Photo: cbssports.com
“The things that matter most must not be at the mercy of the things that matter least.” –Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Stephen Covey, he of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame, used the above quote in an audio presentation I was listening to recently. I wrote it down in a notebook that I keep for things that inspire me. I then thought of it again when I read a story about the Texas Rangers baseball team and last spring’s draft of college and high school players.
I’m a self-professed sports fan, having grown up in a family in which watching, listening to and attending sporting events were regular activities. We attended baseball games in the summer and hockey games in the winter. We watched sports on TV and listened to them on the radio. In other words, sports are in my blood.
But over the years I’ve become disillusioned by sports. The salaries made by professional athletes are one indicator to me that our society has its priorities messed up (especially when I look at my paycheck as an educator – I once calculated that Ken Griffey, Jr. made more money each time he walked up to bat than I made in a year). Then there was the NFL lock-out, the latest collegiate sports scandals, and my realization that the highest paid “state” official in Washington state is the University of Washington football coach. Why should he make more money than the university president? Than the governor? So I’m pleased to learn that last spring the Texas Rangers did something extraordinary, at least for a professional sports team. A young man’s dreams of playing professional baseball were shattered by a recent catastrophic injury. Still, he got drafted, thus fulfilling that part of his dream.
By Andy Smallman
Photo source: cbsspports.com
