This past Christmas my grandmother gave me the book The Brothers K by David James Duncan. I haven’t written about it on here yet, but were it not for Tom Robbins and his lovable characters in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, I am pretty sure The Brothers K would have been my favorite book of 2005.

In particular, there is one scene that I can’t seem to shake. The father of the family – a former up and coming minor league baseball player until a work-related accident forced his premature retirement – was explaining to his son about strike zones. Actually, he was showing his son, Kade, how to paint a strike zone on an old matress to serve as a practice target for a pitching mound he constructed behind the house.

Kade was surprised when his father – rather than painting a carefully measured geometric shape – began slapping paint haphazardly on the mattress with aggressive slaps of the brush. His father explained [and I paraphrase]:

Kade, the first thing to know is that a strike zone doesn’t exist. Only strike zones exist. And it’s not what’s between the batter’s knees and shoulders. Strike zones are in the ump’s head. That’s what you gotta figure out. I could stand out here all day throwing balls at a black rectangle and it wouldn’t mean the damndest thing ‘cause I don’t know who’s looking.

The metaphor is obvious and is carried throughout the book: our success in life isn’t judged by some objective strike zone. No. Our success is judged by those who watch us and those who judge us. And maybe most importantly, those who we let judge us.