Don't Widen the Plate

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Vic Verma

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Mar 6, 2017, 3:53:01 PM3/6/17

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YOUR BI-WEEKLY MOTIVATION

Monday, March 6, 2017

"Don't widen the plate."

In Nashville, Tennessee, during the first week of January, 1996, more than 4,000 baseball coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the 52nd annual ABCA's convention. Coach Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a college coaching career that began in 1948. He gave a remarkable speech at that convention, standing on the podium with a string around his neck from which home plate hung.

He asked the size of the home plate, one by one, from all little league, High School, college, minor league and finally the major league coaches.

“Seventeen inches!” all said, in unison.

“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls. “And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello!” he hollered, drawing raucous laughter.

“What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. You can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen inches or nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still. What do we do when our best player shows up late to practice? When our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit him? Do we widen home plate?”

“This is the problem in our homes & businesses today. With our marriages, with the way we parent our kids or manage our businesses. We don’t teach accountability to our kids & business associates, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards. We just widen the plate!”

Everyone was amazed. At a baseball convention where they expected to learn something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better practices, they had learned something far more valuable. From an old man with home plate strung around his neck. They had learned something about life, about themselves, about their own weaknesses and about their responsibilities as a leader. To be successful, we must hold ourselves & people around us to higher standards and be accountable.

Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91, but not before touching the lives of hundreds of players and coaches. His message was clear which applies to all of us. Compromise of standards has no place in achieving excellence in business or personal life.

“Ignorance is a progressive thinker’s enemy; acceptance, awareness, accountability and action are the tools of the informed; of people who want change and do all they can to achieve it.”