The Agony of Defeat

 

Last week, the playoff run of the Philadelphia Phillies, picked by many experts to win it all, came to a painful and abrupt ending. In a tense pitchers’ duel, Orion Kerkering bobbled a grounder and threw wildly to home, allowing the winning run to score. Kerkering immediately bent over with the physical pain of having blundered away a routine play and with it his team’s chance of surviving and advancing. To their credit, his coach and teammates immediately rallied to him, offering encouragement and letting anyone willing to hear them that they lost as a team and not as a result of one play (an admirable level of genuine sportsmanship which we will come back to in a minute).

 Baseball can be cruel. Fourteen Octobers ago, Phillies slugger Ryan Howard not only made the last out in the game that eliminated his team from the playoffs but tore his Achilles in the process. Thirty-two Octobers ago, Phillies closer Mitch Williams came in to protect a lead to force a World Series Game 7 and instead gave up baserunners and then the Series-winning home run by Joe Carter. Kerkering, Howard, and Williams know all too well just how awful and alone it feels to make one mistake and have it bring a sudden end to a joyous postseason run. 

That’s how baseball is. I have a friend who I play golf with who used to play professional basketball and is also a big baseball fan. He tells me greatly prefers to play basketball over baseball, and not just because he’s really tall and good at hoop. Basketball, in his telling, is a sport in which, if you make a mistake, you are immediately able to redeem yourself and in the process let go of your mistake. Badly miss a shot? Hustle back on defense and try to get the ball back. The person you were guarding just blew by you? Now you have the ball and can make something happen. Baseball, on the other hand, is the sort of sport in which you might strike out and then you have to stew for an hour before you have a chance to hit again, or you can commit an error and then you just have to stand there while everyone boos you (and there’s no guarantee the ball will come your way again so you can redeem yourself). 

We agreed that golf is more like baseball than basketball, which is what makes having a strong mental game so important to that sport. But that’s a thought for another post. Coming back to the lonely and abrupt consequence of failing on the baseball diamond, unfortunately life often resembles baseball (and golf) more than basketball. Sometimes we fail, spectacularly and publicly, and there’s nothing we can do to reverse the damage, make amends, or even hide from the negativity. I wish it weren’t say, but such is life. 

They say many things you need to be happy in life you learn at an early age, in places like kindergarten and the ballfield. I think there’s some truth to that. Losing hurts because winning is amazing, and to say otherwise is to negate the fact that in life sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and it matters whether you win or lose. (You will not be surprised that I’m not a big fan of participation trophies, or of Little League games in which parents are afraid of keeping score.) It’s a good life lesson to feel the sting of defeat, for it to hurt a little it or even a lot, because it is practice for understanding that contests have stakes and that there’s a big difference between winning and losing. But it’s also a good life lesson to learn how to be a gracious winner and a gracious loser, the former being easier and the latter requiring having respect for your opponent and for the game. And, it’s also a good life lesson to know that, in a greater sense, as important as winning and losing is, there are still more important things than that. Which is why Orion Kerkering’s teammates rallying to him in the moment and then in the press is so heartwarming, that despite the deep disappointment of the sudden end to their season of promise, they valued their teammate even more. 

In life, we will lose a lot, sometimes quite publicly and sometimes quite decisively. It may not feel like it in the moment, but those are necessary life lessons and we are better for bearing them.