When Time Speeds Up (One Sixty-Two: Day 131)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Thirty-One: Gordon Beckham, Chicago White Sox

Time started to speed up today. From the moment I entered my school on this, the first day for teachers, everything felt like it was moving in fast forward. The paperwork. The meetings. The conversations with colleagues. The boxes to unpack. The room to decorate.

The marathon that we call a school year has begun, but it always begins and ends in a sprint. As we go from 0 to 60 in a matter of hours, teachers try to search within for the ability to breathe deep and allow time to slow down again. It can be done, but it takes real effort. If we don’t slow it down, the only thing we can be sure of is that we’ll come home with a headache every day.

They talk a lot in baseball about what happens when the game starts to speed up on players. When you’re struggling, it often ends up that you step into the batter’s box and, before you can blink, you have two strikes on you. Hitting coaches work with players to develop rhythms and patience at the plate, with the hopes of preventing pitchers from dictating the outcome of every at-bat. As for pitchers, they too need to slow things down so that they don’t find themselves walking two batters quickly, only to groove a pitch down the middle of the plate to the third man up.

Gordon Beckham has struggled this year with the pace of his game. Two years ago, Beckham was a first-round draft pick, and he debuted with the Chicago White Sox last season. Beckham’s rookie campaign was an excellent one, as he hit .270 with 14 home runs in just 378 at bats. There were high hopes pinned on Beckham in the Windy City as the 2010 season began. But in April, Beckham found himself hitting just .235 for the month. In May, he hit .159. And in June, he hit .233. Overall, this left him at just .216 for the first half of the season. Beckham had gone from one of the hottest young prospects in the game to one of the least effective starting position players in all of baseball.

And then, in early July, time started to slow down for the second baseman. He began to knock doubles into the gap, and he hit some home runs as well. The White Sox have kept Beckham in the ninth spot in the lineup, but he is hitting again. In July, his average was .354, and in August it was .309. Beckham is controlling his at-bats once again, and he can anticipate a pitch and make the pitcher pay.

In teaching parlance, Beckham is once again walking in the door ready for his lessons – he prepared the day before, and he knows the material well. He’s well-rested and ready to meet the students’ needs, whatever they might be. He’s doing his grading, but not letting that stack of papers take over his life. He’s got the rest of his paperwork under control, and he’s not getting stressed out over the little things. He’s calling the parents of students who are struggling, in order to avoid major problems down the road. And, most importantly, he’s going home and doing something for himself each day so that the job doesn’t consume him in all the unhealthy ways that work can do to us.

The White Sox like the kind of baseball that their second baseman is playing right now, and he’s certainly not losing his job anytime soon. Gordon Beckham knows this, I’m sure. Now as September brings the pennant race to a close with another full-out sprint, the key for Beckham is to keep his cool as the hot lights shine on him and his teammates. The stakes may be high, but the game doesn’t have to go any faster than you want it to go. Just breathe deep, and keep your hand off that fast-forward button.