Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.....

People make many difficult decisions throughout their lives and must live with the consequences. Whether it’s deciding what to eat for breakfast or the people you’re going to surround yourself with, there are always consequences to the decisions you make. Whether someone eats pancakes with syrup or without has consequences, just like if someone decides to go out with a group of friends and drink or do something illegal. There are still consequences to both, but the consequences are very different. Whether or not someone puts syrup on their pancakes may only make them hyper for a little while. If someone goes out and drinks, or do something illegal, the consequences could be very great. A person could get arrested, or even killed. There are consequences to everything a person does; they just have different severities to them.


During The Old Man and the Sea, the benevolent and confident main character, Santiago, makes many critical choices. One choice that he makes is deciding not to allow anybody to go out and fish with him. This was a dismal mistake because he’s an elderly man. He’s still strong and long-winded, but he still needed help. It would have been better had people been nicer to him and had more sympathy for him, but instead, everybody just made fun of him and said he was a terrible fisherman. He could have used a lot of help when he was trying to catch the marlin and when he was trying to fight off the shark that was trying to eat his marlin. It would have been helpful to have someone there when he was fighting off the sharks because it’s easier to fight off a shark when there are two people, rather than just one. “If the boy were here he would wet the coils of line, he thought. Yes. If the boy were here…” (83). He was starting to cramp up and get sore. It also would’ve been a wise decision to take somebody out with him because he probably felt lonely. He’s out at sea for days at a time with nobody to talk to. It would have been a very intelligent decision to take somebody with him, so he didn’t have to do everything all alone.


Another critical decision that Santiago made was chasing the marlin so far out into the Gulf of Mexico. This was a very naïve decision because he had no clue where he was. He should’ve just stayed close to shore and let the fish go when he started to realize how far out he was. “I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish, he said. Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry fish…” (110). He should have stayed close to shore, so he could actually find his way back home. He got caught up in the moment, knowing that he had hooked an aggressive, majestic fish and wasn’t paying enough attention to how he was frantically being moved around.


Another decision that the old man made was eating the marlin. This was a good idea because he was probably very hungry. “He leaned over the side and pulled a loose piece of meat of the fish where the shark had cut him. He chewed it and noted its quality and its good taste. It was firm and juicy, like meat, but it was not red. There was no stringiness in it and he knew that it would bring the highest price at the market. But there was no way to keep the scent out of the water and the old man knew that a very bad time was coming…” (106). It would have been better if he had saved the remaining marlin meat and try to sell it and make a lot of money. This marlin was huge and he could have gotten lots of money had he saved it and sold it at the market when he made it back to shore. He could have gotten enough money, so he could have bought a nicer house and probably wouldn’t have had to fish again for a long time.


The choices people make in their every day lives can be as simple as what they want to wear that day, or as complicated as what they’re going to do if they can’t work, or lose their job. They are both choices, but they have completely different consequences to them. The choices you make can be very important and be decisions that affect you for the rest of your life, or they can be small, trivial decisions that affect you for just a few minutes. People have to make decisions every day. The only thing that is different about them is what kind of consequences the decisions lead to.

Third Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

Playing With the Enemy by Gary W. Moore. Penguin Books, 2006.
Genre: Non-Fiction

Gene Moore was a fifteen year old boy that is an incredible baseball player in the small, very poor, farming town of Sesser, Illinois. He played in a semi-pro league where most of the other players on the team were quite a bit older than he was. He was the starting catcher, clean-up hitter, and unquestioned leader of the team. One day, while he was warming up the starting pitcher for his team, someone in the crowd called him over to talk to him. It was a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers, named Frank Boudreau. After discussing it with his parents, they allowed him to sign with the Dodgers. One day during the offseason, Gene was at the movies and heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He decided to join the war, but instead of fighting, he played baseball. The army and navy decided that if any players signed by major league teams signed up for the war that they would make two teams and play in North Africa as entertainment for wounded soldiers. After he left Africa, he was ordered to guard a group of German prisoners of war in Louisiana. After several weeks, he decided to teach them how to play baseball because they didn’t have enough guards to field two teams. They play several games and the Americans win all of them, but during the last game on a play at the plate, Gene slid into home plate and dislocated his ankle. After Gene was back home for 4 years, Frank came back and signed him to a deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates even though, after the ankle injury, two screws were put in his ankle just to keep it in place. He couldn’t get into a traditional catchers squat because of the screws in his ankle. He was still good, but he wasn’t as good as he was before his injury. He reported to one of their minor league teams and played for them for a few weeks, then after making a diving play to save a perfect game, he was released because his ankle was in such bad shape.


“A true story of a man’s reaching out to the enemy during a very dark time in our history. Gene Moore and his fellow sailors teach all of us that compassion and tolerance does exist, especially when the bridge builder happens to be that great American pastime: baseball. History and baseball buffs alike will revel in this episode of a man’s ability to reach out, even during a time of war.”

Gerald R. Molen, Academy Award-winning producer of Schindler’s List


This story shows the baseball career of Gene Moore from begin to end with vivid detail. I can picture everything in the story from the poor town of Sesser to the makeshift baseball diamond they made in Louisiana in order to play the Germans. In most other books that I’ve read, the details in the book haven’t been as specific as this one.


“Summers in Southern Illinois are hot, and July 1941 was hotter and more humid than most. Sesser is a small country town in “downstate” Illinois, ninety mile southeast of St.Louis. Although the entire country had suffered from the ravages of the Great Depression, this small coal mining town ws particularly hard hit.



I’m an avid baseball fan and love everything about baseball, especially the history behind the game. This book was about not looking at everyone as an enemy even if you’re really supposed to, never giving up, and that even in bad situations, you can always find a way to have fun. What I enjoyed about this story was how a fifteen year old kid was signed to a Major League contract, this makes me believe that if you want something enough and you work hard to get it, your dreams can come true.