Baseball and Life

The Major League baseball season consists of 162 games per team, far more than the NBA (82), NHL (82), or NFL (16). This means, among other things, that baseball players deal with failure far more frequently than players in these other sports. In fact, when you look at it one way, position players in baseball fail more than they succeed; consider that a .300 hitter in baseball is well above average, and yet, to hit .300 means that you are only getting a hit 3 out of every ten 10 at bats.

Baseball does not have a “failure” statistic, as in a ballplayer having a .700 average for failure (the opposite part of the .300 batting average calculation). Image what it would do to a batter’s mind if he looked at a failure statistic – it could easily suck all of the hope out of him for a better game or a better season. A .250 hitter can visualize becoming a .260 hitter, then a .270 hitter, then a .280 hitter – there can be hope. But a .750 failure hitter, what is he going to visualize…becoming a .725 failure hitter, a .700 failure hitter – thinking about failure, visualizing failure, isn’t much to look forward to, it isn’t likely to inspire hope in a player. Having a goal of “failing less” isn’t a thinking that is likely to produce more hits in a game or season, it isn’t a trajectory likely to produce a good big league career.

A benefit about a long season is that there is always tomorrow; major league players have to learn to shake off a bad game and focus on the next game. While they need to learn from their mistakes and poor at-bats, they can’t dwell on the past or the past will paralyze them.

Sometimes our days get off to great starts, and then something happens and things spin out of control and then we wonder what happened to the great day we had going. (This has probably never happened to you). It’s like a baseball player having a couple of good at-bats early in the game and then he makes an error in the 9^th inning that causes his team to lose. The ballplayer can’t blame his error on anyone else, and we can’t blame a bad day on other people because how we respond to other people and events is really up to us (yes, there can be unforeseen tragedy that invades our lives, I’m not talking about those terrible times).

One thing is sure, dwelling on yesterday’s poor game will not help me play a better game today, let me learn what I can and move on – and not worry about avoiding failure but focus on making contact with the ball, for I know that the more contact I have that the more hits I’ll have.

Perfectly pitched games in baseball are rare; in over 140 years and 210,000 games of major league baseball there have only been 23, and no pitcher has thrown more than one. Also, those who have pitched a perfect game did not do it by themselves, they all needed their teammates.

Maybe this is one reason why baseball is the game I love, failure is woven into it – but you really don’t look it long and hard because you know you’ve got another at-bat coming up.

Well, I had a bad 9^th inning yesterday, I’ve got to get out on the field now and play today’s game.