October 26th, 2021 By Spud

12 bold men and 1 Tom B. Stone joined the Q for a good old fashioned game of America’s past time in our own sandlot – the parking lot of an old abandoned department store called “Sears”. Here’s the box score:

Mosey to mall parking lot to warm up in the usual spot doing the usual stuff:

SSH x20ic

Hillbillies x10ic

Loose Change x10ic

Arm Circles forward and back 

Windmills x5 OYO

THANG

Mosey to the sandlot (other side of the parking lot) where the field of play was set. The PAX were divided into 2 teams who would play each other in a few innings of Fisher Price tee ball. First we would run the bases and do a round of exercises at each base.

1st base – 10 v-ups

2nd base – 20 merkins 

3rd base – 30 LBC’s

Home – play an inning for 10 burpees 

Each inning was played to either 1 run or 3 outs, the loser doing 10 burpees. After each inning we would run the bases and do the exercises and play again. 

MARY 

Downdog/Updog x1 

That’s it. 

PRAYERS 

El Abogado and other PAX that are ailing. 

Rudy Brown – 33 year old baseball coach at Northwest who passed away from COVID leaving behind a family, 3 kids and 1 on the way. 

MOLESKIN

I’ve heard lots of crying about my lack of variety in my Q’s. I’ve got a wife and small children at home, I come here to get away from a life on constant crying and whining. So I mixed it up a little this morning in honor of the World Series starting tonight. 

It was the fall of 2021, and I didn’t know it yet but I would get us all in the biggest pickle we had ever been in. I was so excited to get the guys together for a game this morning, until I realized I didn’t have a ball. So I went into my son’s office and borrowed a Little Tykes one from him. Some lady gave it to him, she even wrote her name on it for some reason – Baby Ruth or something like that? Anyways, it got destroyed by the sheer power swing from Benny “the Firechicken” Rodriguez and now I got us all into the biggest pickle we had ever been in. I’ve got to get that ball back before this weekend when we play in the yard or my son is gonna kill me. I’m out of options. It’s time to lace up a new pair of PF Flyers – a shoe guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher – and run down to Academy Sports to try and buy a new one. Unless one of you has one laying around you can bring me. 

Like many sports, baseball is a great metaphor for life. Watching the Braves this season has been truly inspiring. At the all star break we had lost our entire outfield for the season, 3 all stars including arguably the best player in MLB. We were 52-55 and just couldn’t break .500 no matter what. And then we rebuild even better and run away with it. In the NLCS clinching game, a pitcher came out of the bullpen in the 7th inning to get us out of a jam that felt like certain doom. That pitcher was a former 1st round draft pick who got “the yips” so bad he washed out of baseball and couldn’t even play catch in the front yard. Just 3 years ago his wife encouraged him to try and make a comeback. In 2019 he was living in a van playing independent league ball. A pitching coach happened to pick up on a very minor thing he was doing in his windup that was causing the problem and worked it out of him. He goes on to be our best reliever and on the biggest stage and in the biggest moment he makes history and delivers. We needed 3 outs – optimistically we could hope for maybe a strikeout and a double play to get out clean. He goes out there and strikes out 3 of the best hitters in baseball. 

When people talk about athletes being heroes, a lot of folks grumble and act like you can’t use the word hero for anything short of a Medal of Honor recipient. But that’s not true. You can be inspired in many ways by many people. I’ve been around a lot of heroes, but the story above inspires me. I think you’re not even human if it doesn’t inspire you too. Failure is one of the main requirements to be a hero. Picking yourself up, refusing to quit, and coming through when it counts. Those are the things that matter, regardless of the stage you do them on. Whatever you do, don’t be afraid to fail. And when you do fail, don’t be afraid to try again. Failure doesn’t define us. The best people in the world fail. If you bat .300 (that’s failing 7 out of every 10 times you go to the plate) you’re an automatic first ballot Hall of Famer. Imagine what you could do if you have the courage to fail 70% of the time? 

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