The Big Impossible

A few nights back I couldn't sleep, so I got out of bed and pulled a book off from the shelf to read until I could fall back asleep. It's title: "Man Enough: Fathers, Sons and the Search for Masculinity," by Dr. Frank Pittman. I'm interested in the subject because I will be periodically working with young men between the ages of 14 and 19 through spring and well into summer on the baseball diamond. At that age I remember the question the took center stage in my mind was: What does it mean to be a man? This quote jumped off the page at me during my fit of sleeplessness.

"Masculinity is an 'artificial state, a challenge to be overcome, a prize to be won by fierce struggle.' So says David Gilmore in "Manhood in the Making," after he examined the ways in which boys become men in various cultures. Gilmore tries to define what it takes to be a man, what the puberty rituals attempt to instill in boys. He says, 'To be a man in most of the societies we have looked at, one must impregnate women, protect dependents from danger, and provision kith and kin...Manhood is a kind of male procreation; its heroic quality lies in its self-direction and discipline, its absolute self-reliance.' Gilmore tells us that the Fox tribe of Iowa considers being a real man 'The Big Impossible.' No man who sets out to achieve total masculinity can ever be man enough.

"Masculinity is supposed to be about protection of the family, but the pursuit of this Big Impossible can lead men to escape domesticity and the power of women. Men can't always do what man's gotta do to "feel like" a man and still do what a man's gotta do to "be" a man."(Pg. xiv)

I also like this quote about how terrifyingly dangerous and terrifyingly important women are to men. I remember reading somewhere that younger men look for the guidance of older men because the older men have been with women longer. They have more experience with the danger and importance of women, in other words.

"Why do men love their masculinity so much? Because men have been trained to sacrifice their lives for their masculinity, and men always know they are far less masculine than they think they should be. Women, though, have the power to give a man his maculinity or take it away, so women become both terrifyingly important and terrifyingly dangerous to men. It's all quite crazy, but this, too, is a part of the 'masculine mystique.'" (Pg. xvi)

Politics and Coaching Baseball

Right before my son's baseball game got started my coaching partner told me that I needed counseling. Apparently he followed me and my family to the diamonds and got a good look at the bumper sticker on the back of our rusty 1999 Pontiac Montana mini-van. The bumper sticker reads "Wisconsin wants to be scott-free in 2014/ Remove Walker."

Here is how the exchange went in the dugout as our players were warming up on the field.

"So, you don't like Walker?"

"No, not at all." I said. "And you think I need counseling because of this?"

"No, no," he laughingly said trying to keep it light, "but do you vote for the other party automatically?"

"Ummm, no. I'd consider myself independent." I said. "But I'd say that I mostly lean left. You know, like on social issues; take care of the poor and quit giving so much money to the rich."

He nervously stood back and faced me straight on swinging a bat lightly as I sat on the bench in the dugout feeling like absolute shit from an allergy attack and lack of sleep. Psychically shrinking by the second and not wanting to have this conversation 10 minutes before game time, I said, "We probably should'nt get into this right now. This is a pretty deep subject for me."

"I know, I know." he said. Then in a faint fatherly tone he snuck this in there, "You can't enable them (I'm assuming he meant the poor). And the wealthy provide a lot of jobs." Then his mom (She keeps the books for us) looked over at me and said, "And he got our state out of debt."

I nodded. Thinking to myself how in the fuck am I going to coach this game with this bullshit out in the open. Things went well, though. We went on to win 15 to 5. Our bats finally got going late in the game and we played solid defense throughout.

Since I started coaching again that is what I have always loved about the game. For a couple of hours the political and philosophical tensions between the parents seem to lighten. Now that the game is over, though, the lightness is gone. It was gone as I soon as I got in the van to go home.

Play or Pay

The other day the library sent me Phil Jackson's new book Eleven Rings. Outside of coaching two baseball teams, practicing with my sons, and taking care of life's other priorities I've had the opportunity to read twenty pages or so out of ER. This morning I was taken by this quote by Lao Tzu:

The best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general
enters the mind of his enemy...
All of them embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.

This is probably one of the biggest challenges I have noticed when I'm coaching, especially in tight games. The spirit of play (I don't know if play necessarily needs to be light) turns into a must-win situation. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's just an observation, I guess.

There is something deeper that I got from the Lao Tzu quote, though. As a culture we don't keep that spirit of play in mind when we engage The Community of Life. We annihilate our competitors in the biological community. If they're competing with our food and our food's food we are at war with them. And we're going to go extinct if we don't stop this.

Hidden Values Find There Way To Action

I just didn't have enough time to do a blog post yesterday. That's three that I missed this year. It's been a long time since I've been this busy(Over a decade?)in my life.

Quote from The Un-Game that resonated with me yesterday.

"In coaching they'll get to see that any closely held value, no matter how well hidden, even from yourself, inevitably prompts action that's consistent with it." [Pg. 127, The Un-Game]

Phil Jackson hits on this in Sacred Hoops.

First Game of the Season

We had our first Little Leageue baseball game last night. We ended up losing 18 to 2. I was nervous as hell the whole day leading up to it, but the weird thing is that I was extremely calm during the game as my team of 9-12 yr. olds self-destructed. I remember experiencing the exact same thing playing baseball as a child. So after 25 years not much has changed. The same sort of thoughts and feelings (I wrote about some of them yesterday) happen leading up to the game, but during the game they fade or simply just go away. Upon reflection I think part of the reason this happens is explained in this quote by Phil Jackson:

"[Players] live for the moments when they can lose themselves completely in the action and experience the pure joy of competition."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 180, Sacred Hoops

Right now I'd say that it happens not only to players but coaches too.

Videos: Ishmael and The Ripken Way

Again, immersed in learning baseball fundamentals The Ripken Way via CD Rom this morning. Last practice of the week is tonight. Our first game is next Wednesday. I have so much that I want to show the kids and not enough time to do it. A couple of the main reasons I don't have enough time is because the northwestern Wisconsin weather doesn't always cooperate(It snowed for awhile yesterday morning) and I live close to 15 miles from town.

I checked into Facebook to look for an idea for a post and found this YouTube video immediately. It's title: The River of Vision: On the Works of Daniel Quinn, Author of Ishmael. About 3 minutes into the video I wrote this quote down.

"What I have left is an invitation: Jump into the river that is already flowing and let this river carry you. Nevermind that you cannot know with your rational mind where exactly this river might take you. That, indeed, is the whole point. This river may be taking us to a million different destinations. This is something very different from being in control."--Timothy Scott Bennett

It's been over ten years now since I jumped into that river. I still don't understand what baseball and The Ripken Way has to do with it. I'm just going to go with it.

Off the Ground

Off to carry mail for the United States Postal Service today. I'm feeling rushed and rundown. It's probably the combination of many things. Most of all, I think it's the result of running a Little League baseball practice last night and gearing up for the postal work this morning. I don't know how coaches can work full-time and volunteer coach, it must take an unbelievable amount of energy. It reminds me of this quote by Phil Jackson:

There was a time in my life -- I spent fifteen years in my career with New York and New Jersey -- where I always felt if I didn't get those three or four months in Montana to camp, to be on the land, to actually live on the ground and be connected with the ground, then I wasn't really connecting myself with my roots, with that pioneer spirit that is so deeply a part of me. Phil Jackson in Esquire

There is too much going on in my life at the moment to maintain connection with my roots. It'll pass, but it has to be recognized.

A True Coaching Inspiration

Revisiting this powerful article for some inspiration before baseball practices start next week. Mike Powell, in my mind, is a good example of a male mother for his players, and what masculinity is to some degree. He's showed the boys his wounds and in return they've showed him their wounds. I think it was the mythologist Micheal Meade who once said, "I'll show you my wound if you show me yours." I have learned through experience it is a challenge to lay your wounds out there for younger men hear, but they won't trust you otherwise.

Quote from article: "Powell's goal, as he told his friends, was 'for each boy to say that for the first time in my academic career I had someone who really loved me.'"

Kids, Coaching and School

The other day our 12 year old commented that if they made school more interesting kids would pay more attention in class. I thought it was an astute observation. I know that looking back on my schooling experience I was bored out of my skull most of the time (That's one of the primary reasons why we homeschool). But when it came to my response to him, I waffled. My hatred of the schooling system has cooled a bit, I think. And, I think, part of the reason why is because of my experience coaching Little League baseball. I know that as a coach you try like hell to make practices as interesting and fun as possible, and there are just some kids that refuse to quit screwing around and disrupting practice. There is always the child who quips, when are we going to do something fun.