The separator: Ineffable Poise

David Wright, Ian Kinsler and Hiroki Kuroda all have this in common; they have really hard skulls.  All three were hit in the head by baseballs traveling 90+ miles per hour and on Saturday night August 15, they served as visual reminders poise daily confronts the dangers of professional sports. I can conjecture that there is a proverbial dotted line on which you sign when you make it pro and there is likely fine print that says something to the effect that you acknowledge the risk associated with your new lucrative employment.

Fine print doesn’t make what we saw in Major League Baseball on August 15 any easier to behold. Two of the three incidents were due to balls gettnig away from pitchers and tailing off toward the unsuspecting batter bravely standing in the box. The third was Dodger pitcher Kuroda who received his artillery from the bat of an Arizona Diamond Backs batter who hit a come-backer straight up the middle.

It’s been a chippy couple of weeks in the majors with all the beaning of batters, bench-clearing brawls and win-at-all-cost antics. Tempers are flaring and accidents are becoming more frequent but the truth underlying all of this bedlam is that sports are risky and those who compete in them, while privileged, are paid for more than their ability; they’re paid for their poise.

John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach Emeritus, used poise, self-control and confidence as key building blocks in his pyramid of success. Poise was that seemingly ineffable quality that Wooden thought was necessary because it meant you were going to be able to perform under stress. He believed in preparation and in mistakes. Wooden’s mentor was a coach by the name of Piggy Lambert who believed mistakes were unavoidable. Poise is why the two batters and pitcher hit on Saturday night will return to the diamond to do their jobs.

It’s the reason former Clippers guard Shaun Livingston is still in the NBA. According to a Wikipedia article, Livingston injured almost every part of his knee, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), and the lateral meniscus, badly spraining his medial collateral ligament (MCL), and dislocating his patella and his tibia–femoral joint. He destroyed his knee on February 26, 2007 but on March 31, 2009, he signed a multi-year contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder. It takes more than talent to play at the highest level of sports and what it takes has nothing to do with banned substances or nepotism. You have to prepare, compete, get hit, get up and do your job…probably in that order.