Wait… What?

There may be such thing as a stupid question, or there may not. In my case, I believe that there are no such things as stupid questions. One time I remember was when I asked a stupid question was during a baseball practice. We were still in pre season and had only been able to get outside for one practice before our regular season had started. That day I had felt pretty good and rolling into Saturday practice, I was excited because it was officially feeling like baseball season due to us being able to go outside. I was the first one at practice, as I sat around I was thinking about how great it felt to be outside finally and also what we were planning on working on at practice. When coach, had arrived I said “Good morning coach” and he responded with “Good morning Caleb”. Automatically thought that it was going to be a great practice off the bat. Once we got our warmups done and out of the way we started throwing which was not an issue, then we broke into infield and outfield for fielding drills. We neared the end of practice which was exciting as we had the day off on Sunday. Coach decided that we should learn a trick play that we would “possibly use in the right scenario” no news that we did not actually end up using the trick play once that season. Coach had started explaining what to do in different scenarios and I was listening intently, trying to understand the point of the trick play and what we were hoping to get out of the trick play. Once he was done the explanation for the play we all got into our positions and attempted the play. Once the ball got to me I just held it because I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go with the ball at that moment. All that ran through my head was what would happen if I asked what we were doing. Knowing that our coach had a little bit of a hothead I was afraid to ask. Though he had done a tremendous job improving his ability to control his heat, thus far in the new season. Finally, I had just blurted it out I said the phrase coaches and teachers hate to hear. I said, “What are we doing” straight to my coach in the middle of the drill which was arguably my biggest mistake in that practice. He immediately looked at me and said “Are you kidding me, you have been playing baseball for how long and you did not pay attention to what we are doing?!” I just stared straight at the ground, then said, “Coach I just don’t understand” this was the wrong thing to say. He ran through the drill again in an extremely heated temper and was trying to make a point to me. Afterwards he asked a few of my teammates if they knew what they were doing to try and make another point to me, all of them answered his questions correctly and then he got around to me. He said to me “Do you know what you are doing now” to which I responded irritatedly “Yes coach, I understand what we are doing”. I then proceeded to look at the ground as I walked back to my position in the drill and I started talking to myself under my breath “Stupid, why the hell would you ask such a dumb question just don’t be stupid”. Finally, I had reached the point where I needed to be for the drill so I turned around and got ready for the play to run. The play was run extremely smoothly after that interaction had taken place. The rest of practice ran smoothly and we had finally had the rest of the weekend off.

Looking back at that moment I am extremely glad that I asked that question instead of just trying to guess because if I had not asked that question but had guessed what to do correctly then I may not have understood what the play was actually trying to do and what the point was. Since I asked the question I better understood the terms of the trick play and how to run it. This helped me because in the following years, I understood what to do because I had asked that question. The next two years, I was able to answer all the questions other players had on the trick play because I understood what we were doing so well. This year I am more than likely going to be asked to help the younger kids understand the trick play and be able to run it like a well-oiled machine. That is my reason to thinking that there are no stupid questions because you can always learn from any question.

Photo by theseanster93 on Trend Hype / CC BY-SA