It’s when you set aside your distractions that you begin to see what you were distracting yourself from. — Johann Hari
I’ve never been what society at large would call athletic. But not for lack of enthusiasm.
In middle school, I joined our (objectively) terrible basketball team. To give you an idea of just how bad we were, one time, we faced a Jewish rival. The kids on the other team were kind and hilarious, but they had one major flaw. For some reason, their yarmulkes kept falling off during the game. So, at any given point, 2 or 3 of their 5 players would stop mid-play to reach down and resecure it.
They beat us by 21 points.
In high school, I upgraded to softball with a ragtag group of guys who could recite significantly more Star Wars facts than they could baseball stats. None of us really knew what we were doing other than (A) we had to hit the ball when it was our turn and (B) we had to catch the ball when it wasn't our turn (I feel like most sports actually boil down to this).
Ricky (we’ll call him Ricky for this story) was in the outfield with me. Now, what you have to know about Ricky is that paying attention wasn’t exactly his strong suit. He was a daydreamer. He liked to let his mind wander. More than once (an inning) we’d have to yell at him to turn around and face the plate, instead of staring at whatever had caught his attention at that moment.
Ricky was about to learn why the hard way.
In our last practice of the preseason, we met up on a beautiful June day to play through a full scrimmage match. We all donned our light blue team shirts for the first time and ran over to assemble our lineup.
It’s so cliché to say that the excitement was palpable, but it was. We felt cool. Maybe even a little athletic, for a moment at least. The other team started at bat, so Ricky and I took our spots in the outfield.
Batter 1 came and got a base hit with a ground ball. Batter 2 lobbed it to the other side of the outfield and nabbed their first point on the board. Batter 3 is when it all went to shit. He stepped up to the plate and hit that ball high and right into the sun’s line of sight. We all watched for what felt like 5 minutes trying to figure out where it was going to land, then we saw it. It was making a B line for Ricky.
Ricky!, we shouted. Ball!
Ricky, I kid you not, was facing the other direction. But he spun around, got his hands up, and popped a mid-squat to brace for impact. The ball came down fast and for a split second, looked like it was headed straight for Ricky’s glove. But it was high. Just an inch or two.
Just enough to come down squarely on Ricky’s face.
One broken nose, a fractured cheekbone, a couple of black eyes, and one ruined light blue shirt later, we all learned an important lesson about focus. Or, more clearly, what happens when you don’t.
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