The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph

by Shawn Green

Within a couple of days, the shot took effect and my pain was much relieved and much of my power returned. In the remaining twenty-four games of the season, I had twenty-three RBIs and seven homers and ended the season with a .280 average, 19 home runs, 85 RBIs, and a league-leading 49 doubles. While those numbers were a far cry from the 40-plus homers I’d hit in each of the previous two years, this season was among the most significant of my career, not because of numbers, but because it had exposed to me yet another layer of my ego—a layer that I likely would never have noticed without the injury—and taught me that the more I self-consciously resisted its pull, the more I became attached to the suspect identity that formed in the resistance. I learned acceptance of what is. A place of no judgment, no goals … the place where actual life happens. And that is a much better place to be.