[Nuus Met Uitsigti] When I watch TV with my husband Steve, a former athlete, I see superb ballplayers in basketball, baseball, and football exhibiting what immense discipline went into their sculpted bodies, what sacrifices they made to achieve their goals, what tremendous——almost superhuman——talent they have in effecting that three-point shot from mid-court, that spectacular triple play, that "you’ve been Mossed" catch in the endzone.
And I picture them as young boys watching Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Tom Brady, and saying to themselves what Steve——his team’s slugger——said to himself in 1955, when, at the age of 14, he took the 3,000-mile train ride from New Haven, CT, to Portland, OR, to compete in the Babe Ruth League World Series in the Multnomah Stadium: "I’m gonna be the next Joe DiMaggio!"
It only added to that lofty ambition when the residents of The City of Roses greeted the teenaged boys by showering red, white, and pink roses on them when they got off the train.
As it happened, the star pitcher of Steve’s team got into a fistfight and was sent home on the next train. And that left Steve to face not only the 15-year-old pitcher Mickey Lolich, who became the three-time All-Star and World Series winner for the Detroit Tigers, but also 15-year-old Al Downing, who became an ace pitcher for the NY Mets and NY Yankees (and other teams).
"I was up three times and Lolich pitched me nine pitches I couldn’t hit," Steve told me, smiling back at the memory.
But that humbling experience didn’t discourage Steve from continuing to admire and emulate his heroes DiMaggio and Mantle and Koufax, et al, and to engage in the sports he loved...both baseball and basketball, the latter of which earned him All Connecticut and All New England status, as well as the coveted New England Championship in 1959 in high school, and subsequently to become the captain of the Dartmouth College basketball team.
Why? "Because when you admire someone and you want to be like them," Steve told me, "You study what they do, how they act, what they say. You try to find out what the secrets of their success are, with the goal of achieving what they’ve achieved, or at least coming close. And that goes for farmers or hedge-fund managers, ballerinas or composers or astronauts, rich or poor black or white...that goes for everyone!"
Indeed, intelligent people who play sports realize when they’re quite young that the way to achieve your goals is to emulate the people you admire...their discipline, drive, sacrifice, demeanor, behavior. And to learn the lessons that only sports, not school, teaches: humility, how to deal with disappointment with grace, how to be modest in victory, how to be grateful for the gifts of health and talent that God has given you. 
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