Screen shot of Matthew Jeffers. Photo: ESPN.

Near the end of the regular season in the NFL the Baltimore Ravens were slumping and their chances of winning a Super Bowl looked slim. Enter Matthew Jeffers, a graduate of congregation Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore, Maryland, who suffers from skeletal dysplasia. Jeffers wrote a letter titled “A Reason to Win” to Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who was so moved by it he passed it along to his team.

The letter, which you can see Jeffers recite below on a segment from sports network ESPN, read in part: “Life doesn’t care about streaks. it does not care if you want to win, if you need to win. At the end of the day life is simply unfair.”

Jeffers goes on to explain the illness which stunted his growth—he stands only 4ft 2 inches- and  the fact that he has endured some 20 surgeries since his childhood. He concludes with this penetrating and pithy thought: “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”

Watch the ESPN segment below: