Out at third, Safe at home

The summer I turned fourteen, I was in a neighbourhood softball league. It was not hugely competitive and it was played on crummy surfaces with gravel infields. But my friends and I were competitive sporting teens and we took it kind of seriously. I was going through a growth spurt and was, like many of my peers, an awkward and gangly teen.

In one game, on a lovely carefree June evening, I found myself on second base and during the next at-bat, I took off for third. The opposing catcher was a friend, so it was a bit of a personal battle. I slid into third. It was a close play, and the neighbourhood umpire (an older teen volunteer) called me out. And I was indeed out.

But worse than that, I broke my right arm on that slide. I lived about a block away, so I got up and immediately started running home, writhing in pain, tears running down my not-yet-ready-to-shave face, and cradling my broken arm all the way. My mom agreed that I needed hospital care, so we drove to the emergency in an old 1972 gold Pontiac Ventura. With little left in the way of shock absorbers, every bump on the way riddled me with more unimaginable pain.

But the bigger picture was more painful. I was to be an inactive fourteen-year-old in a cast from hand to shoulder for the next six weeks and it meant my summer was mostly ruined. No swimming. No sports of any kind. Awkward bike riding. My spirit was crushed. I felt like a failure. Even if it was irrational.

But that failure, that misfortune, got turned around somehow. Because I didn’t give up. I eventually began to play in some pick-up basketball games with my pals in the following weeks. Learning to dribble and shoot with my left hand. I’d spend countless hours by myself learning to do left-handed layups and shoot with my only healthy arm, my basketball endlessly in my only usable hand. The following autumn, I tried out for the high school basketball team. The pre-eminent team in our school. And I made the team. Barely. About a hundred boys tried out. And I was the nineteenth boy on a nineteen-boy roster.

And the coach told me that the only reason I made it was, not because I was greatly skilled or overly athletic, but because I was one of the few who could go left or right. It was rare. I sat on the bench most of that season. I think my season-high best scoring game was six points. But in the next season, I became a starter, I was co-captain of the team, we won the city championship, and I made the end-of-season city all-star team. I made innumerable wonderful friends, some of whom are life-long friends, I had a ton of fun and played basketball for the rest of my time in high school.

Why? Because I failed. Badly. And painfully. Had I stayed on second base that summer day, and not gotten thrown out at third, and not wrecked my arm, I wouldn’t have made that basketball team later on. And that’s a certainty. That moment of near despair, of great physical pain, changed my youth for the better. My arm healed after six weeks. But my once-broken bone made me stronger. My failure was converted into a kind of victory. My despair turned into eventual joy. A joy for which I am ever grateful. They say broken bones can heal stronger than they once were. I believe it. But I also believe that it can also be true of broken spirits. My failure eventually made me a winner.

And sweetly and co-incidentally, the catcher who threw me out? The victor that summer evening when I felt like a failure? I think you may know him. Behind the mask was none other than a fourteen-year-old Michael Murray. Thanks, old pal. Nice throw!