"Stay at 17 Inches" by Chris Sperry

I'm going to share an article that a friend of mine emailed me. It has a great message that I could not present any better. To give proper credit for this article: it was written by Chris Sperry on www.sperrybaseballlife.com (To clarify, I don't know the writer personally.) Here it is:

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 convention. Nineteen times since, many of the same professional, college, high school, youth, and a slew of international coaches from passionate and developing baseball nations have gathered at various convention hotels across the country for two-and-half days of clinic presentations and industry exhibits. Sure, many members of the American Baseball Coaches Association have come and gone in those years; the leadership has been passed, nepotistically, from Dave Keilitz to his son, Craig; and the association — and baseball, in general — has lost some of its greatest coaches, including Rod Dedeaux, Gordie Gillespie, and Chuck “Bobo” Brayton.

I have attended all but three conventions in those nineteen years, and I have enjoyed and benefited from each of them. But ’96 was special — not just because it was held in the home of country music, a town I’d always wanted to visit. And not because I was attending my very first convention. Nashville in ’96 was special because it was there and then that I learned that baseball — the thing that had brought 4,000 of us together — was merely a metaphor for my own life and those of the players I hoped to impact.

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 the hell is John Scolinos, I wondered. No matter, I was just happy to be there.

Having sensed the size of the group during check-in, I woke early the next morning in order to ensure myself a good seat near the stage — first chair on the right side of the center isle, third row back — where I sat, alone, for an hour until the audio-visual techs arrived to fine-tune their equipment. The proverbial bee bee in a boxcar, I was surrounded by empty chairs in a room as large as a football field. Eventually, I was joined by other, slightly less eager, coaches until the room was filled to capacity. By the time Augie Garrido was introduced to deliver the traditional first presentation from the previous season’s College World Series winner, there wasn’t an empty chair in the room.

ABCA conventions have a certain party-like quality to them. They provide a wonderful opportunity to re-connect with old friends from a fraternal game that often spreads its coaches all over the country. As such, it is common for coaches to bail out of afternoon clinic sessions in favor of old friends and the bar. As a result, I discovered, the crowd is comparatively sparse after lunch, and I had no trouble getting my seat back, even after grabbing a plastic-wrapped sandwich off the shelf at the Opryland gift shop.

I woke early the next morning and once again found myself alone in the massive convention hall, reviewing my notes from the day before: pitching mechanics, hitting philosophy, team practice drills. All technical and typical — important stuff for a young coach, and I was in Heaven. At the end of the morning session, certain that I had accurately scouted the group dynamic and that my seat would again be waiting for me after lunch, I allowed myself a few extra minutes to sit down and enjoy an overpriced sandwich in one of the hotel restaurants. But when I returned to the convention hall thirty minutes before the lunch break ended, not only was my seat not available, barely any seats were available! I managed to find one between two high school coaches, both proudly adorned in their respective team caps and jackets. Disappointed in myself for losing my seat up front, I wondered what had pried all these coaches from their barstools. I found the clinic schedule in my bag: “1 PM John Scolinos, Cal Poly Pomona.” It was the man whose name I had heard buzzing around the lobby two days earlier. Could he be the reason that all 4,000 coaches had returned, early, to the convention hall? Wow, I thought, this guy must really be good.

I had no idea.

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 in the hell 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. Or maybe you think I escaped from Camarillo State Hospital,” he said, his voice growing irascible. I laughed along with the others, acknowledging the possibility. “No,” he continued, “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 question than answer.

“That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth? Any Babe Ruth coaches in the house?”

Another long pause.

“Seventeen inches?”came 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 home plate is 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 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!”

I was amazed. At a baseball convention where I expected to learn something about curveballs 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 and churches and 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, and most of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches.”

He was, indeed, worth the airfare.

© Chris Sperry, Baseball/Life, LLC

Syria, Iran, and North Korea

Syria

Over the past few weeks I have been kicking around different views on Syria and where the United States should stand. I've taken into consideration opinions from a few friends, so my opinion has changed, well more like it formed. So, here we go.

The missile strike on Syria was the correct decision. Assad continues to drop Sarin on his own countrymen and he's propped up by Putin and Russia. The strike lets the world know where we stand on leaders killing their own citizens and on nations supporting these leaders. Obama made that red line in Syria, but he didn't do anything about it; he didn't take a firm stance at all. 

Assad, like other leaders, saw Obama make his apology tours to apologize for things that happened in the past. Apologizing for things that happened in history shows weakness not strength. Strength is exactly the thing we need to show to every nation. Trump showed strength by striking Syria right in front of Assad and his puppeteer, Putin. 

I originally thought that the U.S. stay out of the Middle East, but that was too idealistic of a view. Once we became embroiled in world affairs, which happened decades ago, it was too late to pull back out of world affairs (this includes the Middle East). We, like every other nation, now have to protect our own interests, because no one else will. We need to put America first. It might selfish to some folks, however, we elect people to lead our country and put it first.

Now, we should move forward surgically when dealing with Syria, but maybe regime change isn't a terrible idea. We should make the best strategy possible and then commit to the strategy, unlike some previous administrations (I'm not just talking about Obama, let me just get ahead of it now). 

Iran

The Iran nuclear deal needs to be investigated and I'm glad it is being investigated. That deal should have never been signed in the first place. As the saying goes, I don't trust Iran as far as I can throw them. Any nation that supports terrorism as much as they do should not be trusted with nuclear weaponry. They also hate Israel and Israel is really our only true ally in the Middle East.

Secretary of State Tillerson said it best, "An unchecked Iran has the potential to travel the same path as North Korea — and to take the world along with it."

Let's not forget how this nuclear deal was born. The Obama administration created an "echo chamber" of experts who all agreed on the nuclear deal. There were no dissenting opinions on the matter. I don't really need to say this, but that's not how you make a decision. You need people of different viewpoints involved in a discussion to make an informed decision. 

The Iran deal was something the administration promised on the campaign trail, so they pushed it on through to say that they signed a nuclear deal with Iran. Did it matter that Iran supports Hamas? No. Did it matter that they hate Israel? No. The deal was political more than anything.

North Korea

North Korea, oh, North Korea... Where do I begin? Maybe I should start with the most recent American citizen to be arrested in North Korea. The following is from The Christian Post:

Korean-American Tony Kim, who also goes by his Korean name Kim Sang-duk and is in his 50s, was leaving after having spent a month teaching an accounting course at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.....

Kim is the third known American being held in North Korea. Last year, Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in prison in North Korea after he "confessed" to trying to steal a propaganda banner. South Korean-born Kim Dong Chul, who is believed to have U.S. citizenship, is serving a sentence of 10 years for "espionage."

We are all well aware of the ICBM tests and the missile truck parades, those communists sure love their parades. 

North Korea also supplies Assad with Sarin and Iran with arms. They profit from the slaughter of innocent people. Kim Jong-Un doesn't care of course, because he's a dictator who does whatever he wants regardless of morality. Dictators are all the same, no matter if they're North Korean or Syrian.

I hope we don't have to come to blows, but if they launch an ICBM with the ability to hit America, then it's go time. China may even put Kim Jong-Un on a shorter leash, who knows. My only point is that the world has had to put up with three generations of Kim's and I think this Kim's time may be coming. He's a threat to global security and he's getting ready for war.

In summary, Syria, Iran, and North Korea are all threats that need to be dealt with in some manner. We shouldn't rush to war, but doing nothing is what our foreign policy has been for the past few years. The world has shaken their heads at us for too long. We need to flex our muscles and show the world that America is a force to be reckoned with.

Teddy Roosevelt said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." We've been speaking softly, now it's time for the stick.

Legging it

This past Sunday two teenage girls were not allowed to board a United Airlines flight at Denver International Airport headed for Minneapolis because they were wearing leggings.

That sentence is all it took for social media to go crazy. People too lazy to read the whole article were going off half-cocked hurling insults at United for being unruly. It doesn't take much to set off Twitter and Facebook, even something as trivial as this did it.

Here's the part people missed: the teenagers were "pass riders." Per United: "One of the benefits of working for an airline is that our employees are able to travel the world. Even better, they can extend this privilege to a select number of what we call "pass riders." These are relatives or friends who also receive the benefit of free or heavily discounted air travel... When taking advantage of this benefit, all employees and pass riders are considered representatives of United. And like most companies, we have a dress code that we ask employees and pass riders to follow."

The New York Times aptly named one of their articles on this matter: What Can You Wear on a Plane? It Depends Who’s Paying. Another New York Times article, After Barring Girls for Leggings, United Airlines Defends Decision, explains that this was started by a passenger who waiting to board a flight at the same airport. She took it upon herself to tweet about what was happening during the incident while saying that United was "policing the clothing of women and girls."

The leggings weren't really the issue. The only issue was that the teens didn't follow the dress code for pass riders. United wasn't doing anything crazy.

The only reason I brought this up is to paint a picture of the social climate today. Many people hear a fragment of a news story or a conversation and go straight to social media for blood. 

As I said, even something trivial like a dress code violation can be turned into a social media firestorm. People have mostly been this way forever, but social media made it easy for people to rant and rave while being completely ignorant. There were twits before Twitter.

As the young folks say today: check yo self before you wreck yo self. As in think before you do something. It's a crazy idea, isn't it?

A Day Without Women (edited)

I would like to take a moment to thank the women who not participating in "A Day Without Women". These women, the ones not participating, are doing the right thing by going to work, taking care of their children, or doing whatever else they have to do. The women participating in this demonstration are doing themselves, their families, and society more harm than good. Women are important to our country and I don't deny that, but marching and laying out of work are not proving anything. 

There's a lot of supposed problems with being a woman in America, according to the news. I'm here to say that America is the best country on the planet for women. Women in America can vote, they can go outside without a man, they can drive, beating women is a crime, they can have a career in practically any field, they don't have to wear hijabs, and they can do pretty much anything they want to. In other nations around the world women aren't allowed to do anything I listed and their husbands can legally beat them. Many women in Africa have to walk miles through deserts and war torn towns just to get water for themselves and their children.

So, to the women laying out of work and marching, please don't let the media and the radicals get you riled up about how bad America is. Compared to the Middle East and Africa, America is paradise. Don't forget that when you're complaining about oppression. My hat goes off to the women in the Middle East and Africa who have to live in those conditions. These women are the ones who truly need help in this world. Why don't you march to that? 

There's just no sense in this mess. I'm not trying to be "that" guy, but I'm tired of people who live here complaining about America. I know America is not perfect, however, no other country is as good as America. We have it good here. 

Edit: I removed the original ending, because I wrote it in haste and it got off of the message I was trying to get across. All I meant to say was that I don't see the problems these women talk about. I do, however, appreciate all that women contribute to our country. 

Pres. Trump's Address to Congress

President Trump's first address to Congress on Tuesday was very presidential and much different than his campaign speeches. Trump didn't use his normal language, but he spoke calmly and collected. That's not to say that I doubted he had the ability to speak this well, because he knows how to give speeches. I'm glad he did change his tone from his campaign speeches; I didn't particularly like those speeches, but that's in the past and not the present. As many pundits have put it: Trump became the president in that address.

Another thing that this address displayed was the pettiness of the Democratic Party. I read a study the other day (I can't find link to it) that said about 64% of Americans agree that if the Democrats don't work with Trump then their standing among citizens will be harmed. If this study is a good representation of Americans, the Democrats should reconsider their course of resistance and persistence, as Hillary Clinton encouraged in her little video. Most Americans hate political gridlock and that's what Clinton is suggesting. 

The Democrats certainly showed themselves at the address Tuesday by refusing to stand and clap at almost everything. They seem to have forgotten that they are our representatives, We the People put them there. 

Trump pointed out some serious problems that need to be fixed and promised to fix them, which he hopefully will. The problems that I'm personally glad he brought up are ISIS, Iran, the attacks on Jewish people, the infrastructure of our country, school vouchers, and immigration. All of these problems should have received bipartisan applause and should receive bipartisan attention in Congress. 

I'm going to keep this post short, because I'm working on a longer post on another topic. Nonetheless, I wanted to at least commend Pres. Trump on a well put together address. I'm trying to be a little more supportive of the President, even though he wasn't my first choice. I was a part of this election, which is something I'm proud of. I only hope politicians and regular citizens will be less angry about Trump.

I know everyone doesn't agree with Pres. Trump's policies and I get that. I have empathy for them after the last eight years. I'm not going to trash Obama, but I didn't agree with most of his policies. Regardless of my personal feelings, Obama was the president. The office of the president should be respected no matter your personal feelings.