I have been blessed to be on the platform over the years with some pretty terrific speakers whose real life stories are simply amazing. One such guy was baseball’s Jim Abbott, born without a right hand. He was one of the most successful major league pitchers even though he was missing a hand.

Abbott would throw the ball with his left hand, nestling his glove on his stump of a right arm and would quickly slip the glove on in time to field any ball hit his way. Once fielded, he would hurl the ball toward first base and, more often than not, he would gun down the runner.

In his rookie season in 1989 as a professional, he won more games as a rookie than any other previous player without major league experience. Abbott spent hours as a youngster bouncing a ball off a wall to practice fielding as well as throwing.

He was the starting quarterback on his high school football team, which went to the finals of the Michigan State Championships, and he showed enough promise as a pitcher to be drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays shortly after graduation.

Jim Abbott found a way to excel both on the baseball diamond and the gridiron. But what if he had to play basketball where two hands are critical to the success of a player. Could it be done?

You only need to look to tiny Manhattan College, a Roman Catholic liberal arts college in New York City for your answer. Despite its name, Manhattan has actually been relocated to the Riverdale section of the Bronx, roughly ten miles north of midtown New York.

There is a coach at Manhattan that loves to take chances on kids that most schools would consider second tier. They might have academic challenges or disciplinary issues, but rarely would a college coach waste a precious scholarship on a student with a physical handicap. But that is exactly what Coach Barry Rohrssen did. He gave a full scholarship to Kevin Laue, a kid with one arm.

To be fair, that might be the only handicap that Kevin Laue has. A native of Northern California, Laue played a postgraduate season for Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia last year, hoping to impress college recruiters. His Coach Fletcher Arrest said Laue averaged about 10 points and five rebounds, competing against many Division I prospects.

What Laue lacked in limb capacity was more than made up with desire and determination. His 6’-10” frame does not hurt him a bit. Most colleges would take a pass on a guy like Laue.

When Laue was born, the circulation in his left arm was cut off by the umbilical cord. It left him with one good arm and the remains of a left arm. He uses his upper left arm to help receive passes, and his large right hand allows him to easily palm the ball. Not only is his frame huge, but so is his good hand.

The old expression of turn your lemons into lemonade is just not adequate enough to speak to the issues that the Jim Abbott’s and the Kevin Laue’s of the world have to face each day. To their credit, you never heard a peep out of either one of them. All they wanted was an opportunity to show what they could do with what they DID have, not the things they lacked.

In life, people are fond of using the “losers limp” to point to why they cannot accomplish something, whether it is in the world of sports or the classroom or in business.

My own daughter-in-law, Jessica, suffered from scoliosis as a teenager, causing her to have surgeons insert four “Harrington rods” into her back to correct the problem. To get stronger after the surgery, Jessica began lifting weights. She was pretty good at that and ended up at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan where she met my son Jason. Both were trying to make the US Olympic team.

No, they were not successful in their pursuit of the Olympics, but may I suggest to you that it will make them profoundly successful in life as molecular microbiologists or doctors or whatever they end up doing. Do you make the most out of the gifts that you have been given in life? Be grateful for the gifts you do have!