Leadership Thought: A Leadership Lesson of an Umpire Learned on the Field of Play.

Dear Friends

“Best crew we have had all year.” Those words still ring in my ears, even though it has been over 20 years since I heard them. I was with two other baseball umpires from the Broward County Umpires Association who had traveled down to Miami to umpire a regional tournament high school championship game between Westminster Christian (where former New York Yankee star Alex Rodriguez made a name for himself) and Florida Christian, a perennial baseball power in South Florida.

To be honest, I really was not looking forward to doing the tournament game. Traveling to Miami in the late afternoon is never fun, and I was still not feeling at full strength after a bout with food poisoning. Doing the game meant not getting home until after 10 pm, so I was less than enthusiastic when I joined my traveling partners for our trip to south Miami.

It was a close game between the two outstanding schools. The game went well, and our umpiring crew functioned flawlessly. Throughout the game, we managed to be in a position to get every call right, or at least it seemed like we did.  And after the game as we prepared to get into the car for our return trip home, the manager of the winning team came up to us and offered some very encouraging words. “Best crew of umpires we've had all year.” Now granted we were probably not the best crew he had seen (it’s easy to be affirming after you have just won a regional championship game), but his words had a ring of sincerity, and we received them with grateful appreciation.

To this day I still remember savoring those words on our trip home. I thought of my reluctant attitude about even doing the game, but those coach’s encouraging words caused me to forget that it would late before I walked through the door of my home. At my age, I am lucky to remember what happened yesterday, and yet after these many years those distant words still linger in my memory. Yes, umpires, like everyone else, are grateful for encouraging words.

Proverbs reminds us that “An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. (v. 25) So simple, but so true. For just a few moments in the parking lot, the words of a coach took on a far greater measure of significance than what he could have ever imagined. They breathed new life into my tired spirit and made me thankful for the hours I had just spent umpiring a high school baseball game that I really didn’t want to do.

Encouraging words are like that. They can take on an importance far beyond what the speaker could ever imagine. I wonder how many lives have been touched, maybe even transformed, because of a few simple words that we might have casually spoken at just the time to someone who longed to be loved, or desperately needed to be encouraged.

If something as simple as a few words spoken by a coach in a dark high school parking lot can impact a life the way they did, then I'm going to be on the lookout to speak some small and encouraging words to those who cross my path.  

And while on this temporal side of life we may never know the significant impact of our words, God knows, and eternity may someday reveal just how important those words we uttered might have been.

As Mother Theresa said, “Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless.”

Just something to think about!

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom