Our culture admires Roger Clemens for his work ethic and drive, along with his pitching skill. But he seems to have mistaken ideas about what’s important.
There also may be a time element to Clemens’s pursuit. He has said he would like to win 300 before the pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre retires after this season. Clemens also has four sons 5 to 15 years old, and he may soon want to spend more time with them.
He may get to 300 victories, but what will his legacy with his sons be? I have no idea what kind of father he is, but if he is in fact consumed with getting to 300 , he’s running the risk of saying to them “My place in history is more important than you and your needs as kids.” And the reverberations from that could last several generations.
I worked and rode motorcycles too much when my kids were little. And even now, sometimes, I wonder if I’m spending too much time on my entrepreneurial activities and not enough with my daughter, helping her with her homework, teaching her stuff that she’s not likely to learn in school. Time to start using those Franklin-Covey Weekly Compass cards again, I guess.