Let’s face it. Baseball is hard. It’s a grind. Everyone knows how hard it is to actually hit a baseball. Or throw 95. But that’s kind of the extent of it. The casual observer is going to see you out there playing and they are going to understand that they can’t perform the way a professional baseball player can on that field. They will say, “baseball is hard.”
The things people don’t quite see is what goes on behind the scenes. They don’t think about the logistics. They don’t realize that the guys they are watching out there are coming out of spring training where they work everyday from 630 am to 4 pm for almost two months. Then the real season starts.
The casual fan may not realize that once opening day hits, those same minor leaguers are going to play 142 games in about 150 days. A lot of the guys grinding out their dream are living pay check to pay check. Every single one of them holding out hope that they will get to the big leagues and stick.
That’s the life that all baseball players chose. We get to play sports for a living. That’s a gift. Most of us are thankful for every day we get out there on the field. It’s not something we take for granted. The boys of summer are truly a blessed group. But some days the game beats you down. And for those days, we have the shirts.
They are simple shirts. Plain with one phrase: “It’s All Part of It”. When you get sent down, flight at 6 am. Game in NH at noon. Eight-hour bus to Binghamton, NY postgame. You can whine. You can bitch. But guess what? It’s all part of it. This was the life we chose.
This is my ninth season in the minor leagues. I’ve had a lot of those moments. A lot of why I am doing this. A lot of that’s not fair. Before we picked up the motto, those times could last weeks where I would think that I was getting the short end of the stick. Realizing that everything that happens in this game is all part of the process, helped mentally to grind out a lot of tough times.
The phrase is kind of a baseball legend. It was big with the late 90’s Marlin’s teams. When I played for Mike Redmond in A ball, I used to do a lot of complaining. Whining about the bus ride. Bitching about the filthy clubhouse. Complaining about a rain delay and why they wouldn’t just bang the game already. Any time he heard me, he would just turn and say, “Hey murph, it’s all part of it.”
I tuned it out. He kept saying it to me. Eventually I asked what he meant. He told me, “Look, this game is going to beat you down relentlessly. It’s never going to end. Even if you get to the big leagues, things are going to happen that bring you down. Just remember that everything that goes along with this game is all part of it.”
I finally understood. The more we said it, the more it helped. The long bus rides, 11 am games, dirty hotel rooms, just didn’t bother us nearly as much as it did before. We would roll into a clubhouse and it would be rundown, with one stall and one of the guys would be like, “hey you know what? It’s all part of it.” We would all laugh and get ready for the game.
It’s a motto for us as players to accept the things we can’t change and to keep grinding. The less negative energy we invest in worrying about the hard parts of this job, the more energy we have to put into getting better.
The phrase has touched guys in nearly every organization. We wear the shirts as a daily reminder. Never give up. Always grind it out. And when things go sideways like they always do, just remember, it’s all part of it.
Jack Murphy is currently catching in the LA Dodgers Organization after originally being drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays. Before pro ball, Murphy played three years at Princeton University. Jack has also played winter ball in Australia for four years and currently owns All Part Of It Clothing, which you can check out here.
