{"id":5944,"date":"2025-06-22T18:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T18:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/5944\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T18:26:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T18:26:19","slug":"contributor-baseball-is-mostly-mistakes-how-else-can-we-learn-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/5944\/","title":{"rendered":"Contributor: Baseball is mostly mistakes. How else can we learn grace?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If only! On June 18, 2014, the airwaves and the internet lit up in collective awe at one of the greatest athletic feats in modern history. Clayton Kershaw recorded 15 strikeouts in a 107-pitch no-hitter that many consider the best single-game pitching performance of all time. The asterisk of this epic Dodgers game was the one error in the seventh inning<\/a> that prevented its official recognition as a \u201cperfect game\u201d: When the Rockies\u2019 Corey Dickerson tapped the ball toward the mound, Dodgers shortstop Hanley Ramirez botched a throw to first base, and Dickerson made it to second.<\/p>\n

If only Ramirez had made the play at first! If only coach Don Mattingly hadn\u2019t substituted the ailing Ramirez one inning prior! Los Angeles was one bruised right finger away from celebrating perfection.<\/p>\n

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Baseball has a celebrated history of quantifying value. No professional sport embraces numbers and statistics in the way baseball does. Statisticians are as much a part of the game as the dirt, chalk and grass. Although baseball has been collecting data since the late 1800s, the empiric statistical analysis that is part of our game today dates back to 1977 with the introduction of sabermetrics.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s critical to the game: How else are we to determine success when the majority of what we see is failure? The best hitters in baseball are those who only fail less than 70% of the time; in other words, have a batting average over .300. These perennial all-stars will experience the dissatisfaction and humility of an out in 7 out of every 10 plate appearances. In what other profession can you fail 70% of the time and be considered one of the greats? Consider the mental strength required to accept failure as part of the game and the focus to view each at-bat as an opportunity to fail a little bit less.<\/p>\n

We need a similar kind of thinking in life to quantify value in our failure rates.<\/p>\n

A \u201cperfect game\u201d is defined by Major League Baseball as a game in which a team pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. It\u2019s so rare because failure \u2014 by pitchers as well as batters \u2014 is expected as a matter of course. Francis Thomas Vincent Jr., the eighth commissioner of MLB, is quoted as saying: \u201cBaseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often \u2014 those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On June 19, 2014, the fans and commentators of baseball praised in dramatic fashion Kershaw\u2019s dominant no-hitter, but with a subtle tone of confusion and denial of the ugly blemish recorded across the team\u2019s box score: 0-0-1. Zero runs. Zero hits. One error. One base runner. An imperfect game. If only!<\/p>\n

The collective hope for perfection is understandable. Most people are afraid to fail.<\/p>\n

Parades aren\u2019t held for the runner-up. Grades aren\u2019t given just for trying. Job promotions aren\u2019t offered for making mistakes. Placing perfection on a pedestal relieves the collective anxiety \u2014 but prohibits the opportunity \u2014 of accepting failure as an integral part of life. For an individual, failure is an opportunity to grow and become a better person. For a business, failure is an opportunity to pivot and redefine success. The opposite of perfection is not failure. It is accepting the opportunity to learn from transgressions. Winston Churchill once quipped, \u201cThe maxim, \u2018Nothing prevails but perfection,\u2019 may be spelled P-A-R-A-L-Y-S-I-S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost to the day, 75 years before Kershaw\u2019s no-hitter, the world of sports witnessed the catastrophic reality of paralysis. In June 1939, after a week of extensive testing at the Mayo Clinic, Lou Gehrig announced to the world that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This announcement happened to fall on his 36th birthday. This represented the end of Gehrig\u2019s illustrious baseball career. But 75 years later, what is remembered about this man is not his career batting average of .340, seven-time All-Star appearances, six-time World Series championships, winning of the Triple Crown or two-time league MVP. Sabermetrics could not possibly explain Gehrig\u2019s value to the sport. What endures is what no statistic can capture: his grace. His humility. His courage in the face of loss. What is remembered and honored is his response to the ultimate \u201cfailure\u201d: a failure of upper and lower motor neurons to make necessary connections that ultimately leads to rapidly progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. In defiance to an illness that is uniformly fatal, Gehrig paid homage to his teammates, professional members of the MLB and its fans by proclaiming himself \u201cthe luckiest man on the face of the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Similarly, sabermetrics misses the true greatness of Kershaw\u2019s no-hitter. What could never be displayed in statistics or numbers was Kershaw\u2019s response to the error. After Ramirez\u2019s throwing error, his hat lay at the base of Kershaw\u2019s pitching mound. As I watched from the stands, I could not hear what Kershaw said to Ramirez as he picked it up, dusted off and handed the hat back to his humiliated teammate. But his body language appeared unbelievably humble, accepting and supportive, as if to recognize the lesson of baseball, which is that errors are a celebrated part of the game. To dwell on errors and think \u201cif only\u201d leads to disappointment and blame, but to accept and embrace imperfections with a positive and optimistic attitude defines the ultimate success.<\/p>\n

If only we could all be that perfect.<\/p>\n

Josh Diamond is a physician in private practice in Los Angeles and a lifelong Dodgers fan. Some of his earliest memories are of attending games with his father; he now shares his love of the Dodgers with his son.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s in the news right now, the L.A. Times\u2019 Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. <\/a><\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If only! On June 18, 2014, the airwaves and the internet lit up in collective awe at one…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[7480,1283,7482,7481,224,2502,1884,1266,7484,7485,7483,7486,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-5944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-clayton-kershaw","9":"tag-colorado-rockies","10":"tag-corey-dickerson","11":"tag-hanley-ramirez","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","14":"tag-major-league-baseball","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-opportunity","17":"tag-part-of-the-game","18":"tag-perfect-game","19":"tag-professional-sport","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114728428178331095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}