Years ago, I was on a Little League Majors team that won a Tournament of Champions series in California. We were an unstoppable force. With the exception of an inning here or there at 2nd base and a few at-bats, I almost exclusively rode the bench. At the end of the tournament, when the coach was talking to us and celebrating our win, he pointed at me and asked me how I felt about the season. My response was, "I wish I could have played more." He then asked me if I could remember what he said every practice since day one about cultivating a champion mindset. Of course I could. We heard it constantly. "Control what you can control. The rest is just noise." He reminded me that umpires calls, whether or not a coach plays you as much as you want, weather, field conditions, and a whole lot more are all out of our control as players. What we can control is our effort and our attitude. I'll never forget that.
Now, I'm a father and currently coaching my 10 year old's little league team. Yesterday, we won our game, but several players on our team were getting angry at themselves and at their teammates for mistakes. There were some bad attitudes out there. Thanks to that coach when I was a kid, the absolute heart of my coaching philosophy today is that no matter what your skill level is, you can always control your effort and your attitude. After the game, I congratulated the team on their win and pointed to one of the kids who was getting angry and asked how he felt about the game. He said, "We almost blew it because the defense was all asleep and nobody was making plays." I had to remind him that our job as players, especially at 10 and 11 years old, is to control the controllables. By disrespecting our teammates, our coaches, the umpires, or our opponents, we are disrespecting the game of baseball itself. I hope he got the message that being on a team means that this thing is bigger than just him and no matter how well he thinks he played, he did his team a disservice by acting that way.
So, today I am reminded that this isn't just about baseball. Baseball, like life, should be approached as a "fail forward" activity. We will all fail far more frequently than we will succeed. Failing forward means that when we fall short, we search for the lesson in that failure and then immediately let the rest go. Baseball lives in the way we show up. It lives in the way we carry ourselves both on and off the field. It lives in how we treat other people. Happiness precedes success. Not the other way around.
Baseball is life.
