Raising Elite Athletes Without Losing Perspective with Jonathan V. Last

In this compelling episode of Raising Men, host Shaun Dawson sits down with Jonathan V. Last (JVL), editor of The Bulwark and father of four, to navigate the complex and rapidly evolving landscape of youth sports. Drawing from twelve years of experience parenting a high-level collegiate baseball pitcher, JVL unpacks the delicate balance between fostering an elite athlete's drive and maintaining strict perspective.

He shares powerful, practical insights on why parents must actively deemphasize outcomes—such as winning weekend tournaments—and instead fiercely protect the process, where true character and resilience are forged. From discussing the modern pressures of early sports specialization to highlighting why the ride home from practice is a sacred space for meaningful conversation, this episode serves as an essential, grounded roadmap for fathers striving to raise well-adjusted, independent young men.

Key Takeaways

• Deemphasize Outcomes, Value the Process: In youth sports, individual plays, innings, or weekend tournament wins ultimately do not matter; what matters is the athlete's approach, conduct, and how they manage both success and failure.
• The Car Ride Home is Sacred Space: The drive home from practices or games is a precious window where parents have their children's full attention as they wind down, making it the premier opportunity for meaningful connection and life lessons.
• Expose Kids to Sports, But Let Them Choose: It is highly valuable for children to experience team sports, but parents must explicitly communicate that their love is not tied to performance and that kids are free to pivot to other passions like music or drama.
• Elite Talent is Obvious Early: Real elite athletic potential—enough to play at the collegiate level—is usually unmistakably apparent by age 10 to 12, meaning parents should avoid placing crushing performance pressure on kids who are not at that baseline.
• Sports Concretize Abstract Life Lessons: Properly understood, sports act as a tangible classroom for the human condition, teaching kids how to handle physical limitations, adapt to things being taken away as they age, and manage internal expectations.

"There are only two reasons to do sports... for money or for joy and pleasure and growing. If you're not having fun and you're not growing, why bother?" 

"The most important part of any sports experience with your kid when they're young is the ride home... because the ride home is where you have each other's attention." 

"Even if you play in college and get drafted... you will have more time of your life to figure out what it is that you want to do to contribute to this world without baseball in it than you will have had with baseball." 

00:00 - Introduction of Jonathan V. Last and the elite youth sports landscape
02:04 - Defining the levels of elite talent and collegiate pathway
05:56 - The true purpose of sports as a classroom for the human condition
07:51 - How physical injuries like Tommy John surgery build life-long toughness
09:15 - The critical role of coaches as positive masculine role models 
0:59 - Navigating parental ego and caging the instinct to live through your child 
12:28 - Deemphasizing game outcomes to focus heavily on player approach and process 
14:22 - Why the ride home from practice is a sacred space for connection 
16:45 - Using car rides to pass down music traditions and build family memories 
19:11 - Cultivating a child's natural passion without forcing performance 
21:58 - The modern structural shift toward early sports specialization and club teams 
26:52 - Recognizing elite athletic talent early and handling the "non-sports" child 
32:40 - Teaching young men to turn the page and healthily manage failure 

Books, Links and Frameworks Mentioned

• The Bulwark: The online publication focused on preserving freedom and democracy in the US where Jonathan V. Last serves as editor. https://substack.com/@jvlast
• The Triad: JVL's newsletter and writing platform hosted via The Bulwark.
• European Soccer Club Model: A sports structure framework referenced by JVL to contrast the historical multi-sport high school approach with modern, early single-sport athletic specialization in America.
• Heisenberg Principle / Birth Parity Framework: A sociological concept noted in the discussion highlighting that every child is born into an entirely different family dynamic because parenting styles and household environments organically shift with each subsequent birth.
• The Socratic Method: A classical framework of dialogue based on asking and answering questions, humorously referenced regarding parental communication styles during long car rides.

What is Raising Men?

Raising Men is a podcast about parenting, masculinity, and the lifelong journey of raising sons—and ourselves—to be men of courage, character, and purpose. Hosted by Shaun Dawson, each episode features real conversations with parents, leaders, and thinkers redefining what it means to raising men in today’s world.

the most important part

of any baseball experience with your kid

is the ride home because the ride

home is where you have each other's attention

and that's like they're coming

down from things and that's where you can have like

meaningful conversations that's absolutely true

for sports but I think that goes

I think it applies more generally too

welcome back to Raising Men today I'm joined

by my best friend Jonathan v last or J V L

as he's commonly known Jonathan Last is the editor

of the bulwark an online publication

focused on preserving freedom and democracy in the US

Jvl's role is primarily like that of Cassandra of Troy

which is to say that

he predicts the future with uncanny accuracy

but nobody listens JVL welcome to raising men

oh it's so nice of you to have me

you have my boy Mark hurtling here

now I get to be it's very

very nice oh man

my little nervous about following Mark

absolutely I would have preferred to open for Mark

and not follow him but that's okay because uh

he's a tough act to follow

oh man no kidding he

he is uh but we

today we're gonna be talking

about something that I know that you know a lot about

which is youth sports among everything else that you do

I understand you're also the father of an elite athlete

and you've been plugged into that world

from the very beginning yeah

so I mean there are there are levels of elite right

and there

there is the level of shore fire professional right

or Olympic caliber then there is the level of like

someone who's going to play at the collegiate level

and have a shot to go pro

and that's the that's the level of elite that I'm at

so my oldest who is 17

uh will be playing college baseball next year um

he is a pitcher

based on his velocity and spin rate and the

you know number of inches of drop on his curveball

it is possible that he could wind up by his senior year

getting getting drafted and then

you know like maybe a bounce around my view

like what would be the perfect outcome for him is

you get two years of single

a ball and then he go to law school

yeah like that

that would be amazing right

that would be winning the lottery um

so that's the level of youth athletics that I

I have been seeing for the last

you know 12 years or whatever

since we started doing sports stuff together

uh and I my

my baseline set is that I uh

I was a high school and college athlete um

a very indifferent one very indifferent uh athlete

you know I

I did like a bunch of sports in high school

none of them well and then I was a rower in college

not especially well um

and but

I've been around

some people who have played professionally

at those those levels

and so I I know what that stuff looks like

and I've gotten a real glimpse into

the baseball aspect of this stuff uh

which is different one of the things you

you find out as you go through this

is that every sport

really does have an idiosyncratic pathway

and what is true for baseball is not true for tennis

is not true for track is not true for hockey uh

so I'm I'm pretty cognizant of my blind spots here um

but that's that's the level I come to you from

oh and also

I have three other kids who don't do any sports at all

so

yeah I mean

they

try I'm gonna get into that too because there's yeah

there's a dynamic there

and I had that dynamic with my older brother

I I was like you

I I kind of played a little bit of sports

in fact I played less sports than you did and but my

my older brother was an elite football player

and ended up playing in college

could have had a chance to go pro

I think um and then

you know

didn't it didn't it didn't materialize for him and um

and so but I wasn't sporty at all and um

and so there was an interesting dynamic there

and I'm here to tease that out

I have gotten my my younger

I've gotten 2 of my younger 3 to try some team sports

uh which was very important for me because I

I wanted them to have the experience of it yeah

even if they decided it wasn't for them yeah

you know like it cause it's just I don't know

like you try anything once right

yeah so

and I ended up getting into sports at a

at a major level when I turned 30

I started playing beach volleyball

and just absolutely fell in love with it

and I became pretty good I ended up marrying

a professional beach volleyball player

you and Karch Kiraly right

are you out there with Randy Stoklos and Cindy Smith

and all those guys they were my heroes

they're older than us yeah yeah

yeah they're older than us

did you grow up watching them

cause those are the guys I watched in the AVP

because the AVP used to have a tour stop

in my aunt's town on the East coast side of the tour

and so I would go to those things all the time and yeah

love beach volleyball yeah

I I see your wife's a pro player

say again your wife is a pro player

so she was a pro player she played

you know what she had

the exact career path that you just outlined for your

boy she played pro for exactly two years

and then went to law school

is that the dream it's the best

it's the best of all worlds

and you know what and today she has the greatest career

I'm so I am so unbelievably proud of her

she she has a great career

she is an appellate lawyer

uh here in San Diego and just absolutely loves the work

is tremendously passionate about it

has just a rocket tied to her ass

in terms of what her career

where her career is going

um and

and I'm a you know

a 51 year old white guy in tech

it is she's

you're both living the dream

waxing as I'm waiting and it's great

you're both living the dream

that's great yeah

exactly exactly

alright well

so let's start with this why

what do you see is the purpose of sports in

a young man's life why do it at all

yeah I mean

so I

I would maintain that's sports properly understood are

it's about life and the human condition

and you can learn a lot of really valuable lessons

about life and about yourself

and about how to grow up

and the sort of person you wanna be

and about what failure looks like

how to manage failure

which is an incredibly important part of growing up

and becoming an adult

and about also managing success

and I mean

really this is this is gonna sound a little macabre

so I'm sorry bear with me but uh

so my oldest I just call him flash

it's not his not his actual Christian name

but it's he's it's his show name um

so he tours UCLA as a freshman and it was a you know

he had to have Tommy John and it was

it was a very tough road for him

and I kept thinking to myself

well he'll be better prepared

if he gets diagnosed with cancer

when he's like 40 right

I mean you know

you know it's the most JBL thing ever right

but it's the kind of thing where you know

well some having Tommy John surgery is not fun

recovering from it is is not fun

but it isn't life threatening

but it can teach you some of the toughness

stuff for dealing with physical injuries

and dealing with limitations

and so much of aging

is learning to have things taken away from you

big time right

as you get older and that is a

that's a skill

learning to manage that and understand that

and find other things to give your interest to right

I mean this

you know you know this right

you can when you're 51

you can't do the things that you could do

when you were 21 and uh

part of a life well lived is managing that transition

and growing in other ways

and so all of this is part of life's rich pageant

and sports has a way of taking these ideas

which are very big and abstract

and concretizing them for kids

uh and so that's

that's why I'm I'm a huge

huge fan of sports for precisely that reason

uh it's not the only way to learn about life

you can learn a lot about life from reading books

I think kids should all read as much as uh

their interest sort of allows them to

and that interest should be fostered

but sports is a is a really good way to

to get into the life stuff and the life lesson stuff

and especially if you have an adult

like a parent or a coach or somebody who can

or a grandparent who can guide you around through that

and you know

help teach those lessons

that sport is imparting to the kids

as they're growing up

yeah I think one

one of the things

that I've Learned as a result of doing this project

is that one of the most important aspects of

of raising excellent men

is giving them access to excellent men as role models

yeah and a coach can be such a powerful role model

for good or for bad right

and and so this is a way

a kind of a default way of getting a

a good masculine role model in your life as well

yeah if you don't have a father in the home

which you know

a lot of divorced single moms raising kids

doing the best they can uh

you can get really lucky my

my father in law who's passed away was like this

so his his father died when he was very young

his father died when he was

I think like 8 years old

yeah

and he had a baseball coach in his youth who really

like took him under his wing and taught him

I mean he

he stayed in touch with this coach from the time he was

like 10 or 12 years old until the coach died

when my father my father in law was in his sixties

so like you know this

this man was in my father's life for 55 years

or something like that

and it made a huge difference to him

and I mean I

I would say part of if you have kids in sports

no matter what the level you will have the opportunity

to get involved in coaching

because teams of all levels always need volunteers and

and parents to come in and help coach

and I really recommend to parents that at least once

you say yes to that because a

it's another way to like

get involved in your kid's life

and see a different side of them

but b it's a way for you to

maybe be that sort of person for another kid

who might need it

absolutely I

I struggle with that a little bit in

as I'm trying to introduce my boy uh

into sports

because I find that I have a tremendous amount of ego

attached to how he performs

I deep down want you know

I feel like I had an elite athlete

nascent in me when I was young

that didn't get teased out enough

and I ended up becoming very into sports at a

at a at a later age

and I don't want that for him and as just for myself

I want to be the father of

of an elite whatever right

and I really struggle with

with caging that instinct

and what do you think about that

how do you

how do you think about that tension there about

so I think about it a lot because uh

like I'm not gonna lie

it is cool to be like yeah

my kid throws 90 you know

like it's just like a fun thing

now it hurts when you go out

to play catch with them now

but uh

but it is kind of cool um

it was weird for I mean

he was the best ball player we saw at like every level

through like age 16 you know

like just everywhere we went every travel

I mean he was just

category difference than the second best kid

and that was cool I was also very cognizant of

whatever psychic payoffs I'm getting from this

uh they are nice

but they should not be determinative

this is not about me um

and I was also very very keyed into uh

really deemphasizing outcomes

and strongly emphasizing process

uh now

that is easier to do with baseball

than it is with a lot of other sports right

because in baseball you can say

look this pitch

this at bat this inning

this game none of it matters

you're gonna do a 50,000 more of these

yeah uh

what matters isn't if you strike out or not

what matters is was your approach to the plate right

you know uh

what matters is how did you conduct yourself

after you succeeded or failed

uh all of those things matter

does your team win or lose

it's fucking 10 year old baseball

who cares yeah

you're in the tournament game at a weekend tournament

that's great is

is there cash attached to this

you know and so one of the things

one of my mantras for him was that there are only two

reasons to do sports

this is like a little bit of a lie

but but only a little bit to for money or for for

for joy and and pleasure and you know

growing those are the only two reasons

and so if you're not having fun with it

and you're not growing and learning something from it

and you're not getting paid for it well

then you why bother yeah

and so again

really deemphasize outcomes does not matter uh

what they do on the field

what matters is the process

cause that's what the process is

where all the good stuff is

I think in terms of learning and uh

you know another another dad said this to me um

and his his kids went up playing for like

big 10 baseball schools and so very

very good and he said to me

I took this to heart early on

the most important part

of any baseball experience with your kid and

and really

any sports experience with your kid when they're young

is the ride home

because the ride

home is where you have each other's attention

and that's like they're coming down from things

and that's where you can have like

meaningful conversations you know

and the answer is never to say well

you know you're supposed to protect on two strikes

why didn't you protect there

like they know they're supposed to protect right

the the key is to to get to so what did you learn today

you know like that I would always tell tell my kid that

you know he had one mission before every game

which was that when we got in the car afterwards

he was supposed to tell me one thing he Learned

and it could be that he Learned how to

you know his Two Strike approach to do it better

it could be that he Learned that squeaks

a kid on his team that his birthday was the next week

like you can be learn something about your team

learn something you know

come come home to me in the car

have with one new thing that you didn't know

when you got out of the car

and that's you know

if your kid is upset of something

that's a chance to

to help them realize that it doesn't really matter

the thing that they were upset about

if your kid is like bursting with pride and triumphant

it's a little bit of an opportunity to say yeah

that is great that's wonderful

you didn't cure cancer though

you know like it and it's a

it's those car ride homes are sacred spaces and uh

and really that's again

just where all the good stuff is

so that's one of my piece of advice to parents

yeah I mean

I think that that goes I mean

that's absolutely true for sports

but I think that goes

I think it applies more generally too right

I mean like you're coming home from dance practice

ballet practice with your daughter

or something like you

there are the opportunities to do this

for all of those things from theater practice right

yeah I

I mean the

the thought that comes to mind for that is

how much I waste

the time I spend in the car with my kids

I could really be doing and

and maybe that's okay right

but is it wasting though I mean

it's wasted maybe if they're on their phones

but if you guys are that's what I mean to

you know they're sitting on on their tablets and and

and I'm listening to a podcast or something

I mean I like

we have a separate car ride

as opposed to doing something meaningful

I'm wasting the time

well you can

I mean again

I'm not gonna tell you how to raise your kids

but I always viewed car rides

as a chance to indoctrinate my children into

what music is the best and the answer is like

the best music is the music that I loved when I was 14

yeah and so

like my kids have grown up

thinking that Bon Jovi

is the greatest musical act of all time

and they can just like you know

tick through top 10 Bon Jovi tracks

stuff like that so those are

I think great uses of time for

you know listening to music together

listening to books together

doing audiobooks yeah

you know it doesn't have to be all like Socratic method

sure tell me son

what did you think of Sophocles

but yeah car rides are

are opportunities to make memories yeah

my son's very

first favorite song ever in his life was Bad Medicine

it's classic he would

the one doing something right as a dad was bad medicine

and that's how he would ask for the song

I was like what do you want to listen to like

and he be like bad medicine

it was it was

it was beautiful he

I never got into the rest of the Bon Jovi

uh ooh

though over the yeah

that's right yeah

we so this is

we again it's all indoctrination

your kids just you know

kids just repeat what they hear

yeah and when

so when we moved up to Jersey a few years ago

we took my youngest with us to the closing

you know we had to go

sit and sign all the paperwork on buying the new house

and uh

we're sitting there and he's

you know he's like 5 at this point

and the lawyers are there and whatnot

and he's just like chitter chattering with everybody

and you know they're like

oh so you're excited to move to New Jersey

and he's like yes

so excited to move to New Jersey

really hope that I get to go see Bon Jovi hahaha

and they're like what

and he goes but of course

I will only see it if they're with the original lineup

like what and then he says

because Richie has left the band recently

and he said it's for personal reasons

but that really means drugs

the lawyers are looking at like

and they're clearly like

what are you telling your children at home

and I was like I'm

he's the fourth like

you know by the time you get to the fourth kid

you're just giving up that's right yeah

yeah yeah yeah

we kind of had that with even the second kid yeah

it it gets a little bit more with each one

so yeah yeah

I uh

so what what is it

what is your kid starting to develop

what I mean

or desirable or anything

how do you develop the passion for sports

or is it something that you're just cultivating

there's a plant that's growing in the soil

and you're giving it fertilizer and water

so uh

obviously everybody's different

every kid is different um

for me with flash

so we when we were living in

in Virginia down outside of DC

we had a single a team two miles from our house

and so even before we had him

I was at the ballpark all the time

because it was a great I mean

just going to see minor league ball with my wife

when we were young and single

not single but

you know newly married

it's like ah

what could be better yeah

um so I started taking him

to the ballpark when he was like 1

and uh

we wouldn't go for whole games

we would literally you know

if it was a Saturday afternoon

and he woke up from his nap

and there was a day game we would just drive

you know it was a four minute drive

we go in and we'd stay for literally

as long as he was interested in it

which sometimes was like five minutes

but the tickets are $7 so who cares right

and uh

and sometimes it'd be for like 45 minutes

you know and he just loved going to the ballpark

and then as he grew up he loved baseball

loved watching it and listening to it

and by the time he was 5 and I took him outside to like

you know start teaching him how to throw catch

just because and I was not a baseball player

like this is you know

I was a basketball tennis running guy

um

just because I thought well

you know this America still America

you know we teach our

we teach our boys how to play catch in the front yard

huh we didn't lose a war and

and uh

he loved it and he stopped

I mean

he from about age 5 on

he wanted to be a professional baseball player

and that is the only thing he's

ever really thought about

wow

and like and I didn't

I didn't do it

and one of the things that I have been really

really conscious of is and I like I'm

I'm upset I said I don't do this anymore

but I did all through like the 10 through 16 years

and I would twice a year sit him down and say hey

it looks like you're having a great time with this uh

but are you sure you still wanna play baseball

because I just want to make this very

very clear you're not doing it for me

you are not trapped into this

you are not you know

like you know

it's not like oh dad

you spent so much money on travel teams and etcetera

that I have to keep playing

I was like as far as I'm concerned

all the resources we've put into baseball

have already paid off

in making you who you are right now

and those are great and that makes me very happy

and if you tell me I just wanna pick up the clarinet

and I really wanna learn the clarinet

that's fine you never have to play baseball again

you know and every time he looked at me

like I was an insane person

I was like that's fine

that's fine I thought that was the case

yeah but

you know like

I just want to make sure

you don't turn this into a job

that you feel like you're getting backed into

and I think that's helpful to do with kids

who are on the upper side of

the talent spectrum and because

you know I've

I've seen this with kids who are not as good

but who you know

are good but not like special

yeah

and you can tell they want to be doing something else

but you know

they've got a parent who they

and maybe

the parent isn't really the one who's invested

maybe the kids are just perceiving it that way

you know cause

you know kids are

kids are weird they aren't perfect

um I think it helps to

to make it really explicit and say look

you could I want you doing something with your life

you know I don't want you sitting at home just like

scrolling TikTok or something yeah

but it doesn't matter to me what that is

you could be drawing you could be in the school play

you could be learning guitar

like I I want you to find something that you love

and that you're passionate about

doesn't have to be this

just because it was baseball when you were 5 years old

doesn't mean you're trapped in baseball for forever

so yeah

I love that sentiment

that is such a wise way to approach it

and I I just I

I think that

there's this tension between

giving them so much freedom

that they never actually get to take root

or like being this rigid um

hit them over the head with it

oh you

you need to

you need to get to state or get a scholarship or what

you know get into the pros or else you're not loved

right and man

that's a tough tension it's a tough tension

it is it is tough

the the hardest tension I think is on specialization

so we can I just sort of talk at you for a moment here

I don't know how much you know about this

but you know

it used to be the case uh

if you go back to when we were kids

the the guys who wound up going pro

were three sport athletes in high school

and they they would

you know you

so you'd be a three sport athlete in high school

you would then get your scholarship to go play football

or baseball or basketball at whatever school

and then you get drafted

and starting about 25 years ago

that went away and we went much closer to like

the European soccer club model right

so in in Europe

where when you are identified as a very

very elite soccer player young

your entire life is pushed into soccer and

you know

often you are sent away to a soccer academy and you

and that's kind of

that is the way it was with tennis in America

yeah back in the day

it's the way it's always been with figure skating

and gymnastics yeah right

we commit kids very very young and early

but now the ethos is the same for all sports as it

is for like girls gymnastics

like we commit the kids super

super early to one sport

they've got to play on a bazillion different club teams

the school teams are no longer enough

and there isn't

there is an aspect of just keeping pace where

you know even if you don't want to do it

you don't want your kid specializing in a sport early

well you know

like everybody else is doing it

and so it it's like leverage in

in economics you know

once leverage exists

and one firm is taking advantage of it

then all firms have to just to

just to stay at par yeah

so uh

that is like a real thing

and a hard thing for parents to manage

and there's no like good outcomes from it

I think and so

you just have to

be cognizant that there are trade offs being made

and then work to

work to try to offset and hedge against those

yeah that makes sense I've seen

so the girls volleyball I've I

I have a lot of exposure to girls volleyball recently

and I have a lot of friends um

who played in college and all of that

and they get out of college and they just burned out

they're done they do not

or it's or it's like a Texas football was that way

even when I was growing up

yeah um

I went to

I went to college with a guy named Ricky Williams

who was the Ricky Williams

the Ricky Williams yeah

oh that guy was something else unbelievable

unbelievable unbelievable talent

and yeah we were in college at the same time

graduated the same year and he burned out yeah

left the pros right

you just like after two years yeah

so that's that's one another

another thing that I would say to people um is that

elite talent is obvious

much earlier than you might imagine

yeah you know

there I think we carry with us this idea like well

Einstein was a late bloomer

you know or Michael

Michael Jordan

didn't make the varsity team in his high school

as a sophomore and these things are mostly apocryphal

like

Michael Jordan was kept off the varsity team as like

an ideological matter by the coach

cause he didn't want a sophomore

though he absolutely could have

and would have been the best player in his high school

high school team as a sophomore

um most of the time

you can see how good elite athletes are

by an incredibly young age

you know age 10 at the

12 at the latest yeah

uh I mean I

I could just give you so

and by elite

I don't even necessarily mean Olympic level athletes

I mean uh

like just

the people who are

gonna be good enough to play at the college level yeah

it's it's obvious so early um and

there is a you gotta be really real about this

and I would like my heart would break a little bit

when I would see parents pushing really

really hard on kids at like Little League level

you know and so

like a kid

who was the second

best player on their Little League team

and the parent would be really torqued up about

why didn't you do this why didn't you do that

and I was just like for this kid is not gonna

I mean maybe this kid could play high school baseball

yeah maybe

but maybe not

and why would you put that much pressure on

like this is you know

you you gotta don't be deluded

yeah fun or money right

and uh

yeah so this stuff is all like I said

it's just obvious early and um

you know I

we've had too many sports montages in movies

uh yeah

that is that is for sure the reality

and I mean I

I don't know I uh

my my younger daughter ran cross country

um for a couple seasons

it's like elementary school cross country

the first one of the meets that she was at

I saw a fifth grade girl and I

I watched her run about 200 meters

and my eyes fell out of my head

like it was category difference

yeah between her and everybody else

and that girl was a freshman in high school this year

and she finished 45th in the country

oh my gosh as a freshman

and she is still not like she is not Olympic caliber

she'll run in college

she'll be a Division 1 college runner and but again

in fifth grade

it takes 15 seconds to look at this kid and say oh

that's different yeah you know

it it it is the it's like watching an alien

it's not like they're 10% or 100% or 150% better

they're like

10,000% better than everybody else around them

and that's what elite athletes look like yeah

and so if you know

like if if your kids not at that level

then they're not gonna be at that level and that's OK

that's great yeah actually

you know it releases them

from the obligation of having to perform at that level

and guess what if I

if I'd gotten into volleyball

when I was in high school

I would probably still be living on people's couches

in Hermosa Beach in California um

you know

living on $25,000 a year coaching people you know

coaching high school kids like that's

that would have been my path in life

I wouldn't have gotten into tech

I wouldn't have been an entrepreneur

I wouldn't have done any of the stuff

that I ended up doing and it was a blessing

and you know what

this is I I said this to flash when he was you know

like 10 or 12 and he was like

talking about going to Cooperstown someday

and I was like buddy

I want you to understand even if

even if you play in college and then you get drafted

and then it works out you catch on with a pro team

and then you become an all star

and then you are so good

that you become a first ballot hall of Famer

you will have more time of your life

to figure out what it is that you want to do

to contribute to this world

without baseball in it

than you will have had with baseball

cause you'll be done by 35

yeah you know

you're you'll be done by 35

you are probably gonna be a productive part of society

till you're 75 you know

given the way life expectancy works

so even if all that

more than half your life will have to be

dedicated to finding something else

that you're passionate about

that you love doing that can add value for the world

like you know buddy

have some perspective

so these are things we gotta teach our kids

you know

cause they're not gonna figure it out on their own

to them thinking about what they're gonna be like

when they're 40 is like asking them to time travel

oh absolutely

imagine that yeah

yeah I

I mean I remember

I remember people putting that on me when I was his age

and yeah being like

that was I

I that's old

that's bad

I'm gonna be this age forever

of course I still feel like I'm 25 or something

well that's the dirty secret right is that we get old

but we don't actually feel old

that's right we still feel like we're that kid

and then we see ourselves in a video and we're like

yeah whoa what happened to that guy man

what is my dad doing there

well before I lose you

I want to I want I really want to

drill down into this thing about the non

sports kids how does it affect them

and

and how does it affect the way that you think about

about them and that and how

how does that work out so

somebody who's very wise once told me

that every child is born into a different family

and like there's a Heisenberg principle here where

you know the the measuring of the object changes the

the speed and direction of the object yeah

and you know

so you have a kid and then the next kid is born

but the truth is

you're not the same parent that the first kid got

because having that kid has changed you and um

that is true like at every birth parity

like you had another kid

the whole family dynamic changes

and so I try to be cognizant of that

and to understand that you know a

they're all different um but B

even if they weren't different

they're gonna turn out different

because they're born into a different family

they're not getting the same

the same scientific experiment

you know they're not getting the same petri dish

uh and so I

you know I

I try to present opportunities I

when I say I the answer is always my wife

and I I'm just saying it as I

like it's me um

try to present opportunities

try to show them as much of the world as you can

right through books

through theater through the arts

through sports and see what catches their interests

right and

you know like my

my second oldest kid um

she has been like I think

she finished reading Jane Austen when she was 11

like you know

she made it all the way through

like she uh

she's a very old soul she loves literature

she I mean

she would just sit and read she's

she's better red than I am

and she's like 15 wow

um and that's great

and I love that and

but we also try to like challenge her a little bit

to get outside of her comfort zone and things

because that's important to grow

you know

and she did a season of high school cross country

and she loved it and she got a lot out of it um

but she didn't want to repeat it

and that was fine too

you know like I was so proud of her for doing it and

and I really do think she

you know she made friends with a lot of the girls

and they enjoyed just going out

and running together and she enjoyed being on a team

and she didn't feel like she needed to do it again

and that was also fine you know

so this is you just want them like

you know this

you just want them to be OK

you want everybody to grow up to be OK

and to be well adjusted enough

cause life is hard man right

I mean the world

the universe is indifferent and uh

you know like we will all have bad days

all get laid off from jobs

you have sick kids you have sick parents

I mean

you know you get hurt in a car crash

I mean there

there is so much out there

that the point of all this is just raising them to be

the kinds of people who can handle those things

and thrive and help and serve others

and make the world a little bit better

that's the point of all of it

yeah and sports is just one of those avenues

yeah I love that sentiment

now the last question I always like to ask everybody um

and and I like to spring it on them

so apologies but what is

give me one principle that uh um

if there's one principle that every parent listening

should think about when raising their kids what

what would that principle be

uh

I I am a huge believer in learning to manage failure

right so failure can be crushing

it could also be instructive

it can be habitual it could

you mean there

there's so many ways that failure can affect you

I have always been drawn to baseball

because it's a game of failure

you know if

if somebody fails 70% of the time at the plate

they go to the hall of Fame

yeah right

and so you know

you

you need to learn to manage failing over and over again

and that is one of the

the gifts that baseball gives the people who play it um

at the same time failure can be really demotivating

right

like a kid who can never succeed who can never win

who never gets on the field

can get dejected and turned down

and so I I

one of the things I tell parents

when I am giving unsolicited advice

is to

think about how you teach the kid to manage failure

that is more important ultimately

than getting them to succeed right

I mean you

you feel like oh

my goal is to get my kid to be the valedictorian

or get my kid to to be the Little League champ

and those things are nice

they can be great and good learning experiences for

for your children too nothing against it

but if you can be mindful of failure

and managing failure

and teaching your kid to get the good stuff

from managing failure and to avoid the bad stuff right

to to learn to turn the page on failure

while also learning from it and

and moving on from it

that will serve them really well in life

yeah I love that

uh yeah

one of my one of my principles is uh

uh excellence is failure

yeah

hundred percent

you're just failing less and less every time

yep yeah

I love that well

thank you I

I can't tell you how much uh

how much I appreciate you taking the time

this was a really powerful conversation for me it

it was a like I said

you were one of the inspirations of the show

in the very very beginning

kind of you and uh

and it's

it's really something that's come full circle for me

uh and I think it

it it

it forces us to think about

what the purpose of sports is in our kids lives

and how it has to do with them and not with us and

and how we can

responsibly manage those tensions involved so

so thank you so much uh

for joining us thanks for having me man

good luck with your too

thank you and for uh

for everybody listening

you can follow JBL's work through the bullwork

and his writing especially the triad

where he's trying to save democracy

one pinball or watch story at a time

so thank you for listening

and remember you are a great parent

raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez

this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino