"Take till ye git a strike, then swang away!"

My baseball teams usually had pretty good success from year to year. Having played baseball from little league through college and being a student of the game as well as a participant, I felt that I was qualified to be a pretty fair baseball coach, at least from the standpoint of knowledge of the game. Even so, there is much more to coaching than just knowledge of the game! Every coach must develop his or her "philosophy" or approach as to how the team should perform, and in turn, what aspect of the game for which  most of the practice time is used. A good coach will study and know each player's strengths and weaknesses, his personality, mood, attitude, and work habits. A good coach can communicate his knowledge to his players in a manner that causes them to respect what he knows, what he thinks, and what his expectations are for his team and players. He will teach his players lessons on the game and at the same time lessons that can be applied to life.

My philosophy was centered on hitting. We spent most of our practices in batting practice of some sort. Defense and pitching are essential and must be worked on, but, I believed that a line up of good hitters could intimidate and demoralize the opponent, especially, if the pitcher we were facing had a sparkling record. Many coaches went by the book with good success. Their teams played good defense, had good pitching, and won games by scoring very few runs. We seldom got shut out and usually averaged 7 or 8 runs per game. Sometimes the situation might call for a bunt and my players would be ready to perform, but, usually the instructions would be "Swang away and see how hard ye can hit it!".

Occasionally, we would come down to the last inning or two and find ourselves behind by a run or two or three. When this was the case, the instruction would be "Take till ye git a strike, then swang away!".  You'd be surprised how many games we won over the years simply by taking a strike before swinging away. I find this to be pretty true in life as well. Things tend to pile up on us. Our jobs worry us, our relationships cause us pain sometimes, our government seems to try to run our lives, and on and on. Human nature causes us to want to fire back. We often let our emotions rule and wind up hurt or hurting someone by our words or reactions. Take a strike...let things ride a while before swinging away. Sometimes the situation will resolve itself simply because of your reserve. If not, at least you've had time to think and pray, allowing you to get ready to swing away in a manner that is appropriately guided by reason rather than emotion. Good advice from the old coach: "Take till ye get a strike, then swang away!"