Perspective

I was watching the Cardinals play the Brewers tonight. And I realized I had been seeing something entirely wrong and once I realized that I was seeing it incorrectly, the visual made so much more sense.

So you're watching the game on t.v., and when someone is at bat, a graphic comes up on the bottom, right corner of the screen. The graphic is there to show you the strike zone so that when the pitcher throws the ball, you know right away where the ball was thrown and can see if it is strike or a ball. It's actually great because obviously pitchers throw fast, and so it is difficult for an untrained eye to see exactly where the ball goes. I really like it, is what I am saying.

BUT...all along I've been looking at that graphic as one a one dimensional representation of the strike zone. I thought it was sitting flat over home plate, and that as a t.v. viewer, I was seeing the strike zone from above home plate looking down. Then tonight as I was enjoying the game, I thought how silly that graphic was because instead of showing when a pitch fell below the strike zone, it looked like the ball was not making it to the plate. That just doesn't happen in baseball. Pitchers don't lob the ball and watch it fall before it makes it past the batter.

And then it dawned on me. It doesn't depict the strike zone as seen from the ground. It depicts the strike zone as seen from the pitcher's perspective...where the actual strike zone exists, above the plate. You would think that the graphic of home plate below the strike zone would have alerted me to the fact that we were looking at the strike zone head on, not from the sky down, but nope, I guess I'm not super observant.

Suddenly the graphic made much more sense. I mean, I got it before, of course. Balls shown on the graphic were either inside or outside the strike zone, so you can tell a strike from a ball. But once I realized that I was seeing it all wrong, the picture became so much clearer for me.

Anyway, isn't that just like life? We think we see something correctly, but that is because we aren't paying attention to all the details. We are focusing so closely on one part of the picture, that we don't see the picture in its entirety. Those other details put the whole thing in perspective and help us to see what we see correctly. You might think you get it, but you are oblivious. For several weeks I've been watching play off games. And for several weeks, I've been missing it. It just makes me wonder what else I am missing because I'm not looking at all the details and seeing the picture whole and complete. Simple lesson: back up and look at the whole thing before you decide you know what you are seeing.