Relentless Optimism by Donnelly Darrin

Author:Donnelly, Darrin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shamrock New Media, Inc.
Published: 2017-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

16

I woke up the next morning with extreme soreness in my left elbow and had trouble lifting it. I looked in the mirror and saw that it had turned black and blue. During my tussle with Mitch, I must have banged it hard on the ground.

Great, this is all I need, I thought to myself while examining the damage. You’ve finally got your swing back and you ruin it in a wrestling match with Mitch Mercer. Smart, Bobby, real smart. Are you ever going to learn how to stop being such a disaster?

The negative thoughts rolled in and I made no attempt to argue with them. I deserve this. I don’t deserve to be successful.

Minor-leaguers generally don’t talk about their injuries unless they physically can’t take the field. You don’t want word to trickle through the organization that you have a nagging injury and therefore are too risky to be called up. But I couldn’t hide my gruesome elbow.

As we all boarded the team bus for our next road trip, Wally came up to me in the parking lot and lifted my elbow for a closer look. I winced at the pain.

He shook his head and said, “I’m not even gonna say it.”

He didn’t have to. His look said it all.

Wally walked back to his office on wheels to coach someone else. He knew what had happened and he was disappointed in me, the way a father is when his son makes a stupid decision.

During our four-game series in Midland, Texas, Mitch’s prediction that I would fall back to batting .100 was pretty close to accurate. I played through the elbow pain, but my swing had been slowed by it. The pain was gone by our fourth game, but my hot bat hadn’t returned. I also found that the twisting and turning in my stomach was back.

I was so mad at myself. I spent the night after each game stewing in my hotel room. I mentally beat myself up.

You blew it, Bobby. You had your chance and you blew it…AGAIN. Welcome back to reality. And you wonder why you’re still stuck in the minors after all these years.

Janey called twice during this stretch, but I didn’t answer. The last thing I wanted to do was confess to her that I’d sabotaged myself once again by getting into a ridiculous barroom brawl.

For the first time since Wally convinced me to work on my thinking, for the first time since I told Wally I was committed to making optimism a habit, for the first time since I told Janey I was making permanent changes to my attitude; here I was facing my first test dealing with adversity.

And I was failing miserably.

I had snapped right back into my old pessimistic way of thinking.

I was looking at this setback as a permanent failure: I had missed my chance, like I ALWAYS do.

I was allowing the failure to spread to other areas of my life: I had let down Janey again; she’s going to be so disappointed with me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.