There are a great variety of definitions to the word friendship, but the one I think of most often is this; “that a true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success.” So, at the risk of barreling potentially headlong into the “guilt by association” minefield that is the many facets of friendship, I will hesitate only momentarily to refer to one of my own lifelong friends… I mean, we did meet in 2^nd grade at the age of 7, grew up playing Little League, went to the same high school and college together, were best men at each other’s weddings and now by an absolute coincidence happen to share the same office daily here at work. Therefore, I am speaking from a certain level of experience when I say that, he is without a doubt, the single most pessimistic individual I have personally ever met. He, of course, would simply say that he is a realist… which I, of course, would simply say is… bull$#!&! Much like the Seinfeld co-creator Larry David himself, if there is a way to see the negative, hopeless, or depressing side of any situation, then he is relentlessly on it immediately… faster than Eeyore the depressed donkey could bring down Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and Tigger in the Hundred Acre Wood,

he emits a steady stream of caustic complaints and self-defeating comments, without regard to his surroundings or those of us that have to occupy them. Periodically, I’m fond of reminding him… somewhat sarcastically… that had I known he would still be jaw-jacking in my ear 46 years later, perhaps I would not have let him sit down next to me in the lunchroom that day in elementary school… Lo, those many years ago… but I did and here we are, sooooo… yeah, it’s like that. Therefore, if the old saying holds true, in this case regarding friendship, that opposites really do attract, then I must be one of the most annoyingly positive and upbeat people

most others will likely encounter in their everyday lives. He curiously asked me once, not long ago, “what is it about your personality that allows you to tolerate me?” That is some viciously assertive insight from a dude that

once duct-taped a firecracker to the back of a toad and fired it off without a seconds thought… eh, it was 1981 – these things happened – if PETA wants to call me, I’ve told him repeatedly, that I WILL testify against him.

Where was I again? Oh yeah… positivity. My view on this subject was solidified on the baseball field, or more correctly in the dugout, during a mid-season game in 2014 when the toxicity level on the bench had reached the nuclear meltdown stage of negativity. One individual, we’ll call him a “teammate” at this point, was halfway through his usual act of going 0-4, striking out 4 times, while simultaneously giving other hitters mountains of unsolicited advice about all the things they were doing wrong at the plate. The entire bench had been experiencing a near aneurysm on a weekly basis, up one side and down the other with this guy, running the gauntlet from the usual, “I didn’t ask for your opinion” to the explosive, “SHUT the @#$% up!” … but nothing seemed to faze him or slow him down.

Finally, with multiple teammates at an emotional breaking point and Ean, Luke and several others, seriously contemplating the Class 1 & Class 2 penalties for felony assault in the parking lot… “No, seriously your honor, he had it coming, I admit the tire iron was unjustified, but the baseball bats were simply convenient” … I weighted my options and chose the road less traveled. While my teammates played Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who would be responsible for holding him down while the others got to take free shots with padlocks wrapped in bath towels like the barracks scene in Full Metal Jacket, I simply said to my catchers… “I think when he comes back in here, I’m just going to aggressively agree with whatever he says… maybe he’ll just punch himself out, like Foreman did against Ali, if we refuse to argue with him”. The dugout fell silent, faces awash with complete dismay, cleats slowly erasing the dirt drawings of their planned flanking maneuvers on the ground in front of them. We patiently waited for… let’s call him “Smoker” … to slowly trudge back from another failed excursion to home plate, looking like Bamm-Bamm on the Flintstones, dragging his club behind him muttering incoherently to himself.

“If he hangs that weak-ass curveball one more time to me, I’m going to put it up against the fence” he said, with the misplaced confidence of someone who might connect with the baseball occasionally. I paused, looking up and down the bench at the expectant faces beside me and then with all the energy I could muster blurted out, “Yeah you are!” with the kind of over-the-top enthusiasm that bordered on the pedantically unhinged. Everyone froze, wide-eyed and silent… waiting to see if and how he might take this bait.

“I can… I’ll do it, next time… I will…” he said in rapid-fire succession, placing his bat in the rack as if it was being punished with another time-out for its many failures and then once again resuming his analysis, “I just need to keep my hands in, that’s the important thing,” as though he was trying to convince himself that his words might somehow be true and land a knockout blow to any doubters.

“I know it! You don’t have to convince me…” I crossed my arms and countered-punched, leaning backwards into the aggressiveness of my “encouragement”, trying my best to keep a straight face as my teammates’ grins slowly widened with enjoyment.

“He’s not that good of a pitcher… I just shouldn’t drop my elbow like that,” he said in a short and quick combination, repeating one of the most tired and overused phrases pushed by would-be hitting coaches everywhere.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t,” I emphatically agreed, absorbing the punishment of his many body blows, glancing down at the floor as my teammates realized what my “rope-a-dope” strategy was accomplishing, with their hands covering their faces.

“It’s… it’s just… windy out there… and there are these big holes in the batter’s box,” he said flaying about wildly, grasping for anything… the winds of unearned confidence slowing blowing away from him.

“Yeah, there are!” I gushed, sensing the tables turning… “is that all you got George?”

“It’s kind of embarrassing that I haven’t done it already,” he said meekly, punching the last of his strength out and his energy quickly fading… jab… jab, jab.

“Yeah, it is… imagine how we feel having to watch you.” I pressed my advantage, Ali’s pointed words loudly ringing in my ears… “Now’s not the time to get tired George.”

“I’m a… a good hitter,” he said almost to himself, with the kind of monumental lack of insight characteristic of the cosmically self-delusional.

“Of course, you are! Among the best I’ve ever seen!” I trumpeted again, now with ever increasing and almost copious levels of forced enthusiasm.

“Maybe next time … maybe I’ll just concentrate on making contact next time,” he said quietly sitting down at the end of the bench, fulfilling Lombardi’s classic line, “fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

“Yeah … yeah, you will!” I said slowly standing up triumphantly, picking up my bat and heading out of the dugout victorious… Nighty-nighty, George.

My teammates quickly picked up on the skill, turning the tables on one another while stifling giggles and wide-ass grins. “That will never fit in there,” … “That’s what she said!” … “Yeah, she did!” It went on and on, easing tensions and rebuilding team camaraderie. A few innings later we were back in the field on defense. I was playing third base, when the batter squared to bunt, then changed his mind and pulled the bat back. From the dugout Tony yelled, “Tom, watch the bunt!” and without thinking I simply replied, “I got it.” From behind me in left field was “Smoker” who yelled, “Yeah, you do!” Mike Mack playing shortstop almost pissed himself, he was laughing so hard. Between pitches he whispered to me, “He doesn’t understand what it means, but he hears everyone else doing it and he just wants to be part of the group.” Yeah, he does!

It has been just over 10 years since that exchange and the power we found in aggressive agreement has persistently prevailed season after season. The toxicity that polluted our team’s bench was gone overnight, as teammates learned to deflect the negativity and redirect the team’s sense of humor and general enjoyment of the game. Every time “Smoker” began another one of his tirades, his teammates would lean in like an exaggerated version of an E.F. Hutton commercial, remember… “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen” … to see who would land the first comment and win back the serenity of a quiet bench. Without planning or seemingly even much effort, the young players on that team had turned my passing thought into an artform… they grow up so fast, don’t they? Yeah, they do!

And while this is an old story reworked into a new article, I still feel the need to end it in my now customary style… with a nod to that line that has become a timeless classic among my friends, that even though he has now read one…yes, a single one of these articles and his response to it was, “We laughed, we cried… it became part of us,”… god, even in surrender, Ponty is still a dick!

By Tom Kersten (adapted from a blog article August 14, 2016)

Rage is a fascinating subject, especially if you have the opportunity to see it up close. Like a Rube Goldberg machine… It is complex, difficult to understand, entirely self-perpetuating and the smallest of actions can set off catastrophic results. I live inside just such a system, balanced precariously like a three-legged stool between the words… Wife, Daughters and Responsibility… coated in a thick veneer of constantly cycling hormones, with my only defense being a toxic biochemical cloud of perspiration and fear trailing behind me, as a type of warning to others… It’s too late for me but you can still save yourself. Think I’m exaggerating? Being too hard on the women-folk, am I? Recently, my wife brought home a book about raising children, not all that unusual as she works in a library, but the title gave me pause – “People I Want to Punch in the Throat” – I’m not going to lie, one some level I had grave concerns for my personal safety, reflexively rubbing my neck and adjusting my shirt collar in a very Rodney Dangerfield kind of way. My wife simply nodded slowly, like Geena Davis in The Fly, as if to say… Be afraid, be VERY afraid… And I was. If she had an evil laugh, this is where she would have used it.

Considering this daily exposure to the psychologically delicate, emotionally driven rage that permeates my household, one would think I might have built up a near immunity to outbursts of all types… A wooden and callused shell of a man, emotionally bereft and completely oblivious to the violent displays of rage that frequently appear during tense moments on any baseball field. Our team has taken to calling these types of temper tantrums… “Hulk Smash” moments. These are the little ball-gasms of man-child emotions, bordering on masochistic delight, that leaves people speechless… And much like any prolonged session of aggressive masturbation, leaves everyone involved feeling unfulfilled, slightly ashamed and socially isolated. But as I’ve explained to my children on multiple occasions, this is why crazy trumps tough every day of the week.  If people think you’re tough, someone will eventually want to find out how tough… but if people think you’re crazy… (whew!)… no one ever wants to find out how crazy.

Not the dangerous kind of crazy, not the you’re about to be hog-tied by your fellow passengers on an airplane crazy with a big “C”… Just crazy with a small “c”, like boarding a full elevator and refusing to turn around to watch the floor numbers click by, but rather breaking social convention and starring uncomfortably at everyone as if to say, I could go postal on you at any moment or break into tears body-rocking on the floor… I have no idea what’s coming next… SO… Just don’t! Suddenly, you are given a wide berth by default, as if the neighborhood’s old ladies got together and warned everyone, “just let him do what he wants, Marge’s boy has… some issues”. It’s freedom from within society’s constraints and it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, that I have strategically employed this tactic with frequent success and that deep down inside I am filled with an anger and rage equal to the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns…  or I could just be more than slightly sarcastic… or as Jeff Bridges says to John Goodman in The Big Lebowski, “You’re not wrong Walter… You’re just an asshole!”

Far too often though, society defers to these individuals who stand out from the crowd and attempts to make them “leaders”. While the qualities on display may be greatly beneficial in certain circumstances, true leadership consists of much more than a cult of personality. Aristotle once warned us that, “He who cannot first be a good follower, cannot be a good leader”… of course, Aristotle also thought women were “disfigured” men and that they played little to no role in reproduction… so consider your sources. But the fact remains, no one wants to follow someone who’s nuttier than a fruitcake or a silverback mountain gorilla. Unpredictable, self-absorbed, power hungry and prone to violence… These are the requirements of a Mafia hitman, not a leader. A true leader moves the entire group in a positive direction, cultivating relationships that challenge and reward, but most of all… A true leader makes it all about the “us” and not about the “me”.

Ultimately, leaders inspire others to join the worthy cause, to find the breath that motivates people to push passed the difficulty of the now and beyond the pain of the present… To grasp the elusiveness of possibility and put forth the effort needed to help the movement press forward to reach the vaunted goal. All too often however, history praises the leader above the act of leadership itself, above the goal… George Washington at Valley Forge, Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, Mahatma Gandhi at Dandi, Martin Luther King, Jr. at Selma… Great leaders and great leadership forces, even demands that the focus be put back on the “us”… The service to others and to the cause… And never on the praise of the individual person. This is where actual leadership… and true inspiration really reside. 

Finally, on the recommendation of one of my closest poker table “advisors”, I will be ending all my blog articles with the same tagline… To honor one of our friends who, despite being asked multiple times to read these posts, still refuses to do so. This passive aggressive behavior will continue to be repeated with almost Tourette’s like consistency until he notices his mistake and takes the appropriate action to apologize for his lack of emotional support… PONTY IS A DICK!!!

By Tom Kersten (adapted from a blog article July 17, 2016)

As any clinical psychologist will tell you… and I’ve spoken with many, do with that what you will… “the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior”. They then spend the next 20 minutes citing examples of how this isn’t always true… a behavior in its own right, so predictable it very nearly proves the point. Though inversely, as any analyst on Wall Street will be quick to point out, in the highly paid world of cover-your-ass finance, “past results are not indicative of future returns.” These two statements would appear to be at-odds with one another, similar to my own nearly perpetual bi-polar behavior… as I require constant instruction and yet I do not like to be told what to do… a perplexing conundrum, I admit. My default setting in situations such as these… and they come up with remarkable frequency, is to defer to any number of “advisors” among my circle of compatriots who will offer their musings, on a plethora of topics (see what I did there?)… most often unsolicited, slightly inebriated and in front of a TV, while playing a six-hour poker game. In this case – on the subject of the addictive nature of smoking – among my panel of unqualified “experts”, it was once suggested that, “quitting smoking is easy… I’ve done it 7 times”… a proclamation reminiscent of the movie Better Off Dead with the immortal words, “I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy.”

What does any of this have to do with baseball? Funny you should ask. In our league, containing players ranging in age from 18 to 78, bracketed into 5 age divisions…  the one with the most consistency, both in attendance and performance, 35+ on Friday nights, is also the one with the most “dads”, some with still young children in tow. Stick with me now, I’m bringing it around. While the older guys can play down with the younger guys, it does not work the other way around… leading to interesting and insightful comments that can be overheard – by those of us that move between divisions – during any pre-game warm-up. The younger guys, with their healthy nights out, tend to have “young” guy conversations like, “DUDE we got so wasted Friday night and then the stripper did this thing…” and so forth. The 45+ & 52+ guys, who tend to know their way around a tube of BenGay and a bottle of IcyHot (props to each of you for still getting on the field and doing the deed)… tend to have more “mature” conversations, like “my doctor started me on Lipitor and said I needed to lose 25 pounds… smart move man, my brother did that, made a world of difference… have you seen what my 401k is doing?… That’s awesome for you, trust me, retirement is great!”

Contrast these comments with the 35+ guys, playing on Friday night because Sundays are “family” days and we hear things like, “I won’t make it next week cuz I’m coaching my son’s travel team in a tournament… We’ll be out of town for the weekend camping… we’re gonna be in the Dells, hitting the water park with the kids next week… my arm hurts from throwing batting practice to 12-year-olds… Yeah? Well, try doing grown-ass men for 3 hours”… wait… What? This last one actually was spoken during a poker game, but I think you see where I’m going with this. These are the elusive chirpings of the American Male Dad in his natural habitat and as such, they’re not always going to come out coherently. The odd thing is this, even with all the obstacles facing these players… the time commitments of family, the stress of work and the injury rate over the course of the season… the Friday night teams are rarely short on players, argue infrequently with each other or umpires, play at an extremely high level and manage to do all this, often with kids in tow. Why should this be so? For your consideration, I submit… the word DAD-itude and the proper use of the “big piece of chicken.”

SIDENOTE: The video link here explains the average American household dynamic as put forth by one of today’s foremost marital philosophers, Chris Rock.

Now, I don’t know if DAD-itude is a new word or not… seems like any jackhole with a Wiki-account can create a new word these days… but it definitely isn’t a new idea. This term just refers to that positive, can-do attitude that a father brings to the table whenever he gets a bug-up-his-ass to get something done. When I was young… and yes it feels like a long time ago… my father was fond of saying, “there is a perfect tool for every job… but I don’t own any of them, so we’re gonna do it like this.” Which was invariably followed in close succession by, “now don’t ever try this yourself,” (he was rewiring an electrical outlet, without turning off the power) and “pay close attention cuz the doctor’s gonna want to know what happened,” (he was hanging a 12-point buck from the garage rafters using one pulley and an old set of my bicycle handlebars). Whenever I might venture to point out the inherent danger of said situation, he would always answer the same way… “relax, its gonna be fine”. Carrying sheets of drywall down the basement stairs at 13, “I don’t have much grip here, Dad”… “relax, its gonna be fine”. Wheelbarrowing rock from the driveway to the backyard at 15, “this handle feels like its gonna break, Dad”… “relax, its gonna be fine”. Cutting down a tree by pulling on a rope tied 40 feet up while he cuts the base with a chainsaw at 17, “you really think it’ll hit the open gate and miss the fence on either side, Dad?” … “relax, its gonna be fine” and… it was. In every one of these potential cluster&@#%$, the final outcome was exactly what my father had predicted. Now, there were some miscues… and those childhood memories almost always ended the same way as well, with some version of, “so… let’s not tell your mother about this, okay?” … And I never did, at least until recent years when the gray hairs and sore backs indicated that the statue of limitations had probably expired on our collective stupidity and letting some of these sneak out could be both healthy and bonding, running the risk of little more than eye rolls and a slow head shake from my mother in her easy chair.

SIDENOTE: This video link here is Bat Dad, a suburban father who embraced life in the car pool lane with grace and style… and a cheap Batman mask… truly inspirational DAD-itude.

I believe this is the attitude that gets players to the field and keeps us winning. Players who have the desire to compete, but have the wisdom to know that there is much more to life than winning the game at all costs. This insight and perspective are what sets teams apart from any I have known before. Now don’t hear what I’m not saying… if you take ball four and then pull your calf muscle in a slow jog to first base… there is literally, no limit to the amount of shit that will be heaped on you… right, Keith? And that is an enormous part of the camaraderie of a baseball team at its best… laughter as a bonding agent. Baseball is a sport built, not just for competition, but for contemplation and self-deprecation. Coach John Wooden said, “The best competition I have is against myself to become better”… and I would submit that he wasn’t just talking about sports when he said that.

SIDENOTE: This video link is comedian Heywood Banks and I don’t know why, but every time my children and I watch this, we can’t stop laughing… and yes, that is a toaster he is playing.