Here’s a photo of “Hammerin’” Hank Aaron taking batting practice.
I wonder how many times Aaron took practice swings in his life. Hundreds of thousands of times, I’m guessing. And he wasn’t practicing for some ultimate event, to one day achieve THE perfect swing, THE perfect hit. He was practicing to stay in game shape, to work on his timing, to maintain. All of those practice swings (and the field work, he was a good fielder, too) led to a long, Hall of Fame career.
I wonder what the equivalent of a practice swing is for an artist? Drafts of stories or poems? Rehearsals of plays? Rough cuts of films?
I wonder if it’s all practice? Sure, there’s spring training and the real season when the games count, batting practice and game at-bats when they go toward one’s average. But I wonder if it’s all practice for the next at bat, for whatever you do the day after the book is published or the play opens or the film is released? In that sense, “practice” is used to mean “the carrying out or exercise of a profession”; as in “she practices medicine.” Am I getting lost in semantics?
I wonder, too, if every instance of practice “counts”? I think it must in some way. Aaron didn’t hit 755 home runs by skipping practice, and he didn’t hit number 755 without hitting number 754 and 753 and …
Just a rumination for this first day of autumn 2011.
What do you think?