The Texas Longhorns open their baseball season tonight.  Pitchers and catchers for the Astros, the Rangers and all the other teams have reported to Florida or Arizona for spring training.  It begins again—this long sporting season that replicates the seasons of nature.  It gives us hope in the spring; wears us down in the heat of the summer; and then we earn our harvest of bounty or famine in the fall.

Thus my annual reminder to you school administrators of how school administration is like baseball. We will just emphasize one part of that this year: the part about you not controlling the action.  You don’t have the ball.

Baseball is unique in this respect.  It is the only game in which the defense has the ball. The offense is left with the near impossible task of hitting a round object, traveling at very high speed, with a rounded off piece of wood (or aluminum).  It is no wonder that the offense usually fails. In what other endeavor is success 300 times out of 1000 chances considered exemplary?

But that’s baseball for you, and that’s life also. And that’s school administration.  We don’t have the ball, and we don’t control the action. We just have to be ready at all times, alert, in good shape and able to react and respond.

Let’s hope you bat better than .300 this spring.