Finish The Job

I have two holidays in my life that I celebrate that no one else in the world probably celebrates. I’ve talked about it before, but the first one is September 3rd. That is the day that over nine years ago I decided to start journaling, and I haven’t stopped since. For me that is what I consider my New Year. The other date isn’t as specific, but it comes around the same time every single year and the crazy part is that I don’t even celebrate it every year. That day is the start of the baseball playoffs. Everyone probably knows by this point, but baseball is by far my favorite sport and the Yankees are my only team. When they are in the playoffs the whole world stops and my whole family will be watching. A few days ago, the World Series started and for the first time in fifteen years, my team is in it.  When the playoffs started, I thought I would be content if we just made it this far. It’s been an up and down year, and I just didn’t know if the team was healthy enough to make it this far. They had a few breaks along the way and here they are. Now that it has started, I don’t want to lose. I hate losing, getting here just isn’t enough. We have to finish the job!

Not the Start I Wanted

Game one was exciting, but it ended with a loss. So, what happened? We had the lead late in the game and everything seemed to be in control. Up by one run, the other team hits double. No problem, we got this. Except we didn’t. The throw came in from the outfield, all we had to do was knock it down. We didn’t even have to catch it. The ball was missed, it rolled away and the runner went to third and later scored to tie the game. In the biggest game of your life, how did you let the ball get away? I’m sure everyone has a reason or an excuse as to how this could happen, trust me I could type for the next hour about my frustration with it. At the end of the day, you stopped before the job was finished. The play was still going, the ball was still live, and you took a break thinking nothing crazy would happen.

Take Two!

When it’s the best of seven games, it’s not horrible to lose game one. The chances of you not losing at least one game are almost certain. Shake it off, come back tomorrow stronger. Game two, still early and it’s tied at one. The pitcher keeps throwing it high and outside. Why does that matter? It means his mechanics are off. No problem, everyone knows what is happening. He does a few times and gets away with it. I’m yelling at my TV at this point that someone needs to go talk to him and settle him down. There is a long list of people who can go and talk to him. It would be easy for the catcher to go talk to him. One of the infielders could walk the ball to him and have a discussion. A pitching coach, the manager. So many options, but no one went to talk to him. Two homeruns later, losing by three, we never recovered and lost 4-2. A tough discussion that should have happened, but never did. Now down two games to zero it’s going to be a tough path to winning. Part of the job is going out and having that discussion. Things are spiraling, if you want to finish the inning, have the tough conversation. He didn’t finish the inning, and the job didn’t get finished.

Is it too late?

Mistakes have happened and your backs against the wall, can you recover? In some ways it’s too early to tell right now. It’s getting late really quickly though. Adjustments need to be made. Some people haven’t been performing well. It would be easy to just quit. Some would say making it this far is a win. So many things are out of my hands.  I just can’t get past the fact that I hate to lose. I’m the underdog now, and I like that. People have stopped believing in me, I like that. I can’t guarantee a win, but I can guarantee that I’m not going to quit. I can guarantee that I will go down fighting. I can guarantee that I’m not going to take any more plays off. I can guarantee that I will have some tough discussions. I hate to lose, let’s go and finish the job!