August 17, 2022 | Read Online

The Journeyman Who Refused to Quit

Very few are able to continuously push through setback after setback and not grow cynical. But for the ones who do have the mental fortitude and patience, the long road really is the most satisfying.

Last week, a Major League Baseball player made his debut — an incredibly common occurrence during the dog days of summer when injuries and trades force teams to get creative with their rosters.

Except this player wasn’t a 20-something-year-old top prospect. He was a month shy of his 32nd birthday, a journeyman who had been counted out, dismissed and essentially typecast as a career minor leaguer.

Wynton Bernard then became the oldest player to get a hit and steal a base in a Major League debut in over a century — and his story has some key reminders for us.

Bernard spent 11 years in the minor leagues, playing an almost unheard of 863 games at the level before being promoted by the Colorado Rockies. His journey also took him to Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Australia. Along the way, he was demoted and even released at points.

“I never had the thought of not making it,” he later said.

It’s a resiliency and resolve that seem to have become increasingly rare.

In our world of instant gratification and quick-hit satisfaction, we often set arbitrary deadlines for our goals. Get promoted at this age, make this salary at that age, take over the organization by this point. Then, if we miss one of these, we grow frustrated and maybe view ourselves as disappointments or even failures.

Very few are able to continuously push through setback after setback and not grow cynical.

But for the ones who do have the mental fortitude and patience, the long road really is the most satisfying. And through all of its agony, all of its sleepless nights, all of the questioning of “Is this really worth it?” there can be immense glory at the end.

If something is important to us, it’s important, period, and very rarely will we regret going all in on something we care deeply about, even if we do come up a bit short.

Whether we’re frustrated today over our own journey or hold a leadership position that could give an opportunity to someone like Bernard, let’s be a little bit better about:

Embracing — not just lamenting — the grueling process
Handling delayed gratification
Not pigeon-holing our own team members based on their past
Maintaining the glimmers of hope despite the hardship

Bernard is not exactly destined for the Hall of Fame, and who knows how long he’ll stick at the highest level?

But that moment when he got to call his mother to tell her he was bound for the Majors, and that instance where his family rose to their feet after his hit likely more than justified the decade-long struggle to him.

And it gave us all a reminder: No matter the present trial, no matter if we've missed an arbitrary deadline, our best days can still lie ahead.