I love baseball; always have. I grew up playing it every spring and summer. I looked forward to the first day of ‘spring training’ and regretted the last day of the summer season. I was fortunate enough to play it at the college level. I watch it regularly from the professional level to the Little League World Series.

I have two boys who love the game as well (although not as passionately as their dad!) and played themselves when they were younger. The opportunity to coach their teams in those days was not one that I passed up. It has been a number of years since my youngest turned in his cleats for the last time but I look back on those times ‘mostly’ with fond memories.

I say mostly because there definitely were challenges along the way. Many times that involved parents who were firmly convinced that their little Johnnie certainly was the best pitcher on the team. The truth was that little Johnnie had trouble throwing the ball as far as the mound is from the plate, let alone getting it over that plate for a strike!

Looking back, there was at least one challenging group of kids that were definitely NOT helped by my coaching efforts. They were 16-18 year olds who had just been through a long high school season and were now faced with the prospect of 6-8 more weeks of play. I mistakenly assumed that every one of them were as passionate about the game as I was; that they would want to come out every day and give it their all. I just couldn’t figure out why they didn’t show up for practice and many didn’t even show up for the games? I remember having to make embarrassing calls to opposing coaches to let them know that we would have to forfeit games because we couldn’t even field 9 guys!

What happened? Well, their coach was unable to get them to rally around a common goal. I didn’t cast the vision for our times together and get them to buy into team goals that they could get excited about. Because of the lack of clear vision and common goals on our team we floundered through a couple months that probably would have been better spent fishing!

Are you in charge of a team or a part of a team that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere? Does your team experience a lot of frustration, in-fighting and strife? Do you find yourself wondering why you are even a part of the team? Then your team is probably lacking a clear set of goals and objectives that everyone is willing to commit to.

Yogi Berra said once, “You got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there!” Here is to you taking the time to make sure that your team gets to a place where it knows where it is going and is passionately committed to getting there!