Josh Benner

Tag: sports

  • Life lessons from baseball

    Life lessons from baseball

    Today is the opening day for the 2023 Major League Baseball season. Between opening day and the end of the season in early November, more than 2,430 games will be played.

    Baseball’s regular season is the longest in American professional sports, nearly doubling the 82 games NBA and NHL seasons.

    I think about the baseball games that are blowouts. The 10, 12, 14 run wins. When a team gets behind by a huge margin in baseball, it’s very rare for them to comeback and win. And the later in the game a team is down by a big run-differential, the less likely they are to comeback. If you get to the bottom of the 9th down by double-digit runs, the incidence of a comeback is virtually unheard of.

    In a baseball game, you can go out on Thursday, and your team can get crushed. Starting pitcher might not have good stuff bats aren’t connecting, errors. It can be a horrible day, a 12 run loss.

    But the beauty of baseball is that, no matter what happened on Thursday, Friday is a new opportunity to go out and to succeed. No matter how badly you lost yesterday, it doesn’t matter with how you can do today.

    Life is the same way. We can have a really bad day. We can feel totally defeated. But tomorrow is always a new day.

    That metaphor works both ways. If you were the team who dominated on Thursday, you still have to go out and play well on Friday.

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  • March Madness: one champion, but many winners

    March Madness: one champion, but many winners

    It’s the start of one of the most beloved traditions in the American sports calendar: March Madness. We’re a little bit past the midpoint of the first day. There have already been some upsets. Many people already probably have a team (or two) who they thought would go deep into the tournament already headed home.

    For me, one of the reasons why I appreciate the tournament is that I feel like there is always more than one winner. Yes, there’s only one champion. But lots of teams can come away from March Madness feeling like winners. Not every school is Kansas, or Duke, or Kentucky who expects to be in the tournament every year. For many schools, just getting into the dance i already a big win. Kennesaw State University is in the tournament for the first time in program history.

    I think of Princeton’s win today over Arizona. A 15 seed over a 2 seed. That’s Princeton’s first tournament win in 25 years. Regardless of what happens in their next game, they’re playing with house money.

    Earlier today, Furman who’s a 13 seed upset Virginia. This is Furman’s first appearance in the tournament since 1980. And there will be more upsets to follow. Obviously every team is always going to win their next game, but for the teams who pull off an upset (and if history is an indicator, there are usually about nine upsets in the first round alone), they’re already winners.

    I think of the teams who make it to the final four. Even if you’re a one seed and only make it to the final four, you’ve accomplished something special.

    I feel like we tend to judge a lot of sports based on championships. We’re like Ricky Bobby in Talledgea Nights and think “if you’re not first, you’re last.” Perhaps it’s because the tournament is so long, but in March Madness, more so than other team sports, I feel like we can appreciate the teams that overachieve, the teams that find some magic, the teams who get a game further than the experts thought they could. And in that, I feel like it’s a celebration that much more closely resembles life than how we talk about other sports.

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  • What baseball can teach us about life

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    The second half of the 2019 baseball season starts today. Between now and late September, the regular season will feature over 1,000 games.

    One ting I love about baseball is that no matter how good or bad today’s game went, tomorrow is a new day.

    In baseball, you can get absolutely trounced one day. Pitching can be terrible, hitting can be terrible, you can lose by 15 runs. Just a disaster of a game. But no matter how badly you might lose today, tomorrow is a new day and a new game.

    Conversely, no matter how much you dominate today, you could hit 4 home runs, pitch a no hitter, have a walk off home run, everything can be clicking, but tomorrow is still a new day and you need to do it again. You can’t just rest on yesterday. (more…)

  • D.C. area school won’t play road games at Karen Pence’s Christian schools because students feel “unsafe”

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    It became a story last week that Karen Pence, the wife of vice president Mike Pence is teaching art classes at a private school in Virginia that holds to Biblical values and expects students and staff to abide by a code of conduct which comports with Biblical teachings. This has drawn criticism because Immanuel Christian School, where Pence teaches, has a policy banning LGBT expressions or relationships. (more…)

  • What great coaches can teach us about life

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    Relentless effort (not talent or intelligence) is the key to achieving great things in your life. Struggle is part of the process. It is hard and often painful. But it’s also necessary, because it’s in the struggle that great things are achieved.
    -Urban Meyer, in Above the Line

    Tonight, one of the greatest college football coaches of all time retires.

    Urban Meyer concludes his seventh and final season as the head coach at Ohio State. Meyer has amassed an incredible record at Ohio State and throughout his coaching career. Coming into tonight’s Rose Bowl, Meyer is 82-9 as the Buckeye head coach.  In his seven seasons, Meyer never lost more than two games in a season. He lost four conference games total. He won his first 24 games in Columbus.

    He’s one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. Three national championships. He won .85 percent of his games. Meyer had four winning streaks of 20 or more games (to put that in perspective, no other coach even has three).

    Great coaches can teach us all things. I think of things I’ve read over the years from people like John Wooden, Vince Lomardi, Woody Hayes, Bobby Knight.

    For people who have succeeded in competitive endeavors, they have insights from which we can all benefit in terms of work ethic, leadership, and grit.

    We so often make excuses for our failures and mediocrity. Great coaches don’t settle for mediocrity. They demand excellence from themselves, from their staffs, and from their players. We so often chalk up failure to a lack of resources, things beyond our control, or the fault o others. Great coaches show us all that excellence comes from hard work. Success comes from preparation and learning from mistakes. Success comes from wanting it more than your opponent.

    It’s true on the playing field, on the court, and in life.

    “I’ve come to learn that leadership is not automatically granted to you because of your position or your salary or the size of your office. Leadership is influence based on trust that you have earned. A leader is not someone who declares what he wants and then gets angry when he doesn’t get it. A true leader is someone who is going someplace and taking people with him, a catalyst for elite performance who enables people to achieve things they wouldn’t achieve on their own. A leader is someone who earns trust, sets a clear standard, and then equips and inspires people to meet that standard.”
    -Urban Meyer in Above the Line

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    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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