Willie And Jakob

Intention requires courage and creates responsibility. It requires a very personal and intrinsic brand of courage; the courage to work to try and make your dreams a reality. While intention and the effort it inspires does not guarantee success invariably better outcomes are achieved.

I once heard Willie Mays describing his approach to baseball and his insights into the nuances of the game. At first, his description of how he  played the game of baseball seemed like an old man’s ego driven exaggeration of days gone by. But as he went into detail concerning his approach to the game, I soon came to realize his baseball genius. He described how using his exceptional eyesight from his position in center field he would read the signs from the catcher to the pitcher. He would then position himself according to the pitch being thrown and the strengths and weaknesses of both the pitcher and the hitter. This allowed him to anticipate where the hit ball would go before the pitch was thrown; it allowed him to catch many balls that most would think uncatchable. He would run the bases not just as an individual runner but in ways that would influence throws and strategies of the other team. He was not focused on the game as a whole but on each individual play. He brought intention to every aspect of the game. His focus was to get an advantage with his baseball mind and then let his body exploit the edge his intentions created.

Once upon a time I was a soccer coach for a little boy named Jakob. Jakob was a tough and interestingly different little boy who wanted to be the goal keeper. I had an immediate kinship with Jacob because as a small boy coaches had me play goalie because they thought of me as tough and different. His first attempts playing were nothing close to good because, like many small children new to sports, he had a very hard time paying attention to the game. It was even suggested to me by a couple parents that perhaps he was best suited to play out in the field where his lapses in concentration would not have such dire consequences on the team and the outcome of the game. I resisted the urge to react to his poor play because I thought he could learn to stay focused. So I began to challenge him at practice and in games to pay attention. As I taught him about playing goalie I also started to ask him for more concentration. Literally minute by minute we worked up to him giving the team an entire game of focus. A year or so later we were playing a game against a team that had a star player with a really powerful left footed shot. There were two minutes left in the game and we were leading by one goal when the opposing star got a one-on-one break away. He came in on Jakob poised to blast the ball with his exceptional left foot. I watched in awe as Jakob, the boy who once would let balls go in the goal while staring off in the distance, stalked the shooter. He came off his line, crouched low and focused on the ball, taking away the angle as the shooter approached. Sure enough the rocket shot came off that powerful left foot. It was on goal until Jakob deftly lunged to his right and deflected it wide. We won the game and Jakob was the hero of the day. I will take credit for teaching him about playing goalie and for building up his attention span. I will also take pride in this and other times he made saves in the games we played. But he made the saves because he had done the work and played with intention. It was not luck and he did not dream it true; he visualized his job, worked on his skills, and made it happen intentionally.

It probably seems like a ridiculous stretch to make a comparison between Willie Mays, arguably the greatest baseball player of all time and a little boy named Jakob playing youth soccer. On the surface the connection between an iconic athlete and a small boy is not an obvious one but this is what I see and where I find motivation. Willie and Jakob, they embraced the responsibility of intention and had the courage to give effort in the face of possible failure. Their achievements were not remotely comparable but the course they took to success was identical. Ahhh…the road less traveled…it does make all the difference.