On flushing it and hitting your free throws

Opening Day is one of my favorite holidays of every year for a few reasons.  First, the Indians are still in the hunt.  Second, there are few things more beautiful than those pictures of gigantic American flags being rolled out in the outfield while grown men line up in their whites and grays to play a boy's game.  Third, because it makes me fall in love all over again with the most beautiful pastime there is.

Opening Day 2013 in the Cathedral of the Bronx

My earliest memories are from the baseball field in our side yard, and the majority of my most important moments have happened on this and other ballfields, other places of learning.  Learning how to wait on a curveball and how to read a fly ball off of the bat, learning how to round first base to stretch a single into a double, learning how to wear my socks at just the right length below the knee, learning how and when to use a takeout slide, and most importantly, learning that nobody is above failure.

Every coach that I have played for has understood that failure is part of the game.  My high school  coach used to tell us to Flush It whenever we came back into the dugout after really screwing up.  Not like if you hit a line drive that turned into an out, but rather times when you made an error, or threw to the wrong base, or got fooled by a bad pitch, or hung a curveball that got belted into the stratosphere.  When these mistakes happened, my coaches made me realize that either I could dwell on them and let them eat at me, or I could face up to what happened, figure out why I had made the error, understand that there was nothing I could do to take back the throw that I'd made into the third row, there was no way to get the ball back.  Flush and move on.

Young William with a Flush It play (but great calves) - June 2008

Like all lessons that you can learn from baseball (which is only a game because it couldn't be a philosophy), the ability to Flush It can be applied in every setting in the world, from school to romance to work to anything else, and as I reach what is the biggest turning point that I've faced so far in my life (going from college into the real world/childhood into adulthood/with a support system to on my own), I've found it useful to think about when I look back on the most recent phase of my life.  In my years at college I've screwed up academically, athletically, and socially (not necessarily in order of frequency or severity), and I've done it more times than I can count.  I've bailed on potential relationships because I've been afraid to commit, I've lacked interest in subject matter to the point where I bombed tests and backed my way into passing grades, I've tested friendships because I don't have an off switch on the basketball court, I've been cut from the baseball team, I've lied, I've cheated, I've given up, I've compromised my morals, I've done pretty much everything that everyone would tell you to avoid doing.

College is a period of difficult transitions, and I've grown up more in this time than I ever thought I could have before I came here.  I've accomplished some things and I've screwed some things up, probably at about a .290 batting average with my slugging percentage is floating right around .500. But these numbers, in whatever dimensions they exist, belong to the past.  The damage has been done, or not.  There's nothing that I can do now except to accept that it's gone, Flush It, and then learn from it.  The people around me may or may not accept it, but I can become better, and in the end, that's what's important.  What's done is done.

Okay Young William, so what do you do after you flush it?

Young William at the stripe - February 2007

Because I'm unable to talk in any way but through sports analogies, I'm going to pull from the arsenal again here, but I'll spare baseball.  As my older brother once told me, "Sometimes you get to be Maverick, sometimes you have to be Goose, and sometimes you crash."  I've crashed my fair share, I got to be Maverick on the baseball diamond, but on the basketball court I was always Goose.  My senior year I led the team in minutes because it didn't really matter if I fouled out.  The only other statistical categories that I think I've ever led teams in are fouls and charges taken.  I stayed in games because I played good defense, I didn't turn the ball over, and I made my free throws.

There's nothing like free throws in any other team sport.  Nowhere else are you presented with an opportunity in the form of an unguarded attempt to score points on any regular basis.  There's just you and the hoop, the shot is always the same distance away no matter where you go, and so theoretically, if you've practiced enough, you should be able to make it every time with your eyes closed.  Watch any game in which a team shoots 50% from the free throw line: the announcer is right: free throws are of eternal significance.

There are free throws in life.  There are things that we know will occur and that we can control.  We need to be successful in these things.  We need to be nice to our girlfriend's parents, we need to be confident in interviews, we need to love and take care of our family and friends.  There are very few things that we can actually control, so when they're placed in our lap - when we're fifteen feet away and unguarded - we need to be automatic.

The world is a scary place.  It's manipulating, it's demanding, it's forceful, and it's cruel, but that does not mean that it owns us.  When the world beats us down, we can flush our mistakes and move on.  When we see openings to success, we need to make our free throws.  The world is hard but it is not impossible, and if we are willing to learn from things and then flush them, and if we can make our free throws, the future doesn't seem so daunting after all.