BEYOND WINNING

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] great athletes know that there are no shortcut students every athletic achievement each new record each championship and each individual victory all are the results of intense effort in sports there are no substitutes for hard work and disciplined effort go slowly okay very good seven eight nine ten eleven well this one doesn't bother me anymore at all okay [Applause] there are great many things that kids can get out of football and there's a great many values great many uh things are gonna help in the future to a boy in football or any sport he learns how to take the ups and downs you might say in life as far as uh winning and losing uh this kind of a guy is the thing that i'm looking for the guy who was willing to produce or willing to work hard to get something to reach some goal [Music] so [Music] there is a lot of pressure on today's athletes to really achieve excellence they're also being bombarded by the challenge to break new records as we saw just even recently in the last olympics the breaking of so many not only olympic records but world records with all types of new equipment so that the fantastic amount of pressure on an individual will many times challenge him to maybe even go beyond his own potential physical limits i told you yesterday that we would be preparing for the test and the test is on chapters one and two the ones that we've had to sign now for a good many days now this is an important test and i want you to remember that it's a very important part of your quarter grade so if you haven't studied you're going to have to do it tonight now don't forget that if you don't get a good grade here it's going to be hard to make it up and get your average back up again so study for this test tonight whatever you do the test will be tomorrow and it will be tough okay okay right over left push [Applause] the test will be tomorrow and it will be tough push up 10. right angle the shed please down one down [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Applause] hustle back one more stop all right turn up keep getting drinking water this is an important test so if you haven't studied you're going to have to do it tonight i'm really having a rough time studying tonight and i just i you know wanted to see if i could get a couple of vinnies from you [Music] [Applause] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] sorry to borrow you so early but uh maybe i could meet you after a second period and get a couple more we really got a rough practice today and i really need to be awake [Applause] i remember in 1967 or so that i got up pretty pretty well in weight before in the off season and i went to a doctor friend of mine and uh had heard about diet pills or whatever and i i guess he gave me a normal prescription that every housewife in the country or you know a good percentage of housewives in the country have had from time to time and uh i think it was something like 30 pills uh and he told me uh to take one a day and i did so it was amazing i i at the end of the about 20 days i didn't want to stop taking them because i said geez i'm i'm out beating down doors and calling people and of course i toward the end of the day i felt like you know crawling in a hole but uh i had a super time for a while and he sort of sort of have someone really is great but uh after you have a chance to really think about it it's scary it's frightening really and uh i became so disenchanted with the idea that here you are you're strong supposedly possessing a certain amount of athletic ability and a certain amount of men fear of even having to it's become a moral issue with me and more than a physiological or more a mental thing i just i believe that in my own morality i cannot foresee myself ever taking anything to get myself up to do something i've never seen anyone as as long as i've been associated with any sport who's ever been able to do better as an athlete with the help of some synthetic drug the object of athletics itself is awareness and and the abilities that that athletics entail are the ability to be right in a certain spot in present time doing as much as you can athletically uh to get the purpose done each individual has to take and look at himself look at his own life and he just has to say to himself do i need this you know it's a drug is an excuse it's like saying why himself do i need this you know it's a drug is an excuse it's like saying why'd you drop that pass well i didn't uh i didn't have my hands on it i couldn't get to it i wasn't running fast enough you're the judge of that you're the sole thing that gets the block or whatever you are the person that does it and uh to have something outside such as a drug and you think that's going to help you i think it's a you're lying to yourself and you're really cheating yourself i don't think it's worth it being selfish i like selfish to think about them i think where they're going to be five years from now i decided when i was eight years old that someday i wanted to play for a club like the los angeles dodgers and really to be perfectly honest with you baseball for me has been almost a year proposition ever since i was eight years old because i had that one central goal to pitch for some club in the major league i can remember a lot of times when i got a little bit tired in july and august and wanted to quit i wanted to stop running those extra sprints when although i was working on a farm i had to work out at night run in my front yard at night and then pitch two or three ball games a week i can remember a lot of times when it would have been nice to go to the beach and to spend all afternoon just basking in the sun but they told me that if i want to make the offshore practice on those days football happens to be the sport that i work with and but it's a discipline based on compassion the individual has dignity i don't believe in training rules i think they should be a way of life as far as the athlete's concern what helps an athlete is that number one he must have talent and then he must use that talent and sharpen and hone it and then he must have a good attitude to go with the talent i believe this very sincerely that the athlete is placing a fishbowl so to speak he's being watched he has watched as to what he does where he goes what he says and as a result of this he must watch what he does and i think it's very important that athletically you gain the feeling that yes i am a good person and i am in a condition to be of help to somebody and i do i think we all feel get the feeling that we you need others around you here this a perfect example out there on a football field there have never been any one-man teams [Applause] you know i've often wondered when the situation occurs when i have the bases loaded and nobody out and a guy like hank aaron or willie mccovey or willie starger hitting if there's a lesson i can learn there that i can take out of the baseball stadium and apply it to the world that i live in and really there is because i know that in that situation there are eight guys behind me who are counting on me not to quit and to cop out but to put forth my best effort and the lesson that i can learn that i can go and apply to the business world to my family life or to my spiritual life is that when things are the toughest that's the time when we collect our wits and we use all our resources and face it rather than copying out and running away from it athletics is a stepping stone it's a way to show yourself that you can try things and if you fail you're going to be a lot of failures in life but if you do fail you can take and take that step and use it as a learning experience don't look back on it say well i failed and uh here i am i can't do it again take it and uh for what it's worth if you did fail at something say okay i learned this from it i learned that i learned just good things i learned his bad life if you don't have the ability to dissolve and and discipline takes on many forms uh in my own particular case discipline to me can mean that you know instead of going out and staying out late on friday and saturday night before ball game i'll stay in i'll get my rest you know i'll take care of myself i'll just do something that maybe i wouldn't want to do because maybe i could have a good time going out and doing this but i know that if i make these sacrifices now that it's gonna work you know on sunday when we play of course the greatest thrill is when you go on sunday and you do well and you look back and you say well these sacrifices these disciplines you know these various things that i did then made possible what's happening now i've been involved with athletics all my life and i i've been interested in them and possibly that's why i've done as well as i have in to me being satisfied that i've done something in an area that i'm interested in that satisfies me is very important and i feel that athletics gives one an awful good feeling of himself doing something meaningful to him everything that i am and everything that i hope to be and every view i have really is related to my life as an athlete i can't stress enough the qualities of life that football in particular and athletics in general have imbued upon my life the idea that there's something more important than myself because you know we've got 39 other guys that mean as much as i do and i get hurt as i have been and another guy steps in and takes over and does a pretty good job and the old saying you're about as indispensable as as a guy who puts his hand in a bucket of water and takes it away and you're about as indispensable as the hole left in that water that's that's very true and it's a real sense of pride being part of a team i can't tell you how many times i've been knocked down both uh and i think there's something to the makeup that i have got undergone for these 19 years of preparation that helps me look at life as okay i'm knifed down but i can get back up again and i don't think anybody's gonna keep me down [Music] [Applause] [Music] you