It’s Only a Game

Safe at Secondby Mike O’Mary

When I was younger, I coached a girls’ softball team for several years. It was a gratifying experience. I started with first and second graders, and we mainly covered the basic skills of hitting, running, fielding and throwing. We also talked about the rules of the game itself. Balls and strikes. Outs. Foul balls. Fair balls. And where to run if you actually happened to hit a fair ball.

In subsequent seasons, the girls got the basics down pat and learned other things like bunting, stealing and how to play team defense. By the time they got to age 11 or 12, they had found a nice balance–a place where they seemed to enjoy winning, but didn’t get terribly upset if they lost. As a matter of fact, when I got a little down on myself after a loss one season, our catcher (who also happened to be my daughter) took me aside and helped me put things back in perspective. “Dad,” she said, “it’s only a game.”

It was a timely reminder. There are more important things in life than winning or losing a softball game–more important things in life than winning or losing a contract or a job. And so it was that from time to time as a coach, I was tempted to go to a practice and say, “Okay girls, gather ‘round in a circle and sit down on your gloves…today, we’re going to talk about life and love and your hopes and dreams.” But I never got around to doing that. I imagine the girls would have preferred wind sprints to discussing such topics with their coach. Besides, it wasn’t really my place to teach them about life and love and hopes and dreams anyway. I left that to their parents. Instead, I focused on teaching them how to slide without getting hurt–which is, after all, a pretty important thing to know.

Mike O’Mary is founding dreamer of Dream of Things, a book publisher currently accepting creative nonfiction stories for anthologies on 13 topics, including an anthology titled It’s Only a Game: Lessons Learned from Playing and Coaching Sports.