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| Actual image of me playing softball, courtesy of www.actwin.com |
The ancient Greeks told stories of a young man named Icarus,
whose father made them wings of wax and feathers so they could escape a vengeful
king. Icarus’ pop warned his son not to fly too high or too low because doing
so would end badly. It was sort of a high-concept version of Goldilocks.
Anyway, Icarus didn’t listen. While they were flying to safety, Icarus got caught
up in the wonder of flight and ended up too high, too close to the sun. His wax
wings melted and he plummeted thousands and thousands of back to Earth. He
landed hard on his left wrist and lived out his days in mild discomfort.
The
story of Icarus was meant to illustrate the dangers of hubris – flying too high
– and complacency – the flying too low – or at least that’s Wikipedia’s scholarly
take. However, I’ve begun to see some parallels between old Icky’s life and my
own and as I have, another lesson has emerged: the dangers of dreams.
Perhaps you’ll remember my
Cinderella-esque run through adult league softball last fall. In case you
forgot, here are the highlights:
- six games played
- 7-19 at the plate, good for a .368 batting average
- six runs scored
- one walk, and
- two catches on defense.
Of course, there were low lights:
- at least two errors from my time at third, maybe a few more from my time elsewhere.
- no RBIs
- three strikeouts, and
- 0-2 with the bases loaded.
Considering my confirmed status as
the worst baseball/softball player of all time and my place on the list of the
100 worst athletes of all time, I thought that was pretty good. Unfortunately statistics
don’t always tell the full story. After all, even old Icky put together some
pretty impressive flight statistics before he took his little tumble.
