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Learning from Experience

November 5, 2013

Readers who frequent this space might assume (correctly) that I enjoy travel, especially so to places where I don’t speak the language, don’t know what’s in the food and can’t drink the water.

Back in the days when it was possible to travel in Europe on $5 a day, my wife and I honeymooned across that continent for a summer on slightly more than $6 daily, combined. Today we spend more than that for our morning coffee; but we enjoy the adventures no less or no more.

I suppose on some level we have been making up for the lack of diversity of our childhood homes in the Midwest and our nose-to-the-grindstone approach to high school. Neither one of us ever thought of study abroad, or had time for it, as we pursued good grades and gratified ourselves and others in school-related activities.

This is in sharp contrast to the foreign exchange student from Germany who spoke last month at the annual meeting of the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel. His family has hosted two students from China and he is now being hosted by a family in the USA. The point he made was this:  He prefers to learn about life from experiences, not stereotypes.

And so do I. I just got to this realization later than this fine young man from a small town in Germany.

Change of Pace

January 30, 2015

Michael Schwimer is little known to us in Michigan. He was a 6-8, 240-pound relief pitcher out of the University of Virginia who was drafted in the 10th round by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008.

In his minor league career, Schwimer earned 20 wins against 10 losses with a respectable 2.51 ERA. He struck out an eye-popping 12 batters per nine innings.

When Schwimer made his Major League Baseball debut for the Phillies in August of 2011, he served up a game-tying home run to the first batter he faced. He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in February of 2013, and was released by the Blue Jays the following August. You might say Schwimer majored in the minors. That’s where he peaked as a professional baseball player.

As a player, Schwimer made few waves. He wasn’t a “game changer.” And yet, he may still be known as one who helped to change the game itself.

Schwimer is widely reported to be the first MLB player to use a glove that was made of synthetics, not leather (which weighs twice as much), and was made using a plaster cast of his hand. It was a custom-made, form-fitting glove.

The result looks almost like a toy glove, fit for T-ball; but MLB gave it a “thumbs up” in December of 2011. MLB players have been warming to the glove, although very slowly.

To which Schwimer responds: “It takes forever for any change to occur. But when change happens, it happens really fast.”

That almost sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said – like, “it takes forever for change to occur, and then it doesn’t.” But experience very often teaches us the truth of this sentiment.

As the MHSAA reprocesses two of its toughest topics ever – out-of-season coaching rules and 6th-graders’ roles in school sports and the MHSAA – it seems like there is no progress toward change. And no change is the possible outcome of both long journeys.

But it’s also possible that, for one or both topics, the time will come when wisdom and will combine to create constructive change, which then seems to be occurring almost overnight.

My hope is that we find that formula before a rash of problems causes a tipping point that results in a rush toward solutions that are poorly conceived and/or politically imposed by outside entities.