Measuring Success
Former Phillies OF, and Teaneck, NJ native, Doug Glanville has been writing guest op-ed columns for the New York Times lately, and he does a really nice job. He wrote one on the experience of Winter Baseball in Puerto Rico, and his latest column talks about various measures of success, both in baseball and in life (may need free registration to read column). Some snippets below…
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“Even personal success is hard to define without input from the masses. Baseball has a love affair with numbers…But there are a few universally accepted measuring sticks that no one can escape. A World Series ring is one of them.”
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“So what is success…Maybe you played drug free and left it to nature despite what some players were choosing to do. Or you could be like my minor-league teammate, Scott Weiss, who walked away from the game to explore the power of his Stanford economics degree because a promise of advance wasn’t kept. Or it could be someone like Amaury Telemaco, who grew up in the Dominican Republic without running water and a need to help take care of his siblings; he made it to the top as a pitcher and was one of the most honorable people I met in the game.”
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“I will venture to say that gaining awards and accomplishments doesn’t always mean you will sleep well at night. The players with the most internal peace are those who know who they are and, as a result, have found personal success more accessible than the players who chase the illusions of the quantifiable.”
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