Life’s greatest classroom-the baseball diamond.

Baseball provides the perfect opportunity for everyone to learn life’s lessons without really trying. People grow up playing baseball. And in the process, they grow up.

Baseball shows the importance of winning with dignity. When you’re five, it doesn’t matter if you hit for the cycle. You’re just happy that you got to play with your friends.

Winning is insignificant when you can be outside and free.

But people also learn the value of losing. Little kids don’t really care if they knock the tee over every time they try to hit, commit three errors and lose 21-18.

Everyone still gets ice cream after the game.

Invariably, there will always be one player on every team who is more in-tune with nature than with the game at hand.

Your right fielder thinks catching a monarch butterfly is more important than catching a liner hit to him. The same right fielder will also find a patch of clover or a mound of dirt more interesting than the triple play that his team just turned.

But this teaches players about the importance of showing individuality.

Everyone doesn’t value the same things. If everyone were solely focused on the game, the game would be too serious.

Every team needs someone who keeps things light. People who follow their beliefs make life interesting.

But in learning about our differences, we realize how baseball unites us.

It is one of the few ways people from so many different countries can compete with and against each other.

The Little League World Series shows that children from all over the world can compete for a common goal-the love of baseball.

Baseball also teaches the value of hard work. There is nothing more satisfying than being a consistent hitter, turning your first double play or throwing out a runner at the plate.

Young competitors see the value of hard work in their accomplishments, and that value is ingrained in them.

Being prepared is a necessary lesson that baseball teaches. Anything can happen during a game, and players have to be ready. You learn that the first time you’re playing third base and someone laces a line drive at your face. You have to make a quick decision or grab a bag of ice. Quick thinking and improvisational skills are a necessity in life. The earlier you can learn to think on your feet, the better you’ll be.

Baseball shows the importance of taking time for yourself and doing what you enjoy. Going to the batting cages and dropping a few dollars is amazingly therapeutic. It shows how simple things in life are often the most satisfying.

Instead of working to gobble up as much as we can, we should look at the little things that happen every day for happiness.

The greatest life lesson that baseball teaches is the value of family. There’s no better childhood memory than playing catch with your dad in the backyard when you should be doing homework.

Learning how to hit, tweaking your pitching motion and snatching pop flies show the bond that sports can create. The conversations that you have during catch are life-long memories.

If you understand the last scene of Field of Dreams, then thank your dad for teaching you about the best game there is. And baseball isn’t bad either.