Over the weekend I kept coming back to a story that had nothing to do with my dugout. I’ve spent more than 20 years coaching young players in baseball, from T-ball all the way up to high school varsity. When you manage enough rosters of players who didn’t choose each other, you learn something fast. Disagreement doesn’t have to mean division.
That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about Jaxson Dart and Abdul Carter.
Recently, New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart had the honor to introduce President Trump at a rally in New York. His teammate, linebacker Abdul Carter, took exception and took to social media. “Thought this was AI, what we doing man,” Carter posted. The comment wasn’t inherently bad. In fact, it sounds like a friend talking trash to another. But the media called it a locker room crisis and sports talk ran with it.
But then the two of them stood in front of cameras and settled it. They disagreed. They talked. They moved on. Carter put it plainly. “I know Jaxson is a good dude. It’s just a disagreement, and we can talk about it as men.”
The story was a non-issue from the beginning. But if anything came from it was exactly that – that good people can disagree about sensitive topics like politics, and come around as friends.
While I cherish my time on the diamond helping to shape young men, what I cherish most is teaching life lessons through baseball and establishing relationships with boys I knew in their teens and before, who are now grown men, some with wives, children, jobs, etc.
One of the major lessons team sports can teach is you can disagree with the guy next to you and still execute your job as a teammate when it counts.
At Our America, we call it being Americans First. It means you see the person across from you as a fellow American before you see them as a political opponent. You could say that Dart and Carter figured that out in a week, but really, they likely knew that long before either talked publicly about politics. I believe most Americans already know it. The problem is the media and Washington love to tell a different story.
But here at the Our America Foundation, we don’t hesitate to come together as friends first, as Americans first. No matter what, this is a lesson I’ll continue teaching my kids.
We can agree without being disagreeable and should never compromise our values and principles, but at the end of the day, we are all on the same team as Americans.
