- You're not smart enough, you're not good enough,
why do you even try, why don't you quit now
before you embarrass yourself and everybody else?
You'll never make it.
For 15 years, I watched my parents say the worst things
they could possibly say to each other,
throw things, hit each other, so the next three years,
I learned from my grandparents
it doesn't have to be that way.
I worked for my grandfather in the stores
for three summers, and he taught me a lot.
Every day pretty much, I got a lesson.
Jimmy, you're born with your name,
and you die with your name, what you do with it
in between is a legacy you leave behind for everybody else.
Who do you wanna be?
These lessons from my grandparents added up over time.
Eventually, I take those college
entry exams that everybody loves to take.
The scores came back, and my counselor stops me
in the hallway, he's got my scores in his hand.
He goes, "Jimmy, what are you gonna do with your life?"
I looked up at my counselor, and I said,
"I'm gonna be a baseball player, everybody knows that."
He goes, "I hope so, you're too stupid to go to college."
(audience laughs)
Same period of time, I find out the person
I love more than anybody in my life,
the mentor, the person I held high up here
on this pedestal, my grandfather,
Ernest, was diagnosed with ALS.
I was watching my grandfather get sicker and sicker.
I was playing a Summer league game,
after the game this man came up to talk to me,
he goes, "I'm the coach at Ranger Junior College,
I want you to come play baseball for me."
"I know about your dream, I know about your
grandfather, I know about your grades."
"I'm gonna get you classes that
you can pass," which was important.
"You're gonna pitch for me during the week,
and on the weekends during the Fall,
you're going to go home and spend some time
with your grandparents in the hospital every weekend."
I would pitch, and on the weekends I would go home.
I did that for four and a half months.
On the last Sunday in November of '82,
I kissed my grandparents goodbye.
At midnight, I had to get back
for eight o'clock Monday class.
Told him I loved him, I got back to school at one.
At three, my coach woke me up, he said,
"You need to go home, Ernest has passed away."
"I've already talked to all your professors,
don't worry about your finals,
it'll be taken care of when you get back."
"You go home, you take care of your
grandmother, you take care of the funeral."
"She does not lift another finger."
So I did, to this day in Brownwood,
there's never been a larger funeral take place.
People came from all over the country.
Everybody got to say their goodbyes to my grandfather
who lived for everybody else but himself.
No grades, no scholarship, no where to go,
call my mom, "Mom, I made a horrible mistake."
"I don't know what I was thinking,
I'm quitting, I'm coming home, I'm dome."
"Time to go out in the world
and start teaching and coaching kids."
That's when I found myself at Reagan County
High School in Big Lake, Texas.
I inherited a baseball team that had won one game
each year for the three years before I got there.
The first thing I did as a head coach
was I kept that one team on the schedule.
You're going to respect this game as long
as you're on my field, and you're playing for my team.
We're gonna do things the right way.
Athletic director and head football coach
at Reagan County High School pulled me aside one day
to tell me, "If it's ever close or they're ever behind,
they're gonna find a way to lose."
"Their parents are losers, they're losers,
it's just in their DNA, they're not even
gonna graduate from high school."
"They're gonna work in the oil fields
and gas fields like their dads and granddads did."
"There's nothing you or anybody else can do about it."
"You have taken these kids as far as you can."
See the problem with that little talk was that
two of my kids were behind the lockers changing.
Before I get to my field, spread through my team
like wildfire, the guy not only in charge of all the
coaches, but all the kids, thought they were losers.
I walked down the left field line,
not one kid's looking at me.
I start talking about hopes and dreams and setting goals,
and then my catcher looked at me dead in the eye,
and he goes, "Why are you telling us chase our dreams
if you're not willing to do it yourself?"
"We think you still wanna play."
I said, "No, sir, I wanna stay married,
thank you very much."
"But Coach, the way you teach us the game,
we know your heart's still in it."
"You teach us how to act and react
to every situation that comes up."
"We know what the other team's gonna do before they do it."
What came outta the deal was, if they won a district
championship, which the school had never done
in baseball, I had to try out again.
I forget about the bet, but in the district championship
game, we're down by three runs
in the last inning and history would dictate
we're not gonna come back and win that game.
I watch as a group of kids that nobody believed in,
including themselves, come back to score four runs, win.
It is one of the best sights I've ever seen in my life.
They're hugging each other, they're hugging
the trophy, they're hugging their parents.
This kid on my team sees tears in my eyes,
and when he sees me, he starts giggling.
Big fat coach in driver's seat crying like a baby,
pats me on the shoulder, walks by and goes,
"We did our part, now it's your turn."
I have to go do this, every kid on the bus,
"Coach, we did our part, now it's your turn."
I find a tryout, my dad helps me find it.
I made a promise to group of kids.
If they did something nobody thought they could do,
I would try to do something I know I can't do.
Embarrassing, humiliating, I can't do anything about that.
I made a promise, I'm living up to it.
Young guy catching me, who just graduated from high school,
gives me a sign for a fastball,
I lined up, I throw it as hard as I can.
I look over the catcher's head, behind the screens,
Gassaway, the scout, shaking his radar radar gun.
I do not even throw hard enough to register.
Gassaway, the scout, meets me at my car,
and he said, "Well, son, I don't know what you've done
in your time off, but the first pitch you threw without
warming up was 94, everything after that went up to 98."
The last thing he said to me as I got ready to drive home
is don't be surprised if you get a phone call.
The kids were right.
I didn't embarrass myself.
Drive an hour and 10 minutes home, wasn't one phone call,
it was 12, and we were not the first ones home.
So my ex-wife hangs up the phone,
turns around and says, "So, where have we been?"
My oldest daughter, who was four at the time,
and holds onto me every time she can,
is holding onto my pants, and she looks up at her mother
and goes, "We're not supposed to tell you."
(audience laughs)
She looked back at me, and she said,
"What were you thinking?"
I said, "I'm a man, I'm not supposed to think."
She goes, "What do you do now?"
I said, "The same thing I was gonna do before."
"I'm good at coaching these kids,
I'm trained for that, I'm successful at that,
I win everywhere I go, that's what I'm good at."
"This thing over here,
this baseball dream's never ever worked."
"I've wanted to play since I was five, it's never worked."
She said, "You better listen to phone calls."
They wanted me to come back in two days
and throw again to see if I could actually
throw that hard or if my arm had fallen off.
So, I'm telling my kids they want
me to come back and throw again.
My kids go, "Coach, you told us if we ever
had our dream in front of us,
you'd chase it no matter what."
Two days later, I go back and throw again.
It rained so hard, they had to
hand me a brand new baseball every pitch.
Slamming up to my knee in mud
every time I landed, 98 every pitch.
Our big league general manager's there.
He goes, "You can smile, you're gonna be in Texas tomorrow."
I just looked at him, I was stunned, I was like, what?
He goes, "You're in the big leagues."
I'm trying to process how in three months,
I've lost 60 pounds, I've gone from
grading papers, science papers and report cards,
to autographs and doing interviews.
All because of a group of kids
who when I pushed them, they pushed back.
They got their coach to go to the big leagues
who couldn't even believe in himself at the time.
My grandfather had a saying, every day,
I heard it for three years, remember who you are.
It took me until years later to get what he meant.
Remember who you are is simple.
Don't do anything you wouldn't have anybody see you do.
Cause now what you do when you know people are watching,
it makes you who you are, it's what you do when nobody's
watching at all, that makes you who you are.
That's character, that's my grandparents.
If you make it just about you,
you're never going to go anywhere.
It's when you make it about something bigger
than you, be a mentor for somebody,
be a dream maker, be a team player.
Nothing is impossible in this world.