A Change-up

In the cut-throat world of high school baseball, sometimes the competition and the will to win can go to your head. Nearly every single game we played our entire focus was on winning the game. In our district of 8 teams, 7 of them were pretty evenly matched from year to year. However, there was one team that never had a chance to win beacuse the school had a low budget, and many of the kids on the team were underprivileged. They did not have batting cages, top of the line coaches, brand new bats or gloves, a great field to play on, or the talent to even compete with any of the other teams in our district. In addition, nearly all of their players were African-American while the other teams usually averaged only one or two black players per team. When it came time to play them, some of the teams in our district considered that game to be a "stat-pat", meaning that they would run up the score, sometimes scoring 30 or more runs, to boost their overall stats for the year. However, when we played them, we would first make sure that we scored enough to win, then we would slow down by putting in our back-ups and stopping at every base instead of going for doubles and triples, so as not to run up the score. We always respected them, and we also tried to joke around and make friends with many of them. What we learned was that even though they had no chance to win, they always had fun in what they were doing, just having a good time until the game was over. If they made an error, they would'nt get pissed off about it, they would just shrug it off and try their best the next play. We learned that it was just a game, and everything wasn't always about winning.