What Difference Does It Make?

I am currently in Las Vegas (Lost Wages) for a professional conference. Yesterday,I was helpvisiting with a gentleman explaining the benefits of using fixed index annuities in his retirement plan. (I’ll call him Dan), He started telling me a story about a friend of his. Dan’s friend passed away in 1979 in Memphis. He was well known in the music industry. After the funeral home closed, he got a message that Elvis wanted to come by and pay his respects.

They promised to keep his visit confidential.

Anybody who grew up in God’s country, knows that Elvis died on August 16, 1977. I was on the football practice field at Huntsville High School. We were doing an “Okie” drill when we got the news. That’s not the point.

Elvis died 2 years before his friend passed away. I know that there have been Elvis sightings for more than 48 years, but I never knew of his visiting in a funeral home.

Question: do you correct him or let it pass? Why Major on a Minor? I applied the simple test: What difference does it make?

It could have been a simple mistake. Too many people that I know, would correct him. “Elvis died in 1977. How could he visit your friend in 1979?”

I once worked with a guy that we ended up calling “Pneumonia” as a joke. Whatever event happened, he was always bigger, faster or worse. My wife calls it “one upmanship.” We would wait for his comment which always started with: “That ain’t nothing, let me tell you what happened to me.”

If your car got 29 miles per gallon. David’s got 31.

If you fell and got 9 stitches. David had to walk barefooted to the doctor, holding his severed finger on ice so that the doctor could sew it back on.Some refer to it as win, place and show.

If you were once singing karaoke in Nashville, when Blake Shelton showed up; Dave was playing bongos in Austin, Texas when Willie Nelson came on stage and asked if he could sit in for a couple of songs. Of course, he loved David’s playing.

One of my coworkers loved to mess with David. He would dream up something new every night to share within earshot of Dave. Some of his stories would be so ridiculous, they were funny.

“Last night while I was driving home from work, I saw a brick layer carrying an entire pallet of bricks by a strap hanging from his neck. They had to weigh more than 400 pounds.”

Here came Dave: “That ain’t nothing. When I was in college, I was helping a plumber during the summer when the other 2 workers didn’t show up. I was in charge of carrying all the metal pipes to a house for 12 hours without even a break for lunch. Each pipe weighed about 40 pounds. He didn’t even pay me overtime.”

Where did the “Pneumonia” come from? If you had a sore throat, Dave had pneumonia.

If you break down the causes of most disagreements, it usually comes down to one question: “What difference does it make?”

Does it really matter whether the toilet lid was left up; or that you forgot to fold the towels as they came out of the dryer; or that you didn’t add mushrooms to the spaghetti? These minor things can turn into major things, if we let them.

Here is the best example of: “what difference does it make?”

One of the toughest jobs for a high school baseball coach, is having to “cut” players down to a certain number. In baseball, the number of players is usually 18. More than that, they are in the way and there are not enough uniforms.

Football is easy since most that survive, make the team and dress out. In basketball, height, quickness and ball handling skills are obvious.

In baseball, you judge a player on 5 skills: 1. Hitting for power 2. Hitting for average 3. Arm strength 4. Fielding 5. Speed.

It is difficult to decide based on only 8 practices. Remember as a hitter, you are successful if you get a hit in three out of 10 at bats. Do you bench a player like Aaron Judge if he goes 8 at bats without a hit? Not at all. But if you just evaluated him on those at bats, you might cut him.

When I took over as a head baseball coach in 1978, I had 54 players try out for baseball. We could only keep 18. There were about 10 players who were obviously outstanding players. There were about 20 who couldn’t make a T ball team. That leaves 24 players for 8 slots. 16 too many.

How do you decide who to keep? First, make it tough enough for some to “cut” themselves. Put them through drills both physically and mentally to see how they react.

Every player trying out was an all-star in Little League. They didn’t tell you that 6 players from each team made the all-star team since there were only 3 teams in a division. Their Dad was the coach. They all played either shortstop or pitcher. When I would hear about all their accolades from earlier years, I would simply ask myself: “What difference does it make?”

I met with each player who had to be cut, one on one. I don’t believed in putting up a list of the ones making the team. Tell them man to man, what they need to work on for next time. Don’t hide behind a posted list.

As we grow older, we are gonna find a few more wrinkles. A few more grey hairs. A few more pounds. Old trophies and plaques covered in dust. More toys and a larger 401k. A bigger house and shinier cars.

The Real Head Coach will one day ask that eternal question:

“What difference does it make?”