What Does Working for Habitat for Humanity Have in Common with Baseball?

What do Habitat for Humanity and baseball have in common? Here are my thoughts on the matter.

Theme Song: “Let’s Go Higher” Jordan Knight

Habitat for Humanity and baseball may seem unrelated, but here's what they have in common.

Projects of the Day: Set up for VBS at church, get some stuff done for Bright Hub

So yesterday, I had a doubleheader. I worked for Habitat for Humanity in the morning and then I took my son to the local ball team’s opening night. Our team won (Go Outlaws!) and my son won a t-shirt – yahoo!

As I was sitting in the grandstands, I was thinking, “What could I write about for my blog?” I figured a post on allergies would be excruciatingly boring, so I started to look at how I could connect my day’s activities.

First, both baseball teams and home builds require an enormous amount of teamwork in order to be successful. You cannot build a house by yourself. At least, not a house that meets all the building codes. You cannot have a baseball team with only one person. How are you going to run the bases? I mean, as a kid, I tried playing baseball against my younger brother as a solo affair, but it just was not the same.

Second, both baseball teams and home builds require good communication. On the team, people will let you know if you need to change your pitching tactics, you will need to call the ball if it will land between two people, and you’ll need to tell someone whether to run or stay put. In the build, it is important to communicate – “Hole!” or “Down a bit!” or “Let’s measure that again.” Yesterday, we put the gutters on the house. That required all 12 women there to coordinate their efforts and communicate what was going on. Six of us handed the gutter up onto the scaffolding, the other six took the gutter. It cannot bend. Once it bends, that’s it. We did not bend our gutters.

I’m sure there are many other connections that could be made, but those were the two most profound I came up with on reflecting on the experience. I put up gutters with the help of my teammates, I helped to take down the scaffolding (yay!) I teamed up with another woman to put up a window flashing at the top of every window.

I got home and took a nap, woke up, and rushed over to the stadium for the game. Whew, what a day!

Ronda Bowen

Ronda Bowen is a writer, editor, and independent scholar. She has a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Northern Illinois University and a B.A. in Philosophy, Pre-Graduate Option, Honors in the Major from California State University, Chico. When she is not working on client projects from her editorial consulting business, she is writing a novel. In her free time, she enjoys gourmet cooking, wine, martinis, copious amounts of coffee, reading, watching movies, sewing, crocheting, crafts, hanging out with her husband, and spending time with their teenage son and infant daughter.