02 FROM THE PLAYBOOK
📚The Countdown
Part Four. The final number.
For the last three weeks, we've been counting down.
From 2.4 million kids who picked up a glove, to the 2,200 players standing in that stadium. From roughly 300 games left, to the parents in the stands with a countdown of their own.
This week, we reach the final number.
And Chad answers the question we've been building toward all month:
What do you do with a countdown once you know it's there?
Missed a part? Catch up on the full series here.
Part One ↗
Part Two ↗
Part Three ↗
PART FOUR
WHAT TO DO WITH
THE COUNTDOWN
Opening Ceremony Speech · By Chad Scott
So. What do you do with a countdown? What do you do with a number like three hundred?
I'll show you. It's on a plaque in Cooperstown.
JUMBOTRON SLIDE
.366
Ty Cobb's career batting average. One of the greatest hitters the game has ever seen.
Which means even one of the greatest hitters of all time walked away without a hit nearly sixty-three percent of the time.
He walked back to the dugout, beaten, thousands of times, and they built him a monument.
You picked the one sport on earth that runs on failure.
Football celebrates every touchdown. Basketball, half your shots go in. Baseball?
Baseball looks you in the eye and says: you're going to fail, in public, tonight, in front of everyone you love, now get back in the box.
That's the answer to the countdown.
You can't control how many games you have left. Not one of us can.
What you control is how you play them.
All-out. Grateful. Unafraid to fail, because failing is what this game is made of, and getting back in the box is what it's for.
Here's the last number of the night.
JUMBOTRON SLIDE
0
How much of what this game gives you disappears when you play your last one.
Zero.
That's how much of what this game gives you disappears when you play your last one.
The discipline you built practicing when nobody was watching.
Learning to come back after an 0-for-4.
Being the teammate who picks someone up off the dirt.
Looking a coach in the eye and telling the truth.
Loving something enough to give it everything you have.
You take all of that with you.
The games run out on everybody. Everybody.
But the player this game built? He doesn't run out.
He shows up in how you work, how you treat people, how you raise your own kids someday, in some backyard, thirty years from now, with a tee and a glove that's too big.
JUMBOTRON SLIDE
≈ 300
PLAY THEM ALL
So here's my challenge, and then I'll get out of your way.
Play all three hundred. Every one.
Don't sleepwalk through a Tuesday game in the rain, because that Tuesday game is on the countdown too.
Run out every ground ball like it's the last one, because one day, and you won't know which day, it will be.
And when your last game finds you, and it finds everybody, you walk off that field with nothing left in your pocket.
Nothing you wish you'd given. Nothing you wish you'd said.
Twenty-two hundred of the best players in America. Forty-three states. One countdown.
MAKE IT COUNT.
Thank you, and congratulations, All-State athletes.
EDITOR'S NOTE A MESSAGE FROM MARY
Beyond the Speech
For four weeks, we've been counting.
We started with 2.4 million kids picking up a glove.
We watched that number get smaller until there were 2,200 players standing together in one stadium.
Then we looked ahead.
About 300 games left.
Somewhere inside them, one last game.
Last week, we turned toward the stands and realized the people watching have a countdown of their own.
And tonight, after all of that counting, Chad finally took the number all the way down to:
Zero.
Eventually, the games will run out.
The jerseys get packed away. The teammates scatter. The folding chairs finally come out of the trunk.
And whether that happens at 18, 22, 35, or somewhere around 85 if you're lucky enough to become one of those guys we met a few weeks ago, eventually this version of the game ends.
But you don't.
And neither does everything that happened to you along the way.
Every time you struck out and had to walk back to the plate.
Every practice you showed up for when you didn't feel like it.
Every time you learned that being good at something still requires being willing to fail at it.
Those things don't stay at the ballpark.
You take them with you.
That's what I think I've loved most about The Countdown.
For four weeks, we've been talking about how many games these kids have left.
But somewhere along the way, the question changed.
It stopped being:
How many games do you have left?
And became:
Who are you becoming while you play them?
SO PLAY THE 300.
Be where your cleats are.
Notice the people in the stands.
Get back in the box when you fail.
And whenever the last game eventually finds you, take everything the game gave you and go build something with it.
Coming in September
After spending August learning from a speech, we're heading back to the bookshelf in September.
And I'll be honest: I picked this month's book because of the title.
📚 SEPTEMBER READ
How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life
by Dr. Bob Rotella
I haven't read it yet, which is part of the fun. We're going into this one together.
The book explores what allows people to perform under pressure, overcome challenges, persevere through failure, and develop the kind of self-image that supports confidence and accomplishment.
And not just in sports.
Rotella takes those same performance principles beyond the field and into everyday life, which sounds pretty perfect for a section called From the Playbook.
Want to read along?
NEXT WEEK · CHAPTERS 1 to 5
