Being the baseball junkie that I am, I couldn't help it but find myself in this particular situation today in this particular location.
Because of my injury and necessity for physical therapy, I did not travel with my college team to our away games this week. It is spring break and I'd much preferred to come home, spend time rehabbing at the facilities here and see my family for a few days. But of course since the weather here in the northeast has been more like June and less like March, I couldn't just sit inside all day. I had to check out some college baseball.
I spent a few days during the week hanging out at Fordham University, where I watched the Rams take on Stony Brook University and Marist College. I had the pleasure of enjoying the Stony Brook game with birdman14, who's son is Fordham's first baseman and cleanup hitter. It was truly a pleasurable experience watching the ballgame with him.
Fordham's campus is only about 20 minutes from my house, and thus the reason for me choosing to attend those games. However today's schedule offered a much wider array of opportunities to enjoy baseball around the area, which I wanted to take full advantage of. Being that my father manages a wholesale bakery, his day starts early and ends early. And being that tonight is the night of my little sister's junior prom, we decided it would be a great idea to vacate the house and let the girls do their thing getting ready for the event. So we hopped in the car and headed to watch a game.
We made the 45 minute drive northwest of my hometown to the West Point campus. Army was due to take on Harvard in a doubleheader, and I wanted to check out the facilities at the beautiful military academy. We arrived on campus during batting practice and found out that the first game began at 1 PM instead of 12 like the website had said. Rather than hanging out in the stands watching BP, we figured it'd be nice to take a stroll around the grounds of West Point, which stretch over thousands of majestic rolling acres overlooking the scenic Hudson River.
We stumbled upon a square stone building called the Officer's Club ( Officer's Club Website ). We glanced at the lunch menu and saw that they had a seafood buffet for $9.95 a person and figured it would be the perfect option for a quick bite before first pitch. We loaded up our trays with food, paid for the meal and appropriated ourselves at a table overlooking the river.
During the meal I couldn't help but overhear the conversation being held at the table situated next to the one my father and I were sitting at. There were a group of cadets enjoying a meal there speaking about the looming task of being a platoon leader. They spoke of the nerves they felt overseeing a group of men and women in a platoon and the ways in which they'd been taught to cue themselves into focusing on the task at hand when in a position of authority in a stressful environment. One cadet was telling a story of a general who had come to speak to one of his classes and told them that every time he gave morning reports to his platoon or to his superior officer, he'd hold a pen in his hand. He didn't know why that made him comfortable in his task, but he claimed that it helped him focus on what needed to be accomplished more.
While overhearing this conversation I started thinking to myself about what this cadet was discussing. Out of ALL the things that these military members could be nervous about, it was the conversational aspect of communicating orders between person to person? Seriously?
Yet it made sense to me. In a high pressure environment, around individuals that are grown adults going through the same mental and physical experiences you are, it can be a difficult task to tell someone what to do or to delve into particular actions when describing to a superior. Then, I tried to put myself in the mind of a cadet. What could I do to prepare myself for a situation such as this? What life experiences could help me obtain the required skills in order to successfully accomplish this?
I thought of all of the speeches I'd made in class. I had done research on papers, put on a suit and tie, and stood in front of my peers presenting the information. Sometimes, these presentations came in the form of debates, where I had to defend my position. Then, my teacher or my professor would give me a grade.
I thought of all the group tasks that I had been assigned during the jobs I've held previously in my life. I remembered the discussions that I had with my coworkers and how we went about dishing out responsibilities. Then, my boss would praise me for completing my work or discipline me for not completing it efficiently enough.
The above examples are outstanding, but there's one major difference between those examples and reporting to a platoon of soldiers. In the above examples, no one else is truly depending on your advice, wisdom and actions in order to succeed in a task. If you don't do so well on a school project, you get a bad grade. That doesn't really matter to your classmates. If you don't work well enough in a job, you get fired. That eventually benefits your coworkers. But in a military platoon if you don't communicate appropriately with your fellow soldiers, you could fail the mission. Failing the mission, in almost every instance, is unacceptable.
The only parallel I could even remotely come up with that is somewhat similar is baseball. In baseball, every single teammate relies on one another to complete each and every task at hand...each and every pitch of the game. Every single pitch requires optimal communication between every single person involved in the team, whether that communication is verbal or visual. Teams work hard together for hours and hours each day for sometimes years in order to accomplish their ultimate goal(s). If that communication is not ideal during all of those times, and there is even the slightest bit of differentiation from the ideal, there is potential for the team to be unsuccessful. And often times, that could be very stressful to deal with.
I am well aware that the comparison between a team sport and the military is a bold statement to make. There are obviously much different levels of importance in each particular circumstance. But in terms of purely analyzing the best methods of preparation for certain situations, such as the example of communication that I overheard the cadets discussing, I don't think there is a much better method to prepare than a team sport like baseball.
Take this for what it is, but I truly believe this is an example of how baseball can bring about positive attributes in an individual that deals with real life situations. The experiences that an individual might have on a baseball field can most certainly...directly or indirectly...translate into a positive attribute of assistance in that individual's future. And those lessons learned on the field are things that I believe could and should be carried into many other facets of life. The cadet's conversation, in my opinion, is just an example of that.
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