Much can be gleaned by interacting with a baseball pitching machine. The best instruction taken from baseball or a softball pitching machine actually have nothing to do with baseball. Standing in the batters box with balls flying by at 70 miles an hour offers itself to insight and awareness. Everyday a thousand things fly past every normal working stiff. Decisions are constantly being made every minute. Should I have decaf with artificial sweetener, should I scratch my nose before putting down the donut, should I call Teddy back, take the stairs or elevator, use blue ink or black ink, zip up my fly now or wait until I can duck into a closet, run to catch the cross light or wait? Facing baseballs tossed by a machine is a great practice and perfect metaphor for life.

A major league baseball player knows that whenever he goes to the plate, the pitcher is trying to strike him out. That’s the nature of the sport and the way it is played. The batter doesn’t waste time griping about why the pitcher is throwing so hard, or why he’s making it hard to hit a homerun. The batter isn’t mad at the pitcher because he is throwing fast balls and change ups without telling him. The batter won’t feel sad because he thinks the pitcher hates him. It is the way the game is played, the objectives are clear and the roles are obvious. The batter is out if you miss when swinging at three balls in the strike zone. Is he mad at the pitcher? Heck no admires the pitcher for his skill and is mad at himself for not doing better. The batter made his decisions, to swing hard, to bunt or to watch the ball go by. If he grounds out or goes down swinging, he goes back to the dugout, disappointed, but knowing he will swing again. He doesn’t point the finger at anyone else or make a bunch of excuses, or feel like the man on the mound was being unfair. He swung away and he will live to play another day.

For a lot of folks life is not as black and white or as oppositional as baseball. Life is much more like facing a batting machine. The machine has no worries. The machine doesn’t care if the person with the bat is black, white, purple, tall, short, or shaped like a gourd. It just keeps tossing pitches. The machine doesn’t care if the batter zings it out of the park or fans the air.

That is the way life is for a lot of folks. Things are coming at them a million miles an hour. Should they swing, pass or duck? If they get beaned by a ball do they run out to the mound and take a swing at the mechanical arm? Nope, they do not. It is not personal. Life is just tossing some bad pitches. They can spit and holler, cuss and kick. It does no good, but they can do that if it comforts them. The true focus needs to go into stepping back to the plate and facing the next ball, watch it come in and decide whether to swing or pass.

Baseball has much to teach us all. Simple lessons can become rules for living. Swing or pass, it’s nothing personal. In the game of life, we’re always in the box and there are no strike outs. That is what is so great; you can just keep swinging.