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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Fierce Urgency Of Now
by Dave
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
President Obama spoke with pundit cum "journalist," Matt Lauer, and referred to discussions Obama had with Afghanistan's leader, Hamid Karzai, regarding the Karzai administration's taking steps to solve political corruption in the country. He told Lauer, "What we've been trying to emphasize is the fierce urgency of now." The phrase is one Obama frequently uses. It is one he picked up from Martin Luther King and so would seem to be effective and true. Yet, while the "fierce urgency of now" may be appropriate in certain circumstances, it is really the expression of a common human weakness. Another way to aptly and simply encompass the full meaning of the phrase is "panic." A tendency to panic is not one of the redeeming traits of human beings.
Panic may be appropriate when one is dealing with an immediate disaster like the flooding of one's basement, a leaky roof, or a fire which threatens to spread rapidly. The "fierce urgency of now" is perhaps appropriate in righting a recurrent wrong like slavery or racism. It addresses another common human weakness, a tendency to be controlled by inertia, to procrastinate. Left to their own devices, those who practiced slavery would never change their economic structure to remove it because it is too easy to live with the status quo. Racism is also easy to continue while addressing either injustice requires hard work though society is ultimately better by changing things. But panic can be your worst enemy in most endeavors. And it will definitely work against you in fastpitch softball.
The "urgency of now" is most often to blame when soldiers retreat in a disorderly fashion from the battlefield. The "urgency of now" is what causes workers to complete a project filled with glitches which take more time to fix than the original work took. The "urgency of now" is what makes people take short cuts that wind up taking longer than the long way. The "urgency of now" is what causes softball coaches to lose control of their tempers and teams or make bad early decisions with respect to player and team development.
Think of the "urgency of now" in a work setting. You've got a project which will take 3 months to complete. It doesn't so much matter whether that project is the moving of a massive pile of dirt from one spot to another 100 yards away, or constructing a spreadsheet to calculate the net present value of costs to be incurred over the next ten years related to some legislative change. Most often, it is better to take a step back and consider the steps required to complete the task properly, efficiently, and completely. That is what business leaders do. If a gaggle of workers were left to finish a task without leadership, what most often would happen is they would begin the task immediately without any regard to efficiency, without any regard to how the task might be completed well and within the time allotted.
You may disagree with me, if you must, on this most critical point but I've seen it too many times to be persuaded otherwise. As a low level manager, I've had perhaps hundreds of people work for me throughout my life. Generally, on the first day of someone's employment, they are given few tasks. The real go-getters complete their tasks very rapidly in order to prove their bona fides with the new boss. That's all well and good but it says nothing about whether the person will be successful a month or two from now. If a month from now, this same employee has a sense of the "urgency of now" about all their work, what is produced will often be sloppy, delivered without regard to priority, and generally of a very poor quality. Many important tasks just won't get done because the worker feels he or she just has to much to do. I have cleaned up too many messes made by a co-worker who had a well developed sense of "the urgency of now" to be a big fan of it.
If a group of folks has that sense of panic and they need to move the massive pile of dirt, what you get is a bunch of guys picking up a shovel full and walking the 100 yards to make the new pile. You end up moving the pile though it may take a bit longer than expected. nd you have this trail of dirt leading from one location to the other which nobody cleaned up because it will take too long and they have "the urgency of now" driving their actions. Now they claim the project is completed but the new pile of dirt is short by 10% and nobody really wants to clean up the mess.
If, instead, everyone stood back and a leader examined the size of the project, available resources, etc., usually what will happen is a much better method of attack would be developed - maybe the requisition of a dump truck and front loader - and the three month project would be accomplished in half the time. This is essentially the nature of human endeavor throughout history.
The Red Chinese have generally used an "urgency of now" approach that has cost millions of people their lives as they strove to complete great projects by using simple human labor rather than the best technology and equipment available. We see that approach taken in many Communist countries. In free, entrepreneurial societies, more thought is used and much more is accomplished more quickly. I am sorry to go on for so long about politics but I do want to belabor the point. The urgency of now is valid in only very limited circumstances. And in our sport, it is seldom advisable.
I am not one for MLB's spring training games. I try not to pay attention to baseball until late April / early May. I was reminded today of why that is advisable as I listened to interviews with pitchers on sports talk radio. One pitcher had given up many home runs in his last couple of outings. He felt he had been well prepared for the coming season. There was no sense of panic in him. He was not even slightly concerned about the home runs.
The reason the pitcher was unconcerned was because he had taken a certain approach in these appearances. In one, during the first inning, he threw one pitch, one of his better ones, over and over again. Then after that, for several innings, he threw nothing but a pitch he is working on. He may throw that pitch some during real games but for now it is purely a work in progress. When he begins throwing it, he will not throw it in the circumstances he did during pre-season games.
Another little approach he took during spring games was to speed up his normal pitching pace. When he got the ball back from the catcher, it was his goal to get it back into the catcher's mitt as quickly as possible. I'm not sure why he did this. Perhaps it was a conditioning thing. &n bsp; Perhaps his coach wants him to see first hand that speeding up the pace keeps fielders on their toes. The reason the pitcher did this is not relevant. The fact is he did this and took several other approaches which will likely be abandoned during the real season.
That is the way in which major league baseball clubs go through their paces to get ready for the long season. The clubs do not expect their pitchers to come out and throw 7 plus innings their first outing while hitting the radar gun exactly where they left off at the end of last season. They have them build up arm strength gradually, they carefully monitor pitch counts, they have them experiment with pitches, and they otherwise take steps to be effective during a very long season. It is a marathon not a sprint.
Just within the short high school softball season, we see the same kinds of approaches. Teams set up scrimmages and play games in which the senior catcher who has held the position for several years and is unquestionably the number 1 doesn't catch an inning or maybe catches just two while DPing or maybe trying a few innings at first or third. Three girls who will be starters for the team take stints at SS or 2B. Three or more pitchers might be used over the course of two games. Some newcomer to the squad plays CF because the coach likes her speed and wants to observe her instincts at a position maybe she has never played during "real game" situations. Batting orders are played with to see how kids react. A coach might have a slugger bunt with two runners aboard just to see if she can get one down. Generally it is a time of great experimentation.
Pitchers can be imposed upon to throw just this, that or those two pitches during an outing at this time of the year. Sometimes a coach might instruct a pitcher to throw n0othing but fastballs low in the zone, hoping that this will induce a lot of grounders so the coach can observe his or her fielders. A coach might call a seemingly totally inappropriate pitch in a situation just to see if maybe it might be effective in a key situation. Perhaps a coach might want his or her pitcher to always throw a ball or two on the first pitch(es) just to see how she does pitching from behind. The possibilities are endless.
Different approaches to certain plays can be tried. For example, in a 0-0 "game," a coach might want a throw to go through to second on a first and third steal attempt to see if the SS can tag the runner and make the throw to home in time. Catchers might be told to attempt to throw out a runner at third on every pitch or every other one when during the season, that might not be the way the team works. There is a litany of possible pre-season experiments a team might feel are necessary based on what the coach feels is needed to best prepare the team for battle.
As you sit watching your kid play varsity or whatever level of high school softball, you may not always agree with what you see going on. You might think to yourself, "my is is a far better outfielder than infielder, yet this coach seems to be trying her out at the middle infield when her skills there are going to doom her to failure." Maybe you like a different approach to some aspect of the game. Maybe you wish you had made your kid ready for this or that and now you are afraid she is going to fail at what the coach wants her to do. Well, it's not your call. You don't know what the coach really has in mind. Perhaps your kid is the best option this coach has at X position and it's not going to kill her to do this for a while. It is truly early right now. It is too early to judge everything. Get some patience!
Once upon a time, a father was observing his daughter's team play a game. Everyone seemed to have these powerful bats. His daughter's bat seemed dead. He decided to get a new bat for his kid no matter what it cost. He wan ted the best one he could quickly find but being ignorant of the subject, he wasn't sure where to start. The other team hit the ball hard and used some particular kind of bat. So he made his way over to their side and nonchalantly checked out the brand. What it was doesn't actually matter to the story but let's say they all had Louisville Slugger Catalysts. He went home, got on the computer, found some sporting goods store's web site and made the purchase.
In a few days, the bat came via rapid delivery. He took it out and went over the new 31 inch, drop 10 bat carefully. It was nice and new. He gave it to his daughter to bring to batting practice the next day. When he came home from work the next day, he immediately asked his daughter how the batting practice was and how she liked her new bat. "I like it fine," she said sheepishly, "but coach says I need something heavier and maybe another inch longer. Sara has a Rocketech 32 and I mostly used that. I want one of those."
The father, crushed by his abject failure, checked his bank and credit card accounts and realized that he might be able to swing another $200+ purchase in two weeks but he'd have to go for the slower ground shipping. He told his daughter, "I'll look into it but it's gonna take a couple weeks." She agreed and used sara's bat until hers finally came. Now every time the father opens up the sports equipment closet, he sees $200+ he could have found another use for.
This is the way of all human endeavor. We are always in such a rush. We almost never have patience for our daughter's softball careers to take shape. We spend money foolishly to get stuff that may never be used. We get to near-panic if the coach is using our daughter in ways we didn't anticipate or in which we think he or she might seal her doom. Most of the time, the Universe provides and things work out. But sometimes we open our mouths as we feel the urgency of now and create a much worse situation that could have been avoided had we taken a little time and stepped back.
Today, at the end of March, take a moment and step back. Relax for a moment or three. It is not time to panic, to feed your sense of "the urgency of now." See if you can see the good in things. Don't encourage your daughter to quit the high school team because your daughter is being told to throw all fastballs when she is a drop ball pitcher. Don't worry that your SS is playing CF or your CF is playing SS. This is a marathon not a sprint. Take a longer term view of things, and maybe keep your mouth closed for a few more days or weeks.
 
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