Paying It Forward

I’m once again on injured reserve from my sport, pickleball. As per my norm, this is my own fault. I went back to cover a lob, stepped wrong and wound up with a very sore peroneus brevis tendon under my anklebone in my right foot. It hurt, a lot, actually, so I took time off for it to heal, right? Wrong. I’m old, and I thought (at the time) I couldn’t spare any time-off. So I sucked it up and played on, and before long I was trapped again in a sweaty black walking boot and my own dark thoughts, feeling sorry for myself.

But, uniquely, it ain’t as bad this time around; maybe because of how kind everyone around here has been to me. Their courtesies have even had me thinking about kindness itself, a worthwhile thing to think about. Kindness is a classic virtue but, definitionally, it’s one that is seen very differently amongst authors. Me, I like the interpretation from The Mind Journal. “Kindness is loaning someone your strength, instead of reminding them of their weakness.” Cool, don’t you agree?

And there’s another definition I like. Since the beginning of time, in all faiths and religions, there is one universal, timeless virtue that is praised, encouraged, and urged upon: kindness. Kindness is the epitome of humanity, it is the highest form of wisdom, an underestimated type of strength. (That’s from Egypt Today, BTW.)

Kindness definitely is baked into the culture of pickleball. It’s an obvious component of sportsmanship. Sportsmanship defines in Oxford Languages as “Fair and Generous Behavior towards Others, Especially in Sporting Contests.” So, in pickleball, (the only sport I can really speak to), sportsmanship isn’t rare. In nearly every case, I and most every other good amateur pickleball player I know expects good sportsmanship, both from themselves and from the people with whom they play. (Mostly it’s true for the pickleball pros I know and those I have watched but their pressures are different….and as a hacker I can’t make blanket statements for them.)

How is good sportsmanship expected? Here’s an example. In the culture, as you get better, you will often be asked to play with “lesser” players. And the better you get, the more you’ll be asked, because everybody wants to improve and one of the best ways of improving is, simply, to play against folks a bit (or a lot) better than you. And so you just do, you accept the invitations most every time, (although you will hope that somewhere in the session you get a couple of “big boy” or “big girl” games in, too!). In my opinion that’s sportsmanship, just “Doing Unto Others” and all, and a very standard part of the culture of pickleball. After all, many others let you in their games and taught you, even though you really couldn’t keep up, and now you get to pay it all forward. But if it’s expected, is it also kindness? Only maybe-sorta. Sometimes maybe it’s just doing your sportsmanlike duty!

If there are real differences between kindness and sportsmanship they aren’t obvious but in pickleball you could say that sportsmanship is often written into the rules, where kindness, a virtue, drives from innate character. To me this a reasonable distinction. Sportsmanship helps you remember pickleball isn’t life or death, it’s just a game. There’s even a saying among picklers; If you lose a game, you won’t remember five minutes later. Unless you’re a professional, losing a point, game, match or even a tournament will never, ever impact how well you eat that evening. And sportsmanship is codified, too….printed into the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA) rule book.  Instances abound. One example; if there is a very close line call that’s yours to make (typically because it occurred on your side of the net), make it in favor of your opponent. Sportsmanship, how you act, is required. Kindness, a felt virtue, a part of character, isn’t required and can’t be codified.

But, occasionally, great kindness can co-exist with great sportsmanship on the courts. I myself experienced this co-existence big-time a dozen years ago, at a major tournament on our home courts in Casa Grande, AZ. My partner LeRoy and I were playing pretty well that day and were just one match short of the medal rounds. We were playing the highest-ranked folks in the combined 4.5-5.0-level bracket. Jim and Paul were (and I think still are) excellent 5.0 players, IMHO much better than Leroy and I, a polished, experienced team. However, everybody has an off-day, and LeRoy and I had won the first match 11-7 and jumped way out ahead in the second, 9-4. “Just a little way to go!” I thought. (Just like “I’ve got it!”, definitely something you never say OR think if you can help it, if you’ve got the sense God gave a goose.)

Pickleball is a game of streaks and runs, and the last thing we ever wanted to do was let the momentum shift. The problem occurred when LeRoy served to Paul from the right court. I was about in the middle of our left court. Strategically, I expected LeRoy, being left-handed, to drift a bit left to the middle after his serve, in effect following the angle of the ball, and I’d drift further left, putting me in position to protect a bit against Paul’s well-regarded down-the-line forehand. For whatever reason, though, I moved and LeRoy didn’t. He stayed put in the far-right corner from which he had served. I don’t think this was an error on his part; he could easily have seen something in his own serve that, deep in my gotta-win adrenaline-jacked haze, I didn’t notice. But with him staying far-right and me further left, the middle was drive-a-semi-through wide-open, inviting Paul to simply take LeRoy’s deep serve off the bounce and hammer a backhand right down the center for what seemed to be a sure winner, way too far away from either of us.

I’ve never said that I was the best player around, nor that I was the sharpest tool in the shed. But in this case I saw what was happening. And instead of simply letting the ball go through and saying “nice shot” and moving on and risking losing the momentum,  I awkwardly threw myself right, in the hopes of at least getting my paddle on the ball.

Of course I didn’t get near the ball. I had the same chance of  touching the ball that I’d have of catching a Patriot missile barehanded. But my move wasn’t without consequences, and even the people in the next court said they heard my right Achilles tendon pop. In fact, they said it sounded like somebody had set off a firecracker. (Vance, one of those nearby players and supposedly my very good friend, leaned over the fence as I lay there and said “You’ll do anything for attention, won’t you?” While Mr. Empathy is a jerk-face, he was more or less right about me – I’m a hot-dog. But this time he wasn’t – this time, I was down for the count.

The tournament nurse, standing nearby, called for a medical time-out. With my tendon completely severed I wasn’t in any pain, but my right foot simply couldn’t work, so to my way of thinking the medical was completely unnecessary, we would just forfeit and I would go off to sulk in some corner. I was majorly disappointed, nearly in tears. Part of my reaction was that I knew exactly what an Achilles tear meant; all athletes know. It meant surgery, months of rehab and the end of that pickleball season at least. But, more than that, it also meant that in this case we lost our best chance to beat two legitimate top-tier 5.0 players, a goal we hadn’t as yet come close to achieving.

Leroy and the tournament nurse helped me to my feet and I leaned on the net post, trying to get my bearings while elsewhere the rest of the medical staff scurried, probably looking for a wheelchair or at least crutches so they could get me off the court.

But neither LeRoy nor I were expecting what happened next. I had noticed that Paul and Jim had had their heads together, and now they came over to us.  “We’ve got an idea,” Jim said.

“What’s up?” LeRoy asked.

“Can you stand there and hold that post for awhile?” Jim asked, looking at me.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said, still pain-free but puzzled.

“So let’s just play,” Jim said. “You don’t forfeit. We’ll just hit everything to LeRoy!”

We were surprised and shocked, to say the least. “Are you sure? Really ? I asked.

“It’s just right,” Jim said. “You guys are way ahead.”

“You’re gonna win, or would have. So let’s just go with it!” Paul added.

And, believe it or not, that’s exactly what we all did. I simply stood and held onto the left net post. And they hit every ball they could to LeRoy, which is like playing the game of cutthroat where every ball has to go into the one side -a strategy much harder for them than their simply playing the whole court. Yes, a couple of times the rules required that they serve to me and of course they got those points, but everything else was into my big partner’s side, and, with us needing only a couple of points, the game ended quickly. We had won our first match against two top players, and, totally because of their kindness, I’d have that memory to make me smile now and then over the next few months. Sportsmanship alone didn’t require them to do anything at all. Their own native kindness carried the day.

Those two guys literally gave us a match, just because they thought it was the right thing to do. It still makes me tear up when I re-tell this.

Can one act of kindness make any real change in today’s world? I only know that the kindness our two friendly opponents showed us has stuck with me over the years. Kindness, to me, is worth paying forward.