What 3 Red Sox players, the Boys & Girls Club & my dad taught me about showing up.
My dad used to do this.
Sixty years ago, an 18-year-old kid from Southgate, Michigan got a telegram from the Pittsburgh Pirates . Second round draft pick, 1968. The Western Union telegram told him to catch an Eastern Airlines flight from Detroit to Tampa. Report to Florida. Start playing ball.
And as part of being a young player in a spring training town, he did community events just like the one I sat in last night. Dinners where local kids got to meet the players, ask questions, and feel like baseball belonged to them too.
Last night, I was on the other side of it.
I had dinner in the outfield at JetBlue Park. Literally on the grass, under the Florida sky, at a fundraiser for the Boys & Girls Club. Three Boston Red Sox players sat on stools where my dad once sat, in a state where my dad once played, doing exactly what my dad once did. And they gave the same advice he’s been giving me my whole life.
I just didn’t know that last part until I called him this morning.
The Players
Three young Red Sox took the mic: utility man Nate Eaton, pitcher Payton Tolle, and catcher Carlos Narváez. Two kids from the Boys and Girls Club interviewed them, sharp kids in blazers who asked questions that rivaled the best journalists I’ve seen.
If you’re not from a spring training community, it’s hard to explain what makes it special. For about six weeks every year, Major League Baseball players live in your town. They eat at your restaurants, shop at your stores. And sometimes they sit down with local kids from the Boys and Girls Club and answer their questions with a kind of honesty you don’t usually get from professional athletes.
What started as a fun Q&A turned into something I’m still thinking about this morning.
How Do You Bounce Back from a Bad Game?
One kid asked the question every athlete, and every business owner, relates to.
The position players had similar answers: in baseball, you play multiple games a week. You don’t have time to wallow. (Speaking of wallow, I once wrote about wallowing in a very different context. So many full circle moments.) You have to let it go and move on. Every game is an opportunity. When you play that often, each one is a chance to be better than the last.
The pitcher had a different perspective. Pitchers often have four or five days between starts. That’s a lot of time to get in your own head. Tolle said that after a bad game on the road, he gives himself the walk back to the hotel. That’s his time, to curse, to feel it, to let it all out. But once he walks through that hotel door, it’s over. He’s either present with his family and teammates, or he’s preparing for the next start.
I love that. He doesn’t pretend the bad days don’t hurt. He just puts a boundary on it.
The Spotlight Doesn’t Pause for Your Bad Day
All three players talked about how hard it is to have a rough day when you’re in the spotlight. The fans are watching. The cameras are rolling. Your teammates need you locked in. You can’t disappear.
Sound familiar?
When you run a business, especially one that’s open to the public nearly every day, there’s no hiding. Your team needs you. Your customers deserve a great experience. The beer still has to flow, the music still has to play, and you still have to show up with energy even when everything inside you is screaming for a day off.
They said the key is leaning on your people. Your family, your friends, your teammates. Nobody does this alone. Not in baseball, not in business.
The Rejection Question
The kids asked about rejection. How many times do you hear “no” before you make it? The answers were eye-opening. These are elite athletes, the best of the best, and even they have stories of being told they weren’t good enough, weren’t fast enough, weren’t ready.
Every entrepreneur knows this feeling. Every pitch that doesn’t land. Every idea that gets shot down. Every season that doesn’t go the way you planned.
But here’s what stuck with me: they all said having fun is the antidote. When you’re having fun, you’re not stuck in your own head. People want to be around you. Energy is contagious, in a dugout or a taproom.
My Dad, the Pitcher
Here’s where the night got personal, though I didn’t realize how personal until later.
My dad was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1968. Second round pick, straight out of high school. He was a lefty pitcher, 18 years old, talented, and suddenly playing professional baseball in Florida.
He worked his way through the minors. And then he threw out his arm, and just like that, his baseball career was over.
He went home to Michigan and became a police officer. Built a completely different life. A great one.
Years ago, after what felt like the biggest win of my career, I called him. I was in my twenties and I genuinely felt like I had peaked. How do you keep going, I asked him, when you feel like the biggest thing has already happened?
His answer has stuck with me ever since:
“Take the win. Let yourself savor it. Then move on to your next big thing, and don’t compare. Let yourself enjoy something new, something that will be big in its own way.”
My dad lived that advice. He went from the diamond to the badge and never looked back with regret. He found his next big thing.
Years later, my parents faced something no parent should ever have to face: the loss of their son. If you want to know what it really looks like to keep showing up through the worst kind of “bad day,” I wrote about that here.
But here’s what I’ll say: if the pitcher’s lesson is about bouncing back from a bad game, and my dad’s advice was about bouncing back from a career that ended, then watching my parents get up every single morning after losing their child is the lesson that puts everything else in perspective. The days keep coming. And somehow, you keep going.
Full Circle
When I called my dad this morning to tell him about the dinner, he got quiet for a moment.
“I used to do those,” he said. Community events, dinners with local kids, the whole thing, as a young Pirates player in Florida in the late ’60s. He sat on the same kind of stool, answered the same kind of questions, probably gave some version of the same advice.
Sixty years later, his daughter was in the audience. In the same state. At the same kind of event. Listening to young players echo what he taught her.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think some lessons are just true, and they keep getting passed down, generation to generation, stool to stool, one Florida evening at a time.
363 Days a Year
Here’s the business lesson I took home.
I leaned over to my husband Rob during the dinner and said: “@Fort Myers Brewing’s taproom is open all but two days a year. Every single day is an opportunity to get better.”
That’s 363 at-bats. 363 chances to deliver a great experience, to connect with a customer, to fix what went wrong yesterday, to try something new.
Baseball players talk about the grind of a 162-game season. We play more than twice that. And just like those players said, the days keep coming, whether you had a great one or a terrible one. You can’t wallow. You can’t coast. You adapt and you show up.
Great day? Savor it. Tough day? Give yourself the walk back to the hotel. Then get ready, because the taproom opens again tomorrow.
The Gift of Spring Training
I walked out of JetBlue Park last night feeling grateful. Grateful for a community where kids from the Boys and Girls Club can sit across from big league players and ask them real questions. Grateful for a town where the lessons of professional sports literally happen in your backyard. Grateful for a dad who sat where those players sat, sixty years ago, in the same Florida sun.
Thank you to the Boys and Girls Club of Lee County for putting on an incredible fundraiser, for the Red Sox Foundation for hosting and thank you to Frank Jenkins for including us at his table. We’ll be back next year with a Fort Myers Brewing Company table of our own.
And grateful that we get to do this again tomorrow.
Every day is game day.
If you’d like to make a donation to the Boys & Girls Club of Lee County you can do that right here: https://bgclee.harnessgiving.org/donate/
