TALKING BASEBALL WITH EDUCATORS

So, one of my many jobs, is organizing and executing special events for educators.  This is a way of building partnerships, creating networks and enabling professional conversations to happen between educators at all levels. When I look to break the ice or just connect with new colleagues and old, I talk baseball.  I don't necessarily have to talk Yankee baseball, but when I can, I do.

Today, I met with a number of what we call in field the of education, "teacher leaders".  And as always, baseball came into the conversation.  The first dialogue was with a higher education professor from Northern New Jersey.  We started our discussion about a recent conference he attended in St. Louis.  My head went immediately to the Cardinals and did he catch a game?  He isn't a baseball fan, and clearly not a Cards fan, but he did manage to score tickets to the 360 Lounge in St. Louis's Busch Stadium.  This encouraged him to take a selfie with the scoreboard and field behind him and send it to his father, who in fact, is a baseball fan and was immediately greened with envy of his amazing location.  He followed his talk about his selfie in the 360 Lounge with "and the game went on and on; doubling the innings of a regular game."  "Good!" I stated; if you are not a baseball fan and you scored these incredible seats, you might as well suffer through 18 innings! Just saying!

The next conversation was with a baseball fan and die hard Phillie fan.  Now, he knows his baseball and of course, I asked him about how he felt about Cole Hamels' new team in Texas.  He didn't seem all that excited about discussing the situation only to say that Hamels will miss his next start because of a sore groin.

A quick search on ESPN confirmed my colleague's knowledge of Hamels' injury.  We then went into the a side bar on the eventual rebuild of the team and that he thought that perhaps in five years they would have a winning team again.  Given the fact that the Phils are 17 games behind the league leading Mets, that is a long time to wait.

My final conversation over the span of 20 minutes was about the Yankees and a picture I saw on Twitter that morning of Hal Steinbrenner with the caption, "Hal Steinbrenner's expression after learning that for only a dollar added to the payroll, he could have made a good trade before the deadline."  Now, after I saw the glazed look, I jumped over to the NY Post who had these words from the Yankee owner:

“Nobody thought it was going to be easy to win this division. At least, I never did,” Steinbrenner said. “Toronto’s got an explosive offense. And obviously, they added David Price. And they added the shortstop [Troy Tulowitzki]. But they’ve always been explosive this year with their offense.

“When you go up and play in there [Rogers Centre], with all the right-handed hitters — they seem to like left field there — it’ll be a big series. There’s no doubt about it.”

And Steinbrenner holds no doubts his organization did the right thing late last month, no matter how things have gone since.

My Phillie fan commented that George would have never let two key players go to another division team.  "He would have signed them both, instantly, no questions asked," he stated confidently.  I concurred and we both just sighed, he thinking about his Fighting Phils in dead last and me reflecting on the Yankees losses and upcoming trip to Toronto.

You know what...it is what it is...  We can't turn back the clock.  We can't take back these games we dropped to Toronto and Cleveland; we need to instead move ahead.  Can we beat teams that have outfitted their staff with the best that money can buy?  I don't know.  But, we need to keep swinging and hope to bounce back and stay in it.

Good conversations about the game from the perspective of a non fan, a Phillie fan and me.  Talking baseball with anyone is fun; but with educators, you get a whole other perspective.

--Suzie Pinstripe, BYB Senior Staff Writer
BYB Hot Stove Columnist
Twitter: @suzieprof

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