Page 87 - How to Drive the Bottom Line with People

Making Winners Fail

the NAIA Hall of Fame. Major League baseball teams
have drafted more than 100 of his players.

I was a 17-year-old pitching prospect when I first
met Coach Hays in 1977 on the Lubbock Christian
campus, where we discussed the possibility of a base-

ball scholarship. At the time, Lubbock Christian did
not have a baseball field of its own. The team prac-
ticed and played at various diamonds around the city.
It seemed odd to me that Lubbock Christian’s base-
ball team—a team ranked number four in the nation

among NAIA schools—had no facility.
Coach Hays proved to be different from the start.
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Unlike coaches at other universities, who provided =

tours of their baseball facilities and spoke to me in
detail about their baseball programs, Hays had no
facility to tour and spent little time talking about base-
ball. Instead, we talked about my hopes and desires in
life. I am certain we talked baseball at some point;

however, most of what I recall had to do with Coach
Hays’s servanthood—his genuine desire to figure out
if he could help me realize my potential as a person. I

was impressed.
I returned to Houston and excitedly reported that
I had committed to attend Lubbock Christian.
“What’s their stadium like?” my dad asked.