Beckstreet’s Beck (Alright!)

Philly’s own Ryan Howard tied the Major League Baseball record for strikeouts this Sunday. Over the past 130 years, since the National League’s inception, of the over 15,000 estimated players, none have failed as much as Howard to do the most basic thing a baseball player is paid to do - put the bat on the ball.

So fast even I can’t see the ball zooming past him.

Why aren’t Philly fans up in arms over last year’s MVP breaking this dubious record? The notoriously harsh and sometimes evil fans will boo almost anything, so why not Howard?

The reason is simple. Despite his assault on the record for whiffs, Howard is still one heck of a player. He’s second in the league in home runs and in the top ten in the statistic OPS OPS. Turns out when it comes to baseball, power is positively correlated to strike outs.

What can us non-coordinated Penn nerds learn from the 6′4″ first basemen? Simple: swing for the fences.

Since the age of five, adults have asked us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Sadly, the answers are now much different than they were in kindergarten.

Doctor is still a popular one, but things like astronaut and president have been replaced by IT manager and financial analyst.

The sad part about it is that as students at Penn, we have a tremendously greater chance of becoming president than the kids in our kindergarten class ever did. Think back: half the kids spent their day sharpening their crayons for no reason, and a few inexplicably managed to cut themselves with “safety scissors”. Should these kids really have higher aspirations than us? Note: This is probably untrue for those of you who went to elite primary schools that were younger versions of Deerfield. I imagine everyone in your class read The Cat in the Hat in a way worthy of your heritage.

So the moral of the story is, keep striving for those goals. Don’t take the job that pays you the most; take the job that teaches you the most. Then, once you’ve learned and networked all you can, swing for the fences.

If you fail, try again. Nobody knows how many days Neil Armstrong has spent not landing on the moon, and if the Phillies make the playoffs, people will forget how many times Ryan Howard struck out. Just remember - power is positively correlated with strike outs.

Beckstreet’s Beck (Alright!) appears every Tuesday and Thursday.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.