Today I'm excited because my letter to the Class of 2020
What would you say to this year's graduates?
And while we wait to see if there's even a semblance of a baseball season left, my thoughts turn toward kids like my nephew Tanner, who had secured a coveted internship with the Mets this summer that's no longer going to happen. So many disappointments and adjustments for so many of us. When Krista from CharacterStrong put out a call for a baseball fanatic to share a rags-to-riches story, I reached out to ask Tanner if he knew of a team that went through a horrible season that led them to something incredible. Turns out, he played on that underdog team all four years in high school. Here now, his story.
When Obstacles Become Opportunities by Tanner Natzke
This story starts my freshman year of high school. For the first month of our baseball season, we went to practice with 8 guys, and, in case you don’t know anything about baseball, you need at least 9 to play, so we ended up convincing 2 other (non-baseball) guys to play just to be able to have a team. After winning zero games all year and getting 10 run-ruled in roughly half of our games, success seemed to strike sophomore year when we won 2 games. Two years into high school, we had been 10 run-ruled more games than we won and it wasn't looking any better for the start of my junior year. Although we had some talent, what we was a game-changer: Baseball knowledge and experience when it came to big moments and big games. We ended up winning 3 games during the regular season and won our first playoff game before being eliminated in a well fought and tight 3-2 ball game.
I was fortunate that during my entire high school career my coach, Mike Stock, focused on the fundamental mechanics of baseball, how to bond as a team, and how to play baseball the correct way. Although I didn't know it, he was preparing me for my senior year when we'd have a strong freshman class come in. For the first time in school history, NEW Lutheran had 10 solid baseball players as opposed to just athletes playing baseball - and trust me, there’s a huge difference since baseball is such a technical sport. Earlier in my senior year, I was fortunate to be a captain for our football team that made it to the State championship game as well as a captain for our basketball team who made it to State for the fourth year in a row. Baseball was and still is my favorite sport but success was hard to come by given that most of the men in our school of 150 total students focused on football and basketball.
As a program, NEW Lutheran was known to be at the bottom of the conference, year in and year out. In all of our history, we never had a winning season, we never made it to the second round of playoffs. So making it to State for baseball? Well, that was just a comical thought. We started off my senior year just like any other - losing. We didn't have any team chemistry and we weren't playing to the best of our ability. We travelled to St. Bay for a doubleheader near the middle of the year and won the first game, which marked the first time we had beaten St. Bay in close to 10 years. During the second game of the doubleheader we were up 6-0 going into the bottom of the 7th inning. We got two quick outs and it looked like we were going to win two games in a row for the first time in a long time. But we got sloppy and it almost seemed like we forgot how to play baseball. As a catcher, I was able to get a great view of them hitting a walk-off single in the bottom of the 7th and I watched as they stormed the field and celebrated like they just won the world series. It was demoralizing, crushing and downright embarrassing.
After that game, I remembered how Coach Stock had been preparing Jed and me, the only two seniors on the team, to lead in times of success and in times of hardship. We felt like this could be a turning point and a great lesson for all of the young freshman on the team and we took the opportunity to address the team and say how proud we were of them for fighting as hard as we had up to that point in the season. However, while saying everything in a positive light, I made sure to address how much losing that game hurt. Pain is something an athlete hates, and it can change a person for the good or for the bad. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew how far we had come and how much it hurt to lose that game that we seemed to have already won. This was exactly what the young guys needed and, from that point on, we flourished as a team. The freshman stepped up big time and Jed McClellan, the only other senior on the team, threw the school's first ever no-hitter in a game that we won 1-0.
As we continued to have success throughout the season, we came to another bump in the road in a home game against one of the conference's toughest opponents. We found ourselves trailing 7-1 going into the 6th inning. I brought the team in and highlighted how St. Bay had come back to beat us and how if they can do it, then we sure as heck can do it, too. We ended up coming back and walking the game off in the bottom of the 7th. After the game, the shyest freshman on the team, the one who had the walk-off hit to win the game, came up to me and said that all he thought about at the plate during his last at-bat was how much losing the game to St. Bay hurt and how Jed and I highlighted the pain during our talk earlier in the year. We ended up having the best season NEW Lutheran has ever seen. We had a winning record for the first time in school history, we had a home game in the playoffs for the first time ever, and we won regionals by a score of 9-1 to win the first ever Regional title in school history. All we needed to do was win two games in Sectionals to make it to State.
None of us knew how to approach the games because none of us had ever been there.
In the first game, we found ourselves down 2-1 going into the top of the 6th inning and, frankly, we were getting outplayed in every facet of the game. Once again, our freshman stepped up to the plate and delivered 2 runs in the 6th before we shut them down in the 6th and the 7th to win our first-ever Sectional baseball game. Adversity was faced once again in the sectional final game, one game away from going to the State baseball tournament. We trailed 5-4 going into the bottom of the 6th inning against Catholic Central and Jed and I, who had both hit over .400, started the inning by grounding out and striking out. Once again, our freshman, who would have been scared to even step up to the plate earlier in the year, delivered some big hits and we took a 6-5 lead heading into the 7th inning. An error by our freshman first baseman caused a run to score and the score was knotted at 6 as we came to bat in the bottom of the 7th. Bryce, our first baseman, walked to the dugout with his head down knowing that if he wouldn't have had an error, we would be celebrating our first ever trip to State. Although I was up to bat first, I sprinted from behind the plate in my catching gear and held his head up high like my coach had taught me to do my entire career up to that point. He looked at me and smiled and said, “I know you got my back. Pick me up (not literally but figuratively) and let's make NEW history.”
Although that moment was so simple, it made me stop and think. All the years I had played high school baseball, Coach Stock wasn’t preparing me to win like most coaches do.
He was preparing me to be a leader, to make people around me better.
And it had finally paid off.
As I stepped to the plate with 1 out in the bottom of the 7th, the entire season flashed before me. I thought about the awful start to the season, watching the other team celebrate a walk-off win, the tough conversation with our team, and all the adversity that was overcome just to get to this moment. Jed ended up hitting a single up the middle with the two outs, the bases loaded and a 3-2 count, which scored me and we celebrated our first ever trip to State in a walk-off fashion.
It's moments like this that kids dream about their whole lives and I was lucky enough to have lived it. It wasn't easy getting there, but it was well worth the work.
God puts people in our lives for certain reasons and, to this day, I am so thankful that He put Coach Stock in mine because, even though I didn't know it at the time, he trained me to become a leader on and off the baseball field and he taught me that the obstacle is sometimes just an opportunity waiting to be taken.
Author bio: A senior at the University of Iowa, Tanner Natzke is pursuing a BA in Human Health and Physiology as well as a BS in Sports Recreation and Management. He is a member of the University of Iowa Club Baseball Team and serves as the team's Vice President. Tanner is also co-owner of Iowa City Apparel. Last summer, Tanner interned with the Nationals in Washington DC just before they became the World Series Champions.
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"None of us knew... " that's my favorite line, for such a time as this. Thank you, Tanner, for helping us look at obstacles through a different lens as we work with intention to seize those opportunities to encourage, support, inspire, and lead one another toward that next walk-off victory that awaits.
LOVED the story by Tanner - wow, takes me right back to my own high school sports days and the thrills, disappointments and best of all, being part of a team. Thank you, Tanner, for writing with such detail that I was caught up in the suspense and excitement right there with you!
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