In tenth grade, I tried out for my high school baseball team. The several-day process made me miserable.
During the school day, I sat in class, the apprehension of what approached later in the day distracting each thought and moment. And when the time of the tryout arrived, each step felt unsteady as if descending down the side of a steep cliff. Each day of tryouts exhausted me mentally and ended with a coach running us around bases or across the outfield until our lungs burned. I finished last in these sprints, forcing my wobbly legs forward to an arbitrary finish line as the coach shouted at me for falling behind. In the parking lot, my Dad waited in his car with a bottle of Gatorade and ice.
Each tryout ultimately finished with the coach and his assistants huddled to the side, crafting a list of names to call out to return the next day. I silently hoped to miss the cut and spare myself.
Physically exhausted, I returned home after dark to start homework. Ironically, failing a couple of English assignments opened an opportunity or so I thought at the time.
I walked up to the coach while he taught a driver’s ed class at school and said I quit the team. I don’t remember my explanation. He later offered me an opportunity to reconsider but I declined.
I felt relief but acted dishonestly with myself. In reality, I hadn’t quit to salvage my grades. I left the team to shield myself from fear and anxiety, those forces we must face to gain strength.
Baseball is the last thing I ever quit. And for the first time since high school, I’ve been giving my decision considerable thought and holding conversations about this with myself.
In college, I would take a stand when others sat silently. As a television reporter, I would report on hurricanes throughout the day and night without asking for a break or complaining. I thrived under pressure. When I realized my natural talent left me lagging behind in any given situation, I studied and worked hard to narrow the gap. Ultimately, when I realized broadcast journalism would no longer provide me fulfillment, I rebranded myself and walked away.
But baseball continues to rattle me. The person I am today would have told my high school self to face my fears, lace up and swing for the fences in both school and on the field. Now I’ll never know just how far my work ethic would have driven me on the diamond.
It mystifies me why a decision I made decades ago shadows me now. I realize daydreams of reversing time and taking a different path don’t take into consideration the unknown changes: Would I have still attended Northwestern University, where I met my wife?
As we grow older, I suspect we seek more and are vulnerable to questioning decisions that might have achieved an alternative form of greatness. I imagine, as we see our children fear the unknown and struggle with sports, we feel determined to inspire them with strength and encourage them to never quit themselves. Perhaps I am now the parent who my own mother loved to hate, the ambitious and competitive father who, albeit with a compassionate hand, pushes his kids to raise the bar no matter how high it is set. I believe in dreams not lowering expectations.
Quitting baseball feels like a personal failure I have recently attempted to come to grips with. And I’m not finding answers. Should someone back then have empowered me to not hang up my helmet? Did I do myself a disservice by abandoning a sport I had played every winter, spring and summer since the third grade? Should even my 15-year-old self take full personal responsibility, accept my choice and just move on? Or am I simply romanticizing a possibility that could have led me down a path of less desirable unknowns? Am I asking myself these questions because I mistakenly feel something is missing from life when it truly is not?
What decisions do you regret and why do you still think about them instead of letting them go?
