Redemption, Wisdom and Love

The Boxer, the baseball player, the fighter pilot

He walks slowly and with effort up the famous stairs. Decades earlier he bound up these same stairs triumphantly. Now he breathes heavily. His joints creak. Reaching the top is a different kind of triumph.

He is the boxer.

He was one of the most heralded rookies in Major League Baseball. Drafted in high school, he signed a multi-million-dollar deal. He gave up a full scholarship to Stanford. He failed as a major league baseball player miserably and publicly.

Decades later, he is offered the largest deal in professional sports history as a general manager. He declines it.

He is the baseball player.

Today he returns to the elite school he dominated in his carefree youth. But the swagger of youth is gone. He is wiser from battle, from failure, from personal loss. He is the best at his craft, but his peers have far surpassed him in title and power.

He is the fighter pilot.

The boxer, the outfielder and the fighter pilot. Three unconventional journeys with early success, loss, wisdom and redemption. Three stories of growth. Three stories of redemption and love. These are our stories.

I’m obsessed with the hero’s journey. I’m fascinated by stories of idealists pursuing noble missions, enduring setbacks and making the world better. I am myself an idealist who has at times struggled with conventional definitions of success. Equally, I’ve had an equal share of success and failures and found greater wisdom and learning in the latter.

The Calling

All I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody’s ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’,

I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood.

--Rocky Balboa, from the movie Rocky

From the beginning, Rocky Balboa, the main character in the movie Rocky, is an unlikely hero. He is the underdog’s underdog.

He is the enforcer for a loan shark. He lives in a ramshackle apartment in the neighborhood he grew up in. He is a washed-up boxer who has squandered his potential. His best friends are an alcoholic and a turtle.

But fate hands Rocky an opportunity to fight the world champion. He is a heavy underdog. No one gives him a chance. But it is an opportunity for redemption.

Rocky accepts the challenge, knowing he won’t win. Like the baseball player and the fighter pilot, he has a different mission. He has an unconventional definition of success that inspires him.

Balboa trains almost maniacally. He becomes a local hero. He wants to make it to the twelfth round. He wants to hear the bell ring. He wants to prove to himself that he is more than “just another bum from the neighborhood.”

Similarly, Billy Beane doesn’t care about setting records or winning a world series. Beane is the unconventional real life general manager of the Oakland A’s. He inspires a book by Michael Lewis and a movie of the same name called Moneyball.

Beane is an unorthodox leader with an unconventional mission. As his character says, the pursuit of titles and records for their own sake doesn’t motivate him. Beane says, “That’s how people get hurt.”

He wants something more meaningful and enduring. He wants to change the game. Beane says: “If we win—on our budget with this team—we’ll change the game. And that’s what I want, I want it to mean something.”

In their own way, the fighter, the baseball player and the fighter pilot all change the game.

Wisdom Born In Failure

Pete Mitchell, the main character in Top Gun: Maverick, has a long list of accolades. Combat missions. Medals of Valor. Speed records.

But he has been surpassed by his peers. By conventional standards, he is a failure. He is still a captain while some of his peers have become admirals. A commanding officer says to him:

“You can’t get a promotion, you won’t retire, and, despite your best efforts, you refuse to die. You should be at least a two-star admiral by now, if not a senator. Yet here you are: Captain.”

Mitchell has refused to play the game. He has stayed true to his passion for being a great pilot. He has at times broken the rules. As his call sign implies, he is a maverick. And he has paid the price.

The first Top Gun movie ends with Mitchell as a hero with swagger, confidence and unlimited potential. The sequel opens with him years later, humbled and without the trappings of conventional success. He enters the movie with wisdom, humility and self-knowledge born from failure.

Similarly, Moneyball has periodic flashbacks to Billy Beane’s professional baseball care. He enters major league baseball a highly touted, highly paid top draft pick. He fails miserably. He goes from being a swan to an ugly duckling, a cycle many of us experience multiple times in life.

But what he learns in this first failed journey doesn’t defeat him. It inspires a different path. He works his way up to general manager for the Oakland A’s. It informs a leadership philosophy that profoundly changes baseball and all major league sports.

Beane changes the game.

Love Wins

In the end, these stories aren’t about boxing, baseball or being a fighter pilot. They are about love.

In my estimation, when you peel back the layers, most great stories are stories of love, not fame, fortune or status. My simple thesis is that love is the only viable strategy for leadership and life. Love is the only thing, in the end, that redeems us and gives us purpose.

Not a world series. Not power and titles. Not heavy weight championship belts. These things are all wonderful, but they don’t give us purpose and meaning.

All three characters have endured loss. Beane fails as a player, spectacularly. Mitchell fails in rising up the chain in Navy. Balboa suffers the loss of his wife and soul mate to cancer, as well as his best friend. In the movie, he battles cancer.

But Balboa and Mitchell find redemption and purpose in helping others. Balboa takes Adonis Creed under his belt and mentors him in the movie Creed. No longer a great boxer, Balboa is now an inspired coach, a mentor, a surrogate father.

His is not a victory of title, money or power. It is a victory of love.

Beane, at the end of Moneyball, faces the ultimate hero’s test. He is offered the biggest general manager contract in the history of professional sports with the Boston Red Sox. By conventional measures, it is the ultimate sign of success. He has made it.

He turns it down.

Instead, he chooses to stay in Oakland so he can be near his daughter. He chooses love.

Similarly, Pete Mitchell risks his life to save the son of his former wingman, who died in a crash. In the end, the swaggering, cocky pilot finds redemption and peace in love.

A boxer, a fighter pilot and a baseball player. One is a real-life character. Two are fictitious. All three have deeply inspired me.

Theirs are stories of early promise and setbacks. Theirs are stories of unconventional missions. Theirs are stories of loss. They are swans who become ugly ducklings and then swans again, through love. Each in their own way, achieve discover and achieve their unique life’s purpose.

Their stories are our stories. I recognize in myself many of these themes of promise, reversals, redemption and, most of all, love.

In the end, theirs are not victories in the conventional sense. They are victories of love.