I expect to be at Minute Maid Park tonight, watching the Houston Astros open their 2017 campaign.  Two years ago, Sports Illustrated featured the Astros on its cover, with the prediction that the Houston Nine would win the World Series in 2017.   Maybe so.  After all, if the Cubs can do it, anything is possible.

But win or lose, the Astros will be my guys.  My family moved to Houston in the summer of 1966, the second year of the Astrodome. I was there on our first night in Houston, and have remained loyal ever since.

It’s important to be loyal to your team.  I have no patience with those frontrunners who glom on to whatever team is winning.  This shows a lack of character, and an unwillingness to deal with life’s inevitable ups and downs.

For today, let me just offer a reminder to you educators of how baseball—of all the sports—is the most like LIFE, and the best metaphor for your work in public education.  Two reasons.

First, they play baseball every day.  It’s not like football where you practice for a week and then perform once.  No—you have to show up, suit up and perform to the best of your ability every day.  There are days you don’t feel good. There are days you lack enthusiasm.  But baseball players show up, suit up and play--just like teachers, assistant principal, and superintendents.

Second, baseball is the only game in which the defense controls the ball.  The same is true in LIFE, and in school operations.  You don’t control the action.  Instead, you have to be prepared, alert, ready to respond to situations as they arise.

I could go on and on with this topic, but will leave it at that.  Here’s hoping you and your teammates in the school have a winning season.  Here’s hoping you work together to navigate your way around the bases this year, arriving home, with the umpire calling you “SAFE!”

DAWG BONE: GOD IS A BASEBALL FAN. WE KNOW THIS BECAUSE THE FIRST WORDS IN THE BIBLE ARE “IN THE BIG INNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH.” COINCIDENCE?  I THINK NOT!

Tomorrow: Toolbox Tuesday!!