There is a well thought out moral story given here by the Baseball Coach. You will all agree with it, but an you ingest it and put it into force.?
THIS IS A GREAT ONE-POINT SPEECH. WHOEVER READS THIS SPEECH WILL NEVER FORGET THE POINT
Seventeen Inches
Friends, Great Lesson on where our country is headed, please read to the end.
In Nashville, Tennessee, during the first week of January, 1996, more
than 4,000 baseball
coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the 52nd annual ABCA's convention.
While I waited in line to register with the hotel staff, I heard other
more veteran coaches
rumbling about the lineup of speakers scheduled to present during the
weekend. One name,
in particular, kept resurfacing, always with the same sentiment —
“John Scolinos is here?
Oh, man, worth every penny of my airfare.”
Who is John Scolinos, I wondered. No matter; I was just happy to be there.
In 1996, Coach Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a
college coaching
career that began in 1948. He shuffled to the stage to an impressive
standing ovation,
wearing dark polyester pants, a light blue shirt, and a string around
his neck from which
home plate hung — a full-sized, stark-white home plate.
Seriously, I wondered, who is this guy?
After speaking for twenty-five minutes, not once mentioning the prop
hanging around his neck, Coach Scolinos appeared to notice the snickering among some of
the coaches. Even those who knew Coach Scolinos had to wonder exactly
where he was going with this, or if he
had simply forgotten about home plate since he’d gotten on stage.
Then, finally …“You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my neck,” he
said, his voice
growing irascible. I laughed along with the others, acknowledging the
possibility. “I may be old, but I’m not crazy. The reason I stand before you today is to
share with you baseball people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned about home
plate in my 78 years.
”
Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little League
coaches were in the room. “Do you know how wide home plate is in Little League?”
After a pause, someone offered, “Seventeen inches?” more of a question
than answer.
“That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth
coaches in the house?” Another long pause.
“Seventeen inches?” a guess from another reluctant coach.
“That’s right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many high school coaches do
we have in the room?” Hundreds of hands shot up, as the pattern began
to appear. “How wide is home plate in high school baseball?”
“Seventeen inches,” they said, sounding more confident.
“You’re right!” Scolinos barked. “And you college coaches, how wide is
home plate in college?”
“Seventeen inches!” we said, in unison.
“Any Minor League coaches here? How wide is home plate in pro ball?”
“Seventeen inches!”
“RIGHT! And in the Major Leagues, how wide is home plate in the Major Leagues?
“Seventeen inches!”
“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls.
“And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the
ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello!” he
hollered, drawing raucous laughter. “What they don’t do is this: they
don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. You can’t hit a seventeen-inch
target? We’ll make it eighteen inches or nineteen inches. We’ll make
it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you
can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still, say
twenty-five inches.’” Pause. “Coaches…” pause, "… what do we do when
our best player shows up late to practice? When our team rules forbid
facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught
drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit
him? Do we widen home plate? The chuckles gradually faded as four
thousand coaches grew quiet, the fog lifting as the old coach’s
message began to unfold. He turned the plate toward himself and, using
a Sharpie, began to draw something. When he turned it toward the
crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn
door and two windows. “This is the problem in our homes today. With
our marriages, with the way we parent our kids. With our discipline.
We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence
for failing to meet standards. We widen the plate!”
Pause. Then, to the point at the top of the house he added a small
American flag. “This is the problem in our schools today. The quality
of our education is going downhill fast and teachers have been
stripped of the tools they need to be successful, and to educate and
discipline our young people. We are allowing others to widen home
plate! Where is that getting us?”
Silence. He replaced the flag with a Cross. “And this is the problem
in the Church, where powerful people in positions of authority have
taken advantage of young children, only to have such an atrocity swept
under the rug for years. Our church leaders are widening home plate
for themselves! And we allow it.”
“And the same is true with our government. Our so called
representatives make rules for us that don’t apply to themselves. They
take bribes from lobbyists and foreign countries. They no longer serve
us. And we allow them to widen home plate and we see our country
falling into a dark abyss while we watch.”
I was amazed. At a baseball convention where I expected to learn
something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better
practices, I had learned something far more valuable. From an old man
with home plate strung around his neck, I had learned something about
life, about myself, about my own weaknesses and about my
responsibilities as a leader. I had to hold myself and others
accountable to that which I knew to be right, lest our families, our
faith, and our society continue down an undesirable path.
“If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one
thing from this old coach today. It is this: if we fail to hold
ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be
right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same
standards, if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when
they do not meet the standard; and if our schools & churches & our
government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve,
there is but one thing to look forward to …”
With that, he held home plate in front of his chest, turned it around,
and revealed its dark black backside, “… dark days ahead.”
Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91, but not before touching
the lives of hundreds of players and coaches, including mine. Meeting
him at my first ABCA convention kept me returning year after year,
looking for similar wisdom and inspiration from other coaches. He is
the best clinic speaker the ABCA has ever known because he was so much
more than a baseball coach. His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your
players—no matter how good they are—your own children, your churches,
your government, and most of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches."
And this my friends is what our country has become and what is wrong
with it today, and how to fix it.
"Don't widen the plate."
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