseball stories is the tale of Tommy John, who always kept pitching. Tommy John pitched for 26 seasons in the majors. When he started, Kennedy was president, and in his final year, George H. W. Bush was leading the country. It’s an almost superhuman accomplishment to pitch that long. He gave every ounce of effort and energy he had to make it happen.

In the middle of the 1974 season, Tommy John blew out his arm, permanently damaging the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow. Up until this point in baseball and sports medicine, when a pitcher blew out his arm like this, that was it. They called it a “dead arm” injury. The game was over.

Tommy John wouldn’t accept that. What could he do to keep pitching? The doctors suggested an experimental surgery in which they would try to replace the ligaments in his pitching elbow with a tendon from his other arm. Tommy could have retired. But there was a one in 100 chance. With rehab and training, the opportunity was partially in his control. He took it — and won 164 more games over the next 13 seasons. That procedure is now famously known as “Tommy John surgery.”

Sports psychologists recently did a study of elite athletes who were struck with some adversity or serious injury. Initially each reported feeling isolation, emotional disruption and doubts about their athletic ability. Yet afterward, each reported gaining a desire to help others, additional perspective and realization of their own strengths. Every fear and doubt they felt during the injury turned into greater abilities in those exact areas.

It’s a powerful idea. Psychologists call it adversarial growth or posttraumatic growth. The slogan used is, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

In 1988, Tommy John’s baseball career seemed to be finally over. At age 45, he was cut by the Yankees at the end of the season. He would not accept it. He showed up at spring training. Everyone said he shouldn’t be playing baseball at his age. But the baseball officials promised to give him one more look.

So Tommy John reported to camp and trained many hours a day. He made the team as the oldest player in the game. He started the season opener and won, giving up a scant two runs over seven innings on the road at Minnesota.

The things that Tommy John could change, when he had a chance, got a full 100 percent of the effort he could muster. He used to tell coaches that he would die on the field before he quit. He knew it was his job to parse the difference between the unlikely and the impossible.

Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can’t actually influence is wasted in self-indulgence and self-destruction. So much of our power is gritted away in this manner.

To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway — that is also a choice. A choice that is up to us: to keep pitching.

Bob Mueller is a Bishop of the United Catholic Church. bobmueller.org

Today's Transitions Spring 2024 | By Bob Mueller