Friday Faves and Feels #5:

The Tao of the Backup Catcher, By Tim Brown and Eric Kratz

If you need a new perspective on the things you’ve experienced in your career so far, and perhaps even a positive spin on a reboot, you might appreciate The Tao of a Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game. The book is about failing to live up to what you dreamed about and learning to see success in a different way.

There’s no way around the fact that people who like baseball will appreciate this book more than people who don’t. I still like baseball, so this one worked for me.

Among the regrets I have in life is not being more appreciative of the opportunity I had to play baseball in college. Instead I was whiney and a bit entitled. Mostly this was because I was delusional about someday playing in the major leagues. The result: I missed out on a lot of great experiences I might have had. For instance, I was on the first team in the history of our school to finish with a winning record. I didn’t even know it until just a couple years ago, and certainly didn’t celebrate it when we accomplished the feat. Someday I’ll tell you all about it, I promise.

But for now, I want to recommend this book as a source of wisdom about life. We all have dreams, and they sometimes fall short of what we’d dreamed. We can learn to adjust and have great life experiences. Hard work does pay off. The payoff might just look different than we expected it to.