Grace White, a longtime blogger for Extra Inning Softball’s “Inside Pitch” series, finished her college career this spring as a senior for her Division II Union University Bulldogs and received her diploma after she majored in Journalism.
She is now “entering the big girl world!” as she puts it after also being the Sports Editor for the Cardinal & Cream, the school’s student publication, and has a younger sister who plays in the Virginia Unity club organization.
Today’s “Inside Pitch” by Grace looks at the movie “Moneyball” and baseball player Scott Hatteberg… and what happens when sports become your identity.
*****
Moneyball is one of my favorite baseball movies of all time.
Based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” the film has it all: trading, analyzing, suspense, and victory.
It also has a phenomenal cast with Brad Pitt as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, Jonah Hill as Beane’s righthand man Peter Brand, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as A’s manager Art Howe.
I knew I had to write something about this movie…
The obvious choice would’ve been to talk about the small-market A’s winning 20 consecutive games for a then-American League record after being pieced together carefully and economically by Beane who had decided to use a radical sabermetrics method to build his squad with the help of Brand.
However, when I watched the movie several months ago, I found something a little different to hang my “Moneyball” piece on.
The scene that stuck out to me was the one in which Beane and third base and infield coach Ron Washington go to the home of Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt) to recruit him to play first base. Hatteberg, who had only been a catcher up to this point in his career, had suffered an elbow injury, affecting his ability to throw. None of the other major league clubs had called, and he was obviously dismayed.
The thing about Hatteberg and this whole scene that caught my attention was the sadness on his face before the A’s reached out and the memorabilia and pictures of his past career displayed all over his house.
Baseball was his life and love, and without it, he looked lost. Who was he without baseball?
I don’t believe that Hatteberg is the only one to deal with this issue. For many athletes, their sport is their main focus for years and years. They feel like it will last forever, like they’re invincible. But no matter what, whether it comes in the form of an injury or age, the end is inevitable.
I’ll use myself as an example.
I started playing t-ball when I was five, coach-pitch softball when I was seven, and kid-pitch when I was nine. I played in junior high and high school and on multiple travel ball teams. I even got to compete at the Division II level of collegiate softball.
I finished in May of this year when I was 21 years old… that’s 16 years of my life.
This summer, I didn’t feel sad about being done because I had a job to focus on and I was happy that I didn’t have to worry about preparing for a conditioning test. However, since all my former teammates moved back on campus and I’ve started hanging out with them again, I’ve felt a strange sense of loneliness.
On Saturday, I went to support them and cheer them on when they ran their fitness test. It was weird not being part of the huddle or the team meeting that followed. I was there, but I wasn’t part of the team. I’m around them, but I will never again get to experience the three-hour practices or the morning weights or the way that water tastes after an intense conditioning session.
Softball has been part of my life for so long, and it still will be to an extent since I’ll get to watch my sisters play and work the Union games as a sports communications graduate assistant. But it’s different. I’m no longer a player. Instead, I’m a spectator, part of the crowd.
I don’t want to let the newness of the situation make me sad or long for days past. There is more to life than softball as I’ve able to learn from the past few months, and I want to soak up all those memories as well.
In “Moneyball,” Hatteberg was blessed in that he got to continue playing for the A’s. In fact, he went on to hit the walk-off home run that gave the team their 20th win in a row in the 2002 season.
But had he never received that call, I hope that it would have been easy for him to be able to move on, and I hope that all the current athletes and retired athletes in the world will be able to find a healthy balance between their sport and the rest of life because one day—whether we like it or not—we will take our last swing and catch our last ball and unlace our cleats for the last time.
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