What Time Are We Hitting Again, Dad?

A few weeks ago my youngest son found me before I'd finished my coffee and asked, "Hey Dad, are we hitting today?" This morning he asked a different question. "What time are we hitting again, Dad?" He wasn't asking if. He was asking when. But before we got to what time, we got into something else.

Three Ways to Grow

I asked him a question back: what are the three ways you actually need to grow? We're built in three parts, spirit, soul, and body, and each one grows differently.

Spirit is the one that grows through studying God's Word, through prayer, through talking with the people around you about the things of God. That's not a metaphor for me. It's a discipline, the same as any other.

Soul is your mind: your will, your emotions, your ability to choose. And body is exactly what it sounds like, the physical work.

The Algorithm Is a Choice

The soul conversation is the one that stuck with me most, because it came down to something specific: his YouTube algorithm. Right now it's mostly feeding him Minecraft videos. It could just as easily be feeding him something that sharpens him instead of just occupying him. Math. History. How technology actually works. Even baseball mechanics, like how to read a pitcher's move and steal a base, or how to work a pickoff move. YouTube can build him up in a dozen directions. He doesn't need to spend all his time and energy letting one feed shape his mind, especially one that may not carry the value he's actually looking for down the road.

The same question applies inside baseball, not just outside it. Mental growth there looks like learning to pick up a play, staying focused through a full game, studying base running: the reads, the technique, the different scenarios a runner has to evaluate in half a second. That's soul work too, and it's a choice to study the game instead of just showing up to it.

I told him it boils down to one question, over and over: do I watch Minecraft, or do I grow something that could actually be of value to me out here in the world? Really, that's about him taking responsibility for what shapes his own mind. There's a foundation underneath that choice, and we got to it later this morning too.

Down in the Count

Body is where the week's proof showed up. We'd put in a lot of hours, hitting every day, pitching and throwing mixed in, grinding on fundamentals with no game on the schedule to show for it. Sunday, he played in a fall ball scrimmage and pitched exceptionally well. But the plate is where he's actually struggled, and he went in rusty, no real games all summer, just the work we'd done together.

He struck out his first at-bat. His second, he fell behind fast, no balls, already buried in strikes, the kind of count a hitter usually doesn't come back from. He fought it off and hit a pitch for a base hit. 1-for-2 on the day. It may be the first real, true hit of his baseball life.

That at-bat is the soul conversation and the body conversation meeting in one moment. The mental focus to stay in a count he was losing. The physical work that gave him something to swing with when the pitch came. Neither one gets there without the other, and neither one shows up without the reps nobody was scheduled to watch. Later today it's speed and agility training. The body side doesn't take a week off just because Sunday went well.

The Foundation Underneath

Yes, we had a family Bible study this morning, working through the foundation of Christ found in Hebrews chapter 6 and the first basic principles of following Christ. Two of those principles are repentance from dead works and faith toward God, and those are the two we're really working on right now with him.

They're not advanced ideas he graduates past. They're the ground everything else stands on.

That's the part I didn't say out loud to him this morning, but it's the part underneath everything else I did say: spirit isn't the third item on a list next to soul and body. It's the foundation the other two are built on. A kid who's growing spiritually has a reason to care whether his mind is being shaped by Minecraft or by something that actually builds him. Without that foundation, discipline for its own sake doesn't survive a rusty at-bat down in the count.

What Actually Changed

My son didn't wake up from me telling him it was time to go hit. He came and found me first thing this morning, and out of his mouth was, "What time are we going to hit?" Somewhere between studying the Word this morning, talking through an algorithm he can change, and a base hit he earned when he was down in the count, the work stopped being mine and started being his.

That's the only proof that's ever convinced me anything is actually working, not the hit, though I'll take it. The asking.

Let's move better together.

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