Becky and I had a great time at a Colorado Rockies game.
We even got to visit the radio broadcast booth, courtesy of Rockies’ broadcaster Jerry Schemmel, who’s going to ride with us in the FREEDOM TOUR Prologue on June 15th.
In a Major League Baseball stadium, everything (except the umpires) favors the home team. Music, graphics, announcers are all choreographed to motivate and inspire home team fans and players. Visiting players even wear mostly drab gray uniforms. An observer might easily conclude that the Rockies and their fans are the good guys, while the other team represents some evil, outsider cult.
In a few weeks the situation will be reversed. Tonight’s bad guys will be magically transformed into beloved heroes. Our guys will be the hated outsiders invading foreign territory.
Cultures work like that. In OUR circle we dress and act a certain way. We tend to cheer and encourage people like us. Those who look or act or think differently are treated as outsiders. We’re right, they’re wrong.
Same thing happens when we show up in their world…and around and around we go.
The players in the other uniforms aren’t evil outsiders. They’re people, just the same as you and me and the guys on our team. Looking, acting, or thinking differently isn’t about good-and-bad or right-and-wrong.
Because “right” and “good” can’t be a matter of geography. What’s right here can’t be wrong somewhere else. Good over there can’t be bad here.
One mark of a great sports team is that they always want to learn from others. Rather than assuming the other team is an enemy, they’re always asking, “What if we did it that way?”
Good question for our circles, too.