Of baseball, chemistry and judgment

The Texas Rangers are headed to their first World Series.  And in the place where I live, it is hard not to catch the excitement of that event.  (Last night, there were people celebrating in the streets even in my quiet neighborhood.)

A few nights ago, I was at a business social at a sports bar when Game 5 was playing.  I asked the man I was speaking to--who I guessed to be a sports fan, "Why this year for the Rangers?"

His response interested me.  He said, "When I first got into this business, most of the company were kids like me.  We were fresh out of college.  We all made about the same salary.  We worked hard all day, then hung out together at night.  We were great friends and it made it easy to work together. And because of that, the work we did was truly impressive."  He went on to talk about without A-Rod as part of the Rangers, there was no "star" whose job it was to win the game, and that he wonders if the chemistry of a bunch of young guys simply enjoying each others company and baseball isn't the magic formula it takes to get a team that has never been to the World Series it's very first chance.

So, my question is...why don't we have more of that in our lives?  Why don't the teams we are part of experience more "Rangers?"

Nancy-the-Insightful and I had this conversation and came to the conclusion that judgment plays a role.  The moment one person on a team looks at another person on a team and begins to find them "less than" in some way, the chemistry gets broken.  The judgment can be as big as determining that one person isn't pulling their weight; as trivial as annoyance at a perceived slight; or as irrelevant as criticism over how a person dresses or handles elements of their personal life.  I'm not even sure that the judgments have to be uttered.  Sometimes the insidious thing about judgment is that it influences thinking...and slowly but surely the relationships change. When the judgments are uttered aloud, groups begin to form.  Stars are created and others are pushed to the side.

Note that the person issuing judgment usually feels they are right.  But curiously, they don't simply go to the person in question and address their concerns.  They don't work to clear issues to restore relationships.  I know I'm guilty of that. Instead they let the judgments stratify.  People are separated into "good" or "bad" and what could be begins to slip away. 

I wonder how many pennants we've lost in our lives because we let judgment destroy the chemistry of team? Worse I wonder how many times our judgments are wrong and we've assigned bad motives to others actions that were never actually there.

Few great things happen by the actions of one person alone.  Most truly world changing events happen in teams. Maybe we should become more serious about protecting that.