Finishing

Talking about finishing seems vaguely inappropriate this time of year when everyone is using the turn of the New Year to set new goals and begin new courses of action. But a couple of observations over the past holiday season brought the subject forward for consideration.

The first was the abnormally large number of college and professional football teams that folded like a house of cards under pressure during the final days and weeks of the 2009 season. Out of respect, I won’t name the teams, but living just south of Denver, one Orange and Blue clan comes to mind. I don’t use the word “quitters” very often, but I’m not able to come up with a better term to describe what I witnessed down the stretch of the 2009 season, when several college and professional teams seemed to lie down in front of the competition.

When it comes to finishing things, I live in a glass house, so the stone I throw shatters my world as well. Like many of you, I use the New Year to set new goals and adjust my course. Each January, as I write my latest New Year’s goals, I take a look back at how I performed on the previous year’s objectives. This year I discovered I had achieved just one of eight goals I set for 2009 – and even that one – which was finishing my new book Blue Threat - was a two time “rollover” from 2007.

It’s not so much that I mind not achieving every goal I set. If I did I would be probably be setting my goals too low, but 1 of 8 is a .125 batting average, and no one stays in the big leagues long with that kind of performance. So my big questions is “WHY?” Why do good athletic teams fade down the stretch? Why am I batting .125 on well thought out and presumably achievable goals? Why don’t people finish well?

At the risk of mixing too many sports metaphors, let’s turn to baseball, or more specifically to two moments in professional baseball history. It was the fifth inning of Game 5 of the 1968 World Series, and my beloved Detroit Tigers were down three games to one to the St. Louis Cardinals, when speedster Lou Brock decided he did not need to slide at home plate when trying to score from second base. Tiger catcher Bill Freehan took the throw, blocked home plate, and the fastest man in baseball was called out as he tried to dance around the tag. Detroit won by scoring three runs in the seventh inning, and went on to take the last two games to win the Series.

Fast forward two years to the 1970 Major League All Star game – a meaningless competition to showcase the game’s best players. With the score tied 4-4 in the seventh. Pete Rose is on second base when Jim Hickman lined a single to center field. Amos Otis fielded the ball cleanly and came up throwing. As Rose rounded third, Coach Leo Durocher waved him home at full speed. As Rose neared home plate, he started to crouch for his patented head first slide, but seeing the catcher come up the third base line to block his slide, Rose changed his tactics and crashed headlong and under full power into Fosse, dislocating Fosse’s shoulder – an injury the Cleveland Indians’ catcher would never fully recover from. The umpire signaled “safe” (the throw went over Fosse’s head) and Rose’s team won the game by one run.

Why didn’t Lou Brock slide during a critical game of the World Series? Why did Pete Rose intentionally collide with Ray Fosse in a meaningless All Star game? More to the point, why do some of us finish stronger, and more often than others? I know the answers lies in words like planning, perseverance, prioritization and overcoming procrastination. But it seems like there is something more elemental, but I just can’t put my finger on it. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts the readers might have on the subject. In the meantime, I am making a personal committment to a .750 completion batting average as one of my 2010 goals. I'm not betting my next month's paycheck on that one, but we need to hurry, because if the Mayans have it right, we may only have two more New Years to get it all done!