Life, if you’ll excuse the baseball analogy, is like a major-league pitcher, throwing to a little-league team. You’ve basically got very little hope. Just when you think you’re getting the fast ball, you get a slider, and you’re swinging wildly only to have the umpire call a well-deserved strike. And no matter how many times you take that swing, your chances of hitting that ball, let alone actually managing to hit a home run, are infinitesimal.
The difference between life and baseball is that, when you’re in baseball, you know when you’ve made it to the major leagues. In life, there’s nothing to tell you. In life, you’re always in the majors — even if what you’ve got only qualifies you for the farm league.
But unlike baseball, where talent really does count for everything if you expect to become a pro, in life there are lots of people playing for the major leagues who got there not because of talent, but because of some cruel trick of politics or luck or genetics. In cases like those, people who might be far less talented or intelligent than you end up being the folks in charge. If you’re dubious about that last statement, I refer you to the recent two-term presidency of George W. Bush.
Life, like a major league pitcher, ends up throwing you a lot of curve balls. You can work your hardest to become the best that you can be and still end up batting zero. That’s because life isn’t fair.
I mean, sometimes baseball isn’t fair, either — what with steroid-enhanced hitters and dingbat umpires — but at least in baseball you’ve got rules, which give you a good, sporting chance. In life, I’m afraid, there are very few rules that keep the opposing team — and by that I mean everybody else in the world — from playing dirty every chance they get.
But, the thing is in life, unlike baseball, there is another set of rules. They’re the rules that allow even the losers to at least emerge with some sense of dignity. They’re the rules that say being the person with morals, a conscience and integrity is, in the end, a far greater reward than being the person who will do anything at their disposal to be the richest or most powerful. Somebody with morals and a conscience sometimes has the posthumous honour of being judged by history as the one who was right — an example that sometimes the higher road is the path to real humanity.
I strive to be part of the latter group, though it can sometimes be a difficult game to play. The other team has a whole different rulebook, and they’re the ones in charge.
I just hope that after I’ve played my last inning, I’ll be able to chalk one up in the win column for the good guys. Or at least to have somebody remember that I played a good game.
Sean Vale
Editor
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