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Sounds of Silence

April 12, 2015

I write in the early morning hours for the same reason birds sing then – it’s quiet. Birds can hear their voices, and I can hear my thoughts.

It is during the uncontested moments of the day that I can try out ideas – test them on paper. Yes, on paper! My most creative and productive process still employs a legal pad, a pencil and an eraser. The physical process of writing the words, looking at them, and often erasing what doesn’t make sense to my mind or sound right to my ear as I read it aloud.

The task of written communication has become more difficult during the four decades I’ve been engaged in this enterprise. While the work has become more complex and requires more nuanced discussion, the space available for careful comment has been reduced. Pretending cleverness or profundity, texts and tweets often do more harm than good to promote creative and productive discourse.

I am rarely provided the luxury of long-form journalism in this modern age. Even a “feature” article in a prestigious national professional journal is expected to be less than 1,500 words.

Modern scribes must boil down complicated matters to brief blogs like this one, hoping in a few short paragraphs to share an insight worth reading and to suggest a response worth doing.

The insight here? Silence is golden.

The suggested response? Seek a solitary space to describe and defend what it is that you hear in that silence.

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.