Personal Reflection. Why lawyers like baseball

• Author: Peter Hrastovec
• Pages: 371-377

371

R PERSONAL REFLECTION | FALL 2014

Why lawyers like baseball

PETER HRASTOVEC, LSM

I

was never one of those kids who could say that I had big-league

baseball dreams. First, that would be a little too clichéd. Second,

though I could throw a knuckle ball at the age of 12, my curve ball

would rise higher than oodwaters after a spring thaw, and it lacked as

much in control as any raging river. But a dearth of talent didn’t stop me

from playing the game I loved in my own “eld of dreams,” in a park

near my home for hours on end every summer, long before W.P. Kinsella

made that term a baseball staple in his celebrated book, Shoeless Joe.

Though law school was supposed to be a stepping stone to a bud-

ding career in journalism, somewhere along the way I balked and side-

stepped my way into the practice of law.

After 30 years of law practice, the anniversary coinciding with the

start of baseball season, I have concluded that as interesting, rewarding

and challenging as law practice may have been, it was only one of sev-

eral ways to measure my life. Along with my family, my community and

my law practice, baseball has ranked pretty high on my list of “likes and

loves.” It has cast a constant shadow, long and lingering like those balls

we’d throw on a hot, late summer afternoon at the ballpark.

As a litigator, I have found baseball to be a great conversation starter,

a pleasing segue for dialogue with opposing counsel before commen-

cing an intense discovery or a sensitive mediation. “Say, did you see

the game last night?” or “Did you read what so-and-so said in the paper