00:00:10
so Misfortune as a gift is the title of
00:00:13
my
00:00:16
talk and Lady
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Gaga starts my
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presentation probably the last slide you
00:00:22
expected to see as I start in on my talk
00:00:25
today I'm actually not a huge Lady Gaga
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fan I have admired the way she has stuck
00:00:31
to her values and the way she sees
00:00:33
herself what I am a fan of is the title
00:00:37
of this album Born This
00:00:41
Way you see that's an answer that I've
00:00:45
used a lot in my own life Born This Way
00:00:49
a question that I've heard since I was a
00:00:51
little kid what happened to your
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hand my answer ultimately ended up being
00:01:00
I Was Born This Way had a lot of
00:01:02
creative answers that came in between
00:01:04
there but ultimately I was born this way
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you see I was born missing my right hand
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and I never wanted to make a big deal
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about that I still don't I know that
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there's a lot of people out there facing
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a lot more daunting challenges than I
00:01:23
have
00:01:24
faced but being born this way I knew
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what it was like to be different
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I knew what it was like to be on the
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outside looking
00:01:34
in that's my first day of kindergarten
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by the way speaking of being
00:01:40
nervous being born this way I knew what
00:01:42
it was like to be different I knew what
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it was like to be on the outside looking
00:01:45
in and wanting to prove yourself and my
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parents used to say to me when I was a
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kid Jim what's been taken away once will
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be given back twice you have to believe
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that
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what's been taken away once will be
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given back twice more has been given to
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you than was ever taken
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away and I think they were trying to
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encourage the positive in my brother and
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I's life I think they were trying to
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encourage us to see the
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blessings and one of those blessings in
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my life growing up you may not hear this
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sentence again too
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often I come from the great town of
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Flint Michigan
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vehicle
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City anybody heard of Flint
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recently and I don't mean to make light
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I'm awful sorry to see what's going on
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back there with the drinking water and
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all the problems and I have some good
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friends who are affected deeply by
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what's going on but I you know growing
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up in Flint Michigan it was a fantastic
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place to grow up it was a blessing it
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was a tough Town it has always been a
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tough Town h get hard by unemployment
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and crime and and drugs and there were a
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lot of ways on the streets of Flint
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Michigan to get yourself in
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trouble but what was great about my
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hometown what was great about Flint
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Michigan was the
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people parents coaches teachers friends
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teammates people who recognized the
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trouble that was inherent in that City
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and people who tried to Al offer
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Alternatives they used to open the gyms
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up at night in Flint Michigan so that
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the kids had somewhere else to go
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besides the
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streets and because they opened those
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gyms up at night and we had great games
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of basketball and dodgeball and
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volleyball we ended up having a lot of
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great athletes in Flint
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Michigan and for a kid who felt a little
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bit on the outside looking in who wanted
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to prove himself who wanted to be a part
00:04:01
of something those athletes Were My
00:04:04
Heroes the teams that they played on
00:04:07
were what I aspired to to go to the
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movies at night and to see one of those
00:04:13
athletes with a High School varsity
00:04:15
jacket on meant something that's who I
00:04:17
wanted to
00:04:19
be and what was great about Flint
00:04:23
Michigan was those coaches and those
00:04:26
teachers who allowed me to get into the
00:04:29
game Who provided the opportunity for me
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to play because I couldn't play the game
00:04:35
like everybody else did I had to do
00:04:38
things just a little bit differently and
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there was always somebody there people
00:04:42
give me a lot of credit and they say Jim
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you must have been so cious and you were
00:04:46
motivated and inspired it was none of
00:04:49
those things there was so many times I
00:04:51
was filled with uncertainty and
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self-doubt and thinking that I couldn't
00:04:55
do it and there was always a teacher
00:04:57
there to help me to find a little
00:04:59
different way to do things there was
00:05:01
always a coach who literally grabbed me
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by the jersey and brought me into the
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game it was my second grade teacher Mr
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Clarkson who taught me how to tie my
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shoes I didn't know how to tie my shoes
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in the second
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grade up until that point my parents had
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triple knotted them and sent me to
00:05:22
school and said don't untie your shoes
00:05:23
for any
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reason but Mr Clarkson recognized this
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problem
00:05:30
and he showed up to the classroom one
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day he took me out in the hallway he put
00:05:34
two chairs across from each other and he
00:05:36
said I got it I figured it out he had a
00:05:38
film on for the rest of the kids in the
00:05:40
classroom I don't know what was going on
00:05:41
in there but I remember the smile on his
00:05:44
face and I remember him tying the shoes
00:05:47
and working with them and Mr Clarkson
00:05:49
was a big man he was Gordon mcneel's
00:05:53
size and I remember him sitting in a
00:05:55
small chair with one clenched fist
00:05:58
working with those loops and those laces
00:06:00
and the smile on his face and the fist
00:06:01
pump when he got done and he said I
00:06:03
figured it out this is how you can tie
00:06:06
your shoes he had gone home and worked
00:06:10
with his own
00:06:12
shoes imagine that generosity and that
00:06:17
spirit I know I'm wearing loafers
00:06:21
tonight has nothing to do with Mr
00:06:23
clarks's ability to tie
00:06:27
shoes it was the same way all the way
00:06:29
down the line there was always somebody
00:06:32
there to encourage me my high school I
00:06:35
played a quarterback in high school if
00:06:37
we have any Co coaches here I'd never
00:06:40
played football before I'd played some
00:06:43
baseball I'd run cross country I was a
00:06:45
skinny kid the head coach for our
00:06:46
football team in high school called me
00:06:48
up I was sitting at home it was my
00:06:50
junior year two a days it started up for
00:06:51
the football team and he said hey Jim I
00:06:54
said yeah he said I hear you have a
00:06:57
pretty good left arm
00:07:00
yeah he said get down here you're
00:07:02
playing football this year I said' hey
00:07:04
coach uh I've never played football
00:07:07
before he said get down here you're
00:07:10
playing now he was going to be my
00:07:12
history teacher that fall so I knew I
00:07:14
better get my butt down there to that
00:07:15
practice I went to the equipment room
00:07:18
and they gave me a helmet and pads and
00:07:19
shoulder pads I didn't know how to put
00:07:21
any of that stuff on I walked on that
00:07:23
practice field everybody seemed to know
00:07:25
where they were going and what they were
00:07:27
doing and I'll never forget the generos
00:07:29
it of those coaches that day and for the
00:07:31
next few weeks going forward they all
00:07:33
took time out of that practice to figure
00:07:35
out how it could be that I could take
00:07:37
the snap how I could get the football
00:07:39
from the center if I just use my right
00:07:41
forearm as a hand if I dip down a little
00:07:43
bit lower I could get the ball right and
00:07:46
to make the hand off to the running back
00:07:47
to my left I couldn't hold the ball like
00:07:49
this right so what if I just grab the
00:07:52
football grab the very end of it held it
00:07:54
like this we could make the exchange
00:07:56
without causing a fumble
00:07:59
those small adjustments that little
00:08:01
different way of looking at things
00:08:04
allowed me into the
00:08:06
game baseball was the same
00:08:10
way what I took away from my playing
00:08:13
days what I took away from my
00:08:16
experiences of growing up a little bit
00:08:18
different of playing in the major
00:08:20
leagues of playing in great cities like
00:08:22
New York City and Chicago and
00:08:25
Anaheim even Milwaukee
00:08:30
what I learned is that challenge is ever
00:08:35
present that challenge keeps coming at
00:08:39
you on the field off the
00:08:43
field during your career after your
00:08:46
career and challenge comes in many
00:08:49
different forms each and every one of us
00:08:52
has faced Challenge and will continue to
00:08:54
face challenge and it comes in many
00:08:56
different forms and disguises right
00:09:00
challenge can come with great success
00:09:03
and higher
00:09:05
expectations and challenge can come with
00:09:07
great difficulty and
00:09:11
disappointment everybody here at Sage
00:09:13
Hill knows a lot about challenge
00:09:16
athletically facing St Margaret's in a
00:09:19
CIF championship
00:09:21
game facing crean in a conference
00:09:24
Championship game I always hated Ken
00:09:32
academically right the challenge for
00:09:34
great grades and board scores and what
00:09:37
college will I ultimately end up in
00:09:40
challenge comes from well-meaning
00:09:42
parents and teachers it can come
00:09:45
internally with that pressure we put on
00:09:47
ourselves that uncertainty and that
00:09:52
self-doubt but big
00:09:54
picture what if we can come to look at
00:09:57
challenge a little bit differently
00:10:00
what if we could begin to look at
00:10:03
challenge as an
00:10:05
opportunity as a chance to prove oursel
00:10:08
as a chance to reveal Inner
00:10:12
Strength one of my favorite books that I
00:10:15
ever
00:10:16
read and I'm proud of being a baseball
00:10:19
player who's read a
00:10:23
book was a book called All the Pretty
00:10:25
Horses has anybody ever read this book
00:10:27
All the Pretty Horses it's a funny title
00:10:30
it was written by my favorite arthor my
00:10:32
favorite author Cormac McCarthy I still
00:10:35
don't understand the title maybe there's
00:10:36
an English Professor here who could
00:10:38
explain it to me but I love this book
00:10:40
the book was given to me by a friend and
00:10:42
a mentor a person who used to pass along
00:10:45
books to me you know with passages
00:10:47
somewhere hidden within them that he
00:10:50
thought might guide me along in life and
00:10:52
within this book All the Pretty Horses
00:10:55
there's a paragraph there's a
00:10:57
conversation between the protagonist a
00:10:59
young American boy and an older Mexican
00:11:03
woman and they're talking about their
00:11:05
life philosophies and It ultimately ends
00:11:08
up with this older Mexican woman talking
00:11:11
to this young man and telling him about
00:11:13
a lifechanging
00:11:15
experience you see she talks about
00:11:18
losing a hand in her
00:11:20
Youth and how her entire life was spent
00:11:25
reconciling that
00:11:27
disfigurement early on hiding it and
00:11:29
then figuring out how she could
00:11:31
ultimately become a person of
00:11:34
worth at the end of this conversation
00:11:36
she says to this young man and I know
00:11:39
this is the quote my friend hoped for me
00:11:41
to find
00:11:42
someday she says
00:11:45
this those that have endured some
00:11:50
Misfortune will always be set
00:11:53
apart but it is just that
00:11:55
Misfortune which is their gift and which
00:11:58
is the their
00:12:01
strength
00:12:02
imagine if we could look at
00:12:06
Misfortune in Challenge and adversity as
00:12:10
if it was a gift as if it was a chance
00:12:13
to reveal inner strength as if we could
00:12:16
Embrace those challenges that come at
00:12:22
us what I've always
00:12:24
loved about Sage Hill High
00:12:27
School is that it doesn't matter how you
00:12:30
were
00:12:32
born doesn't matter how you were born
00:12:36
there are many people here who've been
00:12:38
born with every
00:12:41
advantage and there are many people here
00:12:43
who've had to scrape and Claw for every
00:12:46
single thing that has come their
00:12:48
way but none of that
00:12:51
matters as we leave here as we all walk
00:12:55
out this door we know challenge will
00:12:59
come our
00:13:00
way but if we've learned anything if my
00:13:03
hometown I hope if they've learned
00:13:05
anything I hope they can draw on that
00:13:08
grittiness that toughness that
00:13:10
deep-seated belief that there is a
00:13:13
solution as we walk out these doors into
00:13:18
2016 I hope you all know that nothing
00:13:21
can stop you if you can be tough if you
00:13:24
can be creative if you can believe in
00:13:26
who you are and what you can do nothing
00:13:29
nothing in this world can hold you
00:13:31
back big
00:13:33
picture there are so many great things
00:13:36
that are possible in this
00:13:39
world and each and every one of them are
00:13:42
within your
00:13:43
reach and it doesn't matter how you were
00:13:48
born thank you all for a great night I
00:13:50
appreciate being here
