Jim Priest is CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Oklahoma and can be reached at jpriest@okgoodwill.org.

In a few weeks baseball’s Spring Training is supposed to start. There’s a labor dispute that may prevent that but, regardless, in February my mind turns to baseball. It’s in my DNA .Not because I played it well but because baseball appeals to me.

One of the reasons is that the object of baseball is to go home. I like the sound of that. And even though it has layers of complexity, at it’s heart baseball is as simple as Willie May’s explanation: “when they throw it, I hit it. When they hit it, I catch it.”

Legendary college baseball coach Joe Scolinos kept it simple too. In a speech he gave to coaches with an actual home plate hanging around his neck he talked about the fact that baseball’s home plate is the same size in every level of baseball. Little league? 17 inches. Major League? 17 inches. Every level of baseball in between? 17 inches.

And then Scolinos said this:

“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!”, his voice bellowing off the walls. “And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to the minors!”

“What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. You can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen inches, or nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.’”

” And coaches, what do we do when our best player shows up late to practice? When our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit him, do we widen home plate?”

He turned the plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to draw something. When he turned it toward the crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows. “This is the problem in our homes today. With our marriages, with the way we parent our kids. With our discipline. We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards. We widen the plate!”

http://www.sperrybaseballlife.com/stay-at-17-inches/

Coach’s message makes us wince, doesn’t it? It makes us think about times we’ve “widened the plate”. Sometimes we widen the plate for others and sometimes we’ve widened it for ourselves. We’ve given a pass when we should have held to a standard.

I’m not suggesting we become hard edged, unforgiving, intolerant rules enforcers. But what I am suggesting is that there have to be standards that have to be met and there have to be consequences when the standards aren’t met. In our own lives and in our families.

Listen to coach. Don’t widen the plate. Hold to the standard.