Golf Saved My Life
by Jeffrey Reed, Editor, LondonOntarioGolf.com
March 20, 2015
Former big-leaguer Jim Bouton’s ground-breaking baseball classic, Ball Four, ended with the now-famous line, “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
Hall-of-fame sportswriter Grantland Rice once wrote, “Eighteen holes of match or medal play will teach you more about your foe than will 18 years of dealing with him across a desk.”
Rice’s prose has a double meaning, since the game of golf can also see you digging deeply into self-discovery. Golf game can rip your heart out almost every round – avid golfers know that it can never be perfected. How you deal with that adversity says a lot about your own character.
Concurrently, Bouton was right in his analogy about those who have dedicated their lives to baseball. As we discovered when reading, Ball Four, a lengthy season is a marathon of ups and downs which, like golf, will expose weaknesses as well as strengths.
As spring marks the return of major league baseball – with opening day seemingly just a 90-foot dash away – and the Masters Tournament just around the corner, hiding behind the azaleas, something always awakes within my soul. For 33 years, baseball had a tight grip on me. When I retired from the London Majors in 2001, golf became my passion. Until the day I’m pushing daisies, I’ll be gripping a golf club while golf tightens its grip on me.
Please excuse the formalities, but each spring I like to remind those who lend an ear that golf saved my life. For two years after I left baseball, I put all of my competitiveness into my career in journalism. I weighed 203 pounds, had dangerously high blood pressure and was diagnosed as pre-diabetic. I also live with colitis, which sometimes sees me feeling ill and fatigued.
I was also already living with numerous skeletal and spinal deformities that made pitching for the Majors in 2001 a miracle. Doctors told my parents shortly after I was born that I would never be able to play sports. Later in life I was told that by age 50 I may be limited to activity using a walker, or within a wheel chair.
In 2003, I suffered a transient ischemic attack (TIA) – a mini stroke – which acted as my wakeup call. I took one look at my golf bag – as always, sitting in the corner of my office – and decided right then and there that golf would be my sport. Legendary golfer Ben Hogan was once said the secret to his golf swing was “in the dirt.” Practicing until my hands bleed has always been my secret – blame it on a work ethic passed onto me by my parents.
Two years later, golf club manufacturer Wilson Staff provided me with a sponsorship that continues to this day. Despite my challenges, Wilson allows me to play with the best equipment for my game, and I owe them deeply for their support.
Speak to any member of my medical team (and it’s large enough to field a baseball team), and they’ll tell you they can’t fully explain why I am able to golf at a high level. All they know for sure is that by keeping active (within reason, given my physical challenges), maintaining a healthy diet, and most of all, adhering to the power of positive thinking, I’m able to thrive – not only on the golf course, but in life in general.
Golf can be cruel – of course, like every golfer, some days I stink the joint out. That’s golf. But my weight is good, blood sugar level normal, blood pressure no longer dangerously high, and, thanks to numerous monthly medical appointments, I am (for the most part) not limited in my physical activities.
The greatest gift I can give to others is inspiring them through my inspirational message, which I enjoy doing as an after-dinner speaker at local charity golf tournaments. Of course, I’ll mix in great stories about interviewing athletes like golf’s Mike Weir and baseball’s Barry Bonds.
But I always end my chats with a quote from Arnold Palmer, who quipped, “I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying. I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.”
For many years, I wasn’t comfortable talking about my shortcomings. But telling your personal story to others is important. If you give 100 per cent, you can’t fail, no matter what the outcome. By telling my story, I hope to make a difference in the lives of others.
Recording artist Amy Grant once said, “More important than talent, strength or knowledge is the ability to laugh at yourself and enjoy the pursuit of your dreams.”
I laugh at myself many times each day. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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