Moneyball and Me

My wife does not like baseball, nor does she enjoy movies with baseball as the backdrop or central theme. SO it surprised and blessed me when I checked to see what disc had arrived from Netflix the other day and discovered that Leah had added Moneyball to the queue. It was a sweet and thoughtful act on her part, and I felt grateful that she loves me so much.

Yesterday as I worked on editing images from a recent wedding Leah and I shot I put the disc in the player and relived a little of the back story of the miracle season the Oakland A's had in 2002. No, they didn't win the World Series, but they made the playoffs when all the experts and fans expected them to be one of the worst, if not the worst, team in the American League that year. They'd lost their star players and had a budget smaller than the average Hollywood film I remember going into the season as a Rangers fan being glad that no matter what else happened at least we wouldn't be last because we were so much better than the A's.

Wrong. Texas finished last in the West, although not last in the American League overall, thankfully, while Oakland finished first in the division. It wasn't supposed to happen that way! Every factor that could be seen by everyone, experts and armchair coaches alike agreed the A's were doomed to fail! So what happened?

Well, I don't want to recap the movie. I might ruin it for those who haven't seen it or bore those who feel about baseball as my wonderful wife does. It's an awesome story if you're in to that kind of thing, so give the film a look see. But to answer the question in a general way Billy Beane, the A's General Manager, did something different and unexpected.

Beane saw another ball club getting direction that he didn't understand from someone he wasn't sure had the qualifications to be giving said direction. He admitted he didn't have the answers himself and gave this new approach a chance. He opened his mind to a new way of thinking and took advice from a source he would not have considered before.

He didn't have instant success, but he didn't quit or demand the path of instant gratification. When the whole world seemed to be heckling and second-guessing, when we all said what he was doing would never work, that he would be as big if not a bigger failure than before, he stayed the course.

The results were amazing and beyond even die hard Oakland fans' wildest dreams. Another team, the Boston Red Sox, put the principles that Beans used in Oakland into place and two years later broke the 86 year championship drought. I won a large pot when the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in what seemed like forever.

So what's the point? Am I just rambling about a movie I really enjoyed? No. I saw in this story an example of recovery and life the way it is meant to be. I, like many others, have made some extremely bad choices running my life. I woke up one day to find myself on the bottom of the pile with little hope of digging my way out of it. I didn't have the resources or skills. There was no way to get a new result using the same old thinking and living the same way that I always had. I simply couldn't happen.

Society looked at my record, my past, tallied up the results of my mistakes and wrote me off. I didn't blame them, because I did the same thing. Then I opened my mind enough to listen to others who had started doing something totally different.

There is another way, an easier softer way, to live that actually produces better results! By surrendering to God and letting Him show me what needed to be cut from my life and what needed to be added, I abandoned the self-centered, look out for number one way of the world that had failed me so miserably, and adopted a new way of thinking and acting and making decisions.

My life began to change. I didn't have instant success, and I still had detractors. More than one person doing the same thing I was doing looked at my early struggles and said this guy is never going to make it. But I found my miracle. Today I have been clean and sober for two years, ten months, and twenty-five days, and that my dear reader is a miracle. I have proven over the years that I could never have done that on my own. I needed to surrender to the still small voice of God, do it His way instead of mine, and stay the course.

I still haven't won the show. There are areas in my life that still need a lot of improvement. But I'm in the playoff hunt again. I have a chance to make a difference. I have a life worth living. And I have my own Red Sox. Another man saw what was happening in my life and started listening to the same advice, practicing the same principles. After a lifetime of mistakes and using, he died clean and sober and restored. He won the show.

I don't take credit for Thomas' success. Beane didn't leave Oakland and Boston won their World Series without him. He saw what someone else was doing and did what they did. Boston saw what he did and took it further. I didn't change my life. God did. And I didn't find a new path. The principles I put into practice have been around a long time. And while I made myself available to listen and help, Thomas did his part of the work and God did all the heavy hitting.

But that's the point. That's the secret to success in recovery and in life. Realize that there is another way, make a connection with the One who understands how things need to be done, listen and put what He said into action in such a way that not only you have success but where others can see what you have and get it for themselves by doing what you did.

There is another way. It doesn't make sense to a self-centered world, but I promise that it works....and it costs a lot less too.