Friday morning inspiration....

----SEVENTEEN INCHES----


One of my best friends, who is a retired SEC football referee and high school baseball umpire, sent this to me, this morning....thought you sports guys might like the message:

"""In Nashville, Tennessee, during the first week of January, 1996, more
than 4,000 baseball coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the
52nd annual ABCA convention.

While I waited in line to register with the hotel staff, I heard other
more veteran coaches rumbling about the lineup of speakers scheduled
to present during the weekend. One name, in particular, kept
resurfacing, always with the same sentiment — “John Scolinos is here?
Oh man, worth every penny of my airfare.”

Who, is John Scolinos, I wondered. No matter, I was just happy to be there.

In 1996, Coach Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a
college coaching career that began in 1948. He shuffled to the stage
to an impressive standing ovation, wearing dark polyester pants, a
light blue shirt, and a string around his neck from which home plate
hung — a full-sized, stark-white home plate.

Seriously, I wondered, who in the world is this guy?

After speaking for twenty-five minutes, not once mentioning the prop
hanging around his neck, Coach Scolinos appeared to notice the
snickering among some of the coaches. Even those who knew Coach
Scolinos had to wonder exactly where he was going with this, or if he
had simply forgotten about home plate since he’d gotten on stage.
Then, finally …

“You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my
neck. Or maybe you think I escaped from Camarillo State Hospital,” he
said, his voice growing irascible. I laughed along with the others,
acknowledging the possibility. “No,” he continued, “I may be old, but
I’m not crazy. The reason I stand before you today is to share with
you baseball people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned
about home plate in my 78 years.”

Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little League
coaches were in the room. “Do you know how wide home plate is in
Little League?”

After a pause, someone offered, “Seventeen inches?” more of a question
than answer.

“That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth
coaches in the house?”

Another long pause.

“Seventeen inches?” came a guess from another reluctant coach.

“That’s right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many high school coaches do
we have in the room?” Hundreds of hands shot up, as the pattern began
to appear.

“How wide is home plate in high school baseball?”

“Seventeen inches,” they said, sounding more confident.

“You’re right!” Scolinos barked. “And you college coaches, how wide is
home plate in college?”

“Seventeen inches!” we said, in unison.

“Any Minor League coaches here? How wide is home plate in pro ball?”

“Seventeen inches!”

“RIGHT! And in the Major Leagues, how wide is home plate in the Major Leagues?”

“Seventeen inches!”
“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls.

“And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the
ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello!” he
hollered, drawing raucous laughter.

“What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy.
You can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen inches,
or nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better
chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can
make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.'”

Pause.

“Coaches …”

Pause.

” … what do we do when our best player shows up late to practice? When
our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if
he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change
the rules to fit him. Do we widen home plate?

The chuckles gradually faded as four thousand coaches grew quiet, the
fog lifting as the old coach’s message began to unfold. He turned the
plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to draw something.
When he turned it toward the crowd, point up, a house was revealed,
complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows. “This is the
problem in our homes today. With our marriages, with the way we parent
our kids. With our discipline. We don’t teach accountability to our
kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards. We
simply, widen the plate!”

Pause.

Then, to the point at the top of the house he added a small American flag.

“This is the problem in our public schools today. The quality of our
education is going downhill fast and teachers have been stripped of
the tools they need to be successful, and to educate and discipline
our young people. We are allowing others to widen home plate! Where is
that getting us?”

Silence.

He replaced the flag with a Cross.

“And this is the problem in the Church, where powerful people in
positions of authority have taken advantage of young children, only to
have such an atrocity swept under the rug for years. Our church
leaders are widening home plate for themselves! And we allow it.”

“And the same is true with our government. Our so called
representatives make rules for us that don’t apply to themselves.
They take bribes from lobbyists and foreign countries. They no longer
serve us. And we allow them to widen home plate and we see our country
falling into a dark abyss while we watch.”

I was amazed. At a baseball convention where I expected to learn
something about curveballs and bunting and how to run better
practices, I had learned something far more valuable. From an old man
with home plate strung around his neck, I had learned something about
life, about myself, about my own weaknesses and about my
responsibilities as a leader. I had to hold myself and others
accountable to that, which I knew to be right, lest our families, our
faith, and our society continue down an undesirable path.

“If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one
thing from this old coach today. It is this: if we fail to hold
ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be
right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same
standards, if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when
they do not meet the standard; and if our schools and churches and our
government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve,
there is but one thing to look forward to …”

With that, he held home plate in front of his chest, turned it around,
and revealed its dark black backside. “… dark days ahead.”

Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91, but not before touching
the lives of hundreds of players and coaches, including mine. Meeting
him at my first ABCA convention kept me returning year after year,
looking for similar wisdom and inspiration from other coaches. He is
the best clinic speaker the ABCA has ever known because he was so much
more than a baseball coach.

His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your players—no matter how good
they are—your own children, your churches, your government, and most
of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches."""