Are You a Diamond?

a diamond as we all know is the hardest rock. Nothing can cut it but itself. so a diamond in a softball players term is basically a hard rock. she lets nothing break her nothing but herself. and even then it's a hard thing to do. under pressure she shows no sign of cracking. after a bobbled ball, strike out, missed pop-up, over thrown ball she shakes it off and carries on, because let's face it, if she let those things bother her she would become the diamond that will cut her. no one else..just her.

Are you a Diamond?

Marc,
Nice analogy! I have another I tell my girls that you can pass along as well:

Which would you rather be; an egg, a carrot, or coffee? When you get in hot water, an egg that started soft turns hard, a carrot that started hard turns soft, but coffe actually changes the water into something gourmet! If your in a slump, behind in the game, or made an error in the field, make a change. Do something that helps your team in some way.

It's ironic the Coach Cardona made the previous post, my granddaughter only started pitching 2 years ago at age 11 and last year on the travel team. She had good innings that made her team feel like superstars, but also several rough innings. One game in particular we played an older team that had a pitcher who threw heat and the players, coaches and fans were all very vocal to the point of insulting. The harder she tried, the worse it got and nothing we could say did much help. I called time out as the assistant coach and went out to talk her through it. She was trying as hard as she could not to cry and I told her to close her eyes as I put my arm around her and said, "remember when you struck out that loud mouth girl in league? Remember how good that felt? This is one of the hardest emotional moments you will ever go through, but you will get through it, and have more high moments and fewer of these. Shut them out of your mind, think about how well you do pitch, and remember that I am proud of you. And when you get through this inning, let's find a way to help the team at bat." She got through the inning, took a pitch to the hip at bat (not exactly the way I had envisioned it!) stole second, and scored on an error thrown to first. We still lost the game, but she now takes a deep breath whenever she gets into a jam and knows that she can get through it.

A REAL DIAMOND:
My answer to this question is quite funny but true, my Granddaughters middle name is Diamond she is 14 years old now but when she started Pitching around 5 years ago during a game when the other team would start to sing these Softball cheers she would get very nervous and could not buy a strike she would throw the ball in the dirt or very high sometimes she would hit a batter or 2, as she got older I started to notice that the cheers would not bother her any more, and she would be talking to herself on the Pitchers Plate, one game we where losing by 2 or 3 runs the other team was doing their cheers because every one in the league knew that that threw her off, but not this day, I noticed that she was throwing hard and with more accuracy, so I decided to call time and go to her with the Catcher and ask her what was she talking to herself about, and she told me that when the other team would cheer she pretended that the where cheering for her so see was singing along with them. Now she is a freshmen in H.S. she has a legitimate 62 MPH fastball, and 3 other Pitches she throws with alot of success now when she gets into a little trouble on the mound she starts to sing to herself. To me and others she is a REAL DIAMOND.