THE BIG WIN
I’m proof that great things can happen to ordinary people if they work hard and never give up.
—OREL HERSHISER
I may win and I may lose, but I will never be defeated.
—EMMITT SMITH
Hobbled by foot injuries, Mark McGwire missed most of the 1993 and ’94 seasons. Each of those years he hit only nine home runs. When the slugger, who then played for Oakland, suffered another setback the next spring, he wondered if the baseball gods were trying to tell him something. Frustrated and worried about his future, he turned to family and friends for advice. They urged him to give it at least one more year.
Imagine if McGwire had quit baseball. Think of what he and all of us would have missed. McGwire would never have hit home run number sixty-one on his father’s sixty-first birthday and written his name alongside Roger Maris in the record book. He never would have shared this memory with the St. Louis Cardinals batboy—McGwire’s ten-year-old son. As Big Mac circled the bases, Matt McGwire stood at the plate, waiting to be swept up in his dad’s embrace. What a moment—three generations joined by one home run.
If McGwire had quit, he never would have hit number sixty-two—a feat that thrilled him so much that he forgot the first rule of Little League: touch them all. In his excitement, McGwire missed first base. He came back, touched first, touched second, touched third, and touched home. The night McGwire took ownership of the most prestigious record in sports, he touched everything and everyone.
If McGwire had quit, baseball’s new Man of Steel wouldn’t have hit five home runs during the last forty-four hours of the magical 1998 season. Before his last at-bat, he stood in the on-deck circle, eyes closed, absorbing the energy. Then he stepped to the plate and belted number seventy. They say that seventieth baseball is worth thousands. But how can you put a price tag on that heroic summer and the impact it made upon the game, the fans, and the country? McGwire said it all: “I can’t believe it, can you?”
Michael Jordan’s goal as a teenager was to make his high school basketball team. He can still see himself back then, as an anxious sophomore, on the long-awaited day when his coach posted the typewritten sheet in the gym. The students who made the team were listed, while those left off had been cut.
Jordan’s eyes searched the list. He ran a finger down the alphabetical column of names. His wasn’t there. His heart sank. After school that day, Jordan went home, shut himself in his room, and cried hard tears.
Thankfully, determination overcame disappointment. The skinny youth refused to accept he wasn’t good enough. He didn’t give up. If he had, we wouldn’t have experienced the pleasure of watching the greatest performer in basketball history win NBA championships and MVP titles and lead a “Dream Team” to gold on the Olympic stage.
Lance Armstrong remembers the moment doctors gave him the grim news. In 1996 the cyclist was told he had testicular cancer. The disease had spread to his abdomen, brain, and lungs.
“The first thing I thought was ‘Oh, no. My career is in jeopardy,’” Armstrong told friends. “Then they kept finding new problems. I forgot about my career. I was more worried about making it to my next birthday.”
Armstrong underwent four rounds of chemotherapy and had surgery to remove brain tumors. Remarkably, less than three years after doctors gave him only a 40 percent chance to live, the twenty-seven-year-old Texan was pedaling fiercely across France, over the Alps, and across the Pyrenees. Bent over his two-wheeler, the American led the way on the 2,286-mile journey over some of Europe’s most extreme terrain. Up hill and down dale, in sunshine and in rain.
Some climbs were as steep as the steps of a football stadium. He ate on the go. He sipped liquids, like a hummingbird from a feeder. Fueled by willpower, he was a sewing machine, burning six thousand calories a day.
The Tour de France is one of the world’s greatest tests of human endurance. The race has been compared with running a marathon every day for twenty days. Lance Armstrong doesn’t need a trophy to prove he is a winner, but he received one in 1999 anyway. On the last day of the race, he arrived in Paris, draped in an American flag, and embraced by cheers, the winner. But more than that, Armstrong is an inspiring symbol of survival. His is a life-affirming story and continues to be. Lance repeated the feat the following year.
In working with athletes, and all performers, I remind them that we don’t know what the future holds for any of us. So why not act as if you’re going to have a great future? Set your goals. Do the work. While positive thinking doesn’t always work, negative thinking, unfortunately, almost always does.
Throughout this book we have talked about some of the world’s best-known athletes. Most champions, however, aren’t famous. They aren’t written about in Sports Illustrated or interviewed on ESPN; instead, they are all around us. They are everywhere we look.
Ida Dotson was two years old before her parents suspected something was wrong. Tests confirmed that the child from Tombstone, Arizona, was hearing impaired. When Ida turned four, her mother and father drove to Tucson and placed her in the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind. She spent ten years at the school.
Her sophomore year, Ida said she wanted to go to public school, so she enrolled at Tombstone High. She didn’t know how to communicate with the other 300 students. They didn’t know sign language. Ida worried if they would accept her. They did.
She couldn’t hear the band play or the cheerleaders cheer. But if being deaf is a handicap, no one told Ida. She joined the girls’ varsity basketball team and worked hard. Wearing a hearing aid that allows her to detect the vibrations from the referee’s whistle, she became the school’s top scorer and team leader. In her senior year Ida took Tombstone to the semifinals in the state playoffs.
The last lesson is the most important. Don’t let your fears get in the way of your dreams. Don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do.
The greatest victory is the victory over ourselves. Remember, it’s always too soon to quit.