Baseball Brings Relief To Dog Days Of Summer

Welcome back to The Sunstone Way. 

As most of you know, I’m a baseball fan. My older son, Ben, has been playing since he was a toddler and helped lead Millikan High School to two league championships. He’ll be playing in college this coming year. 

It probably won’t surprise you that I was very active in the Rams Baseball Boosters. Baseball runs in the Keisler family – dad was a star pitcher for the Long Beach State Dirtbags back in the day. 

It Takes Work 

Being a baseball player, let alone being a star, takes years of work. Most of the best players start when they are 5 or 6 years old in Little League, gradually learning how to play the game. 

It might look like baseball is just a matter of catching, throwing and hitting a ball. But there is much, much more. Timing has to be honed in both the field and the batter’s box. Muscles have to be strengthened. 

Another thing I like about baseball is it is a cerebral sort of game – you have to know what to do in myriad situations and know it so well that you act without a second thought. That learning curve takes a long time, too. 

Bursts of Talent 

One of the complaints I hear about baseball is how slowly it moves. Lots of time passes between bursts of activity. 

I can’t deny that. But the exquisite talent it takes to successfully throw a strike, hit a 95-mph fastball (curves are worse!), make a diving stop of a ground ball, then a throw from third base, etc., is worth the wait! 

Good baseball players do these things over and over again. That kind of consistency creates stars in baseball. Come to think of it, consistency creates stars in business, too. More about that in a bit. 

Endurance Counts 

The cream of the crop makes it to the Majors – Major League Baseball’s pinnacle. And they are expected to be great every day. That’s not just for a week, or even a month. 

Teams in the MLB play 162 regular season games every year, starting in April and ending in October. Days off are few and far between. By the time the dog days of August arrive – hot day after day with no relief – every team has played around 120 games. 

As of Aug. 10, Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Otani has played every game this season. Our managing editor, Harry Saltzgaver, was at Dodgers Stadium on Aug. 9 and watched him hit his 40^th home run of the year – 420 feet to dead center. He hit number 41 the next day, and number 42 the day after that. 

That’s endurance – and consistent excellence. It is a combination that is sure to result in success in any endeavor. 

Stay the Course 

I love watching football and basketball, and I played soccer through college. The truth is, I enjoy sports of all shapes and sizes. 

But I have a soft spot in my heart for baseball, at least partly because it’s a sport where you are expected to show up and play each and every day. That’s the recipe for success in pretty much everything we do. 

Add the importance of helping the team through your own hard work as an individual, and the way you often have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the team – it begins to sound like the building blocks for success in business and most endeavors we take on, doesn’t it? 

It certainly sounds like the principles we operate from here at Sunstone. You might even call it The Sunstone Way! 

So take me out to a ball game. And remember to always be a Sunstone!