The Strike Zone is Not a Bullseye

I grew up playing softball and learned to be a pitcher as early as 10 years old. The most important lesson I learned? The strike zone isn’t a bullseye. As a deeply competitive athlete, I was taught to go for strikes and struggled through endless mental battles in warm ups and drills trying to get it right. Here’s the thing: my pursuit of perfection was aimed at a target, but I was also taught the value of diversity. A high inside fastball is just as much a strike as a low outside curveball. A change up at half speed counts equally as a fastball down the middle. In fact, once in a game, a pitch didn’t have to hit the strike zone at all to count as a strike. As long as the batter believed it to be heading there, she could swing and miss or foul tip it and the pitch counts as a strike. Maybe the umpire saw the outside pitch within the strike zone while the opposing team’s coach disagreed. This counts too.

The point is, these were all acceptable pitches as strikes but also allowed for a wide range of what’s considered in range of the target. In this case, the target is anywhere in the strike zone (or beyond in some cases), no matter proximity to the center. A strike low and inside is just as much a strike as a pitch down the middle. They’re all strikes and all unique on their own. Even a pitch outside the strike zone could become a strike if a batter was tempted to swing or the umpire called it from his eyes. It didn’t always matter just what I did as the pitcher, but also how it was received by the batter and the umpire to ultimately determine if it would count as a strike or not.

As we each pursue our path of “rightness” let’s remember the lessons from a pitcher. We can strive for our strikes, aim at our targets, drill in our technique in practice over and over again. And when it comes to the game, we’ll achieve our goals of hitting that strike zone through our diversity of pitches and collaboration with both our opponents and our observers. The strike zone is not a bullseye. There are a lot of ways to get it right.