I’ve been around baseball a long time. I remember watching with my dad, granddad, uncles, and great-grandpa as a child. My aunt Clara Boyd played pro baseball for the Steel City Chicks, and my great-uncle Fred Boone played in the Negro Leagues. My cousins and I played T-ball, won championships, ate snacks, spent time on the playground, and then headed back home again.

As we grew older, some of us moved on to other sports, and others moved on to other interests. Like many inner-city communities in the 1980s, funding for the sport, the fields, and the adult volunteers slowly disappeared, and it became easy to leave the game behind.

Some of us stuck with it. We moved on to fast-pitch baseball and learned a valuable lesson: take the first pitch.

Me: “Take a pitch? I need to swing at the first one that comes across the plate, right, coach?”

Coach: “Nope. See what the pitcher is giving you first. The other player may not know how to pitch. They may be throwing strikes or they may be throwing balls. Take the first one and see if you can figure it out.”

Mind you, this conversation was happening at the batting cages, not even at home plate. We were practicing before practice. Coach wanted us to learn how to take a pitch and model that behavior before game time arrived, so we’d be mentally prepared to do it when it mattered.

Imagine that, kids learning how to be mentally ready for something as exciting and frightening as stepping into the batter’s box and letting an opportunity whiz right by them.

That’s what taking a pitch felt like, taking a break at the worst possible time. But if I wanted to play, I had to learn. And to learn, I had to listen.

Once I listened, I began to focus.

Then it happened.

I don’t remember whether I heard the ball first, saw it first, or experienced some combination of both. But I remember the moment clearly. I saw my pitch, heard my pitch, and suddenly understood what coach meant.

Taking a pitch wasn’t about doing nothing. It was about being present.

When my pitch came, I knew it.

I didn’t think about it, I just knew.

I missed it by a mile.

I swung exactly when I was supposed to. The problem wasn’t my timing. I didn’t get the bat off my shoulder. That was the next lesson, followed by learning how to stand, how to react, how to count pitches, and how to recognize a pitcher’s tendencies.

All of those lessons came after I learned to slow down, let my mind settle, and simply take the first pitch.

Life comes at us fast. In the digital age, it comes at us fast and constantly.

How often do we allow ourselves to take the first pitch?

How often do we listen to opposing viewpoints before forming opinions that freeze other people in place within our minds?

How often do we admit that we’re learning about events and figuring out how to respond to them in real time?

Recently, I was diagnosed with Mixed Anxiety and Depressive Disorder—which is another way of saying that I am often MADD.

One of the ways I’ve learned to manage my condition is by reminding myself to “take a pitch.” Those three words give me time to examine what’s actually happening instead of immediately reacting to what I think is happening. Sometimes the story my mind is telling me isn’t reality at all. It’s just anxiety filling in the blanks.

That’s when I need to take a pitch.

I need to pause. Observe. Wait for the right ball.

Maybe that’s how we break cycles. Maybe that’s how we grow. By giving ourselves enough time to acclimate to new situations and admitting that we’re still learning how to do things we thought we had already mastered.

I thought I knew how to hit a baseball.

And I did.

Just not one being thrown as hard as possible by someone trying to get me out.

My job was to keep that from happening. The only way I could do that was to pause, see what the pitcher was giving me, and trust what I learned. Then I could let go, make contact, put the ball in play, and start running the bases.

Of course, running the bases brought a whole new level of anxiety.

But that’s a story for another time.

This piece is in Recommend If You Like The Baseball Issue Summer 2026. You can find physical copies in bars, cafes and stores in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The newspaper is available for purchase here. 

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