Finishing well

Spring: it's always a time of hope and expectation. Primroses and crocuses are blooming right now, tulips are pushing their way up, and baseball is in the air.

Yes, a new baseball season is starting up. Spring training is interesting, but it's the real season that baseball fans are most excited about. Regardless of what the team did last year, the start of the season is a fresh beginning, and there is the hope that this will be the year that team ________ will go on all the way to win the World Series.

Starting well is important in baseball. If a team starts off winning a bunch of games in a row, the fans really get their hopes up that it's going to be a good year, a winning year. Inevitably, though, there will be a loss or two, sometimes a whole string of losses. When a losing streak occurs is as important as when a team gets on a winning streak.

In the excitement of the moment, it's easy to forget that what matters is not so much how the game (or the season) starts, but how it ends. At the end of the year, it's the team with the most wins vs. losses that earns the prize. In baseball, though, it's not just the most wins that counts, it is also when the team wins that ultimately matters for the final prize.

This point was painfully demonstrated in 2001 for the Seattle Mariners. That year was magic; they won an incredible number of games in the first half of the year, racking up a commanding lead over the other teams in their division. At the end of the season, they had tied a major league record for most wins in the regular season: 116 wins Amazing! That record garnered an American League West championship pennant for the Mariners that year.

The main reason they were able to tie that record is the winning streaks they had at the start of the season, winning 20 or more games a month initially. The second half of the season, they faltered a bit, but they still won more games than they lost, so the Mariners kept their strong lead.

The year 2001 was an emotional year, however. Who can forget the events of September 11, when it seemed as though everything stopped for many days? Airplane flights were suspended, as were baseball games. When life began to return to some semblance of normal and baseball started again, everything had changed for most of us in the US. The Mariners managed to finish the season well enough to tie that record and win a division pennant, but when the postseason came, they could not regain the momentum they had lost. They quickly fell and in spite of their incredible win/loss record, they did not make it to the World Series. That's baseball: no matter how good the record was throughout the season, it's how a team finishes that really matters. You have to play well enough throughout the season to make it into the playoffs, but it's what you do at that point that counts the most.

That is the way it is with life, too. It's important to live well, but all the good we've done doesn't count for much if we don't press through and finish well. Someone can lead the pack the whole race but let the lead slip away at the end will not win the race. It's the horse whose nose crosses the finish line first that matters. Life is more of a marathon than a sprint, at least for most of us. Developing character, perseverance, and endurance count for more than frantically doing lots of good things initially and yet burning out at the end. We've seen it too many times: a leader rises to prominence, doing good things and gaining a great reputation, only to have it all collapse in a scandal of some sort because he or she did not have the character and perseverance needed for the long haul.

Here is how the Apostle Paul put it:

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14

More importantly, he says:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. I Corinthians 9:24-27

Developing a long-term, marathon mentality towards life can help us not only start strong but keep going and then finish well. I would hate to come to the end of my life and look back only to realize that ultimately I did not do what was necessary to finish well. 

April  2009