Failure is success...

Since today was the first game of the Grapefruit league, we might as well take some time to discuss that and spring training.

There is no question that baseball is the greatest game ever created. It is chess but with live players who change. One game your reliable rook becomes a pawn, the next outing two bishops become queens. And that doesn't even begin to cover pitching.

One of the things that makes me sad about the rise of football, the gladiatorial 'game of inches' is what it creates in the minds of the masses. Firstly, that your opponent is someone to literally be brutally thrown down into mud and that 'every play counts'. It creates an hysteria and a cut throat literalism that teems out into the world around it. Baseball meanwhile, is soft and seductive. You out wit your opponent. You lull them into complacency over innings and pitches. You divert their attention, and call their bluff. It is a dance between 20 minds and then some: nine players per side and their manager. There is no time limit and no coin flip. It is just like life- sometimes the winds change and you're the hero, the other time it blows and you're the goat. Try your best, sometimes that just is what it is.

Take today, for example, and a quote from likely 3rd or 4th starter Bailey Ober in his loss to the Boston Red Sox. "I feel like I could have dominated with fastballs only today, but I needed to go out there and throw my full repertoire."

If I may loosely interpret Bailey, "I needed to fail today so that later in the season, I know how to succeed."

The best hitters in the history of the game get a hit maybe one out of three chances. Their failure rate is 67% and no one ever talks about that. Hall of Fame pitchers give up an average of 3 runs a game. Three runs! Hardly perfect.

When I teach, and I've been doing that for decades, I've slowly told my students that EVERYTHING is practice. Sometimes you practice and have the book at your disposal, or the answers. Sometimes you don't have either. Baseball teaches us, over the course of 161 games, that it's about averages. The best show up over many years, thousands of games and tens of thousands of pitches.

Look, I know that every athlete practices in the dark of night to perfect their craft, but when it comes to teaching children, they largely never see that. In baseball you SEE the failure. It's right there and it's EXPECTED. The tenacity for success any child can see. And that is just one of a million reasons why it is the greatest game ever created.

By the way, the Twins lost 8-6. I get my mlb.tv set up tomorrow. I'll probably listen on the radio...

Cheers and happy spring training to whatever it is you're preparing for. Do or do not, there is no try. And the outcome is not yours to care about, let the wind worry about that. :)

~Becka