How to Lose

So, our little league season ended tonight with a loss(10-4), as they always do -- except for the one team that wins the championship, which none of the teams I've ever coached or played on ever have. Baseball is a very tough sport -- physically, mentally, emotionally. It's always been my favorite sport, for many reasons, including its statistical complexity.

Among the players, coaches and parents who have gotten to know me as a coach these past few years, many assume I must have played in my youth. But I never had that chance. I tried to play, but an untimely illness made me appear to be, in my coaches' eyes, "lazy." It certainly was not their fault for interpreting my behavior the way they did. I had the ability but I couldn't execute. I'd start chasing a fly ball and then slow down. The ball would fall untouched by me.

It took two years for doctors to figure out why this was happening. After that, I spent a long time in bed, which gave me the chance to invent an entire world of fantasy baseball, not to mention memorizing every batting average that can occur under, say, 100 at bats.

The one thing, as a coach and a parent, I never want to do, is repeat the mistake that my coaches made with me. Tonight was a very tough night. My little red-haired, freckle-faced star pitcher has been feeling elbow pain the past few games. We don't know what this is about, but it could be as serious in its way as what was wrong with me five decades ago.

Yet he is, by far, the best pitcher on this team, so I had to make the call to send him out. I did, and he tried, but he couldn't really pitch the way he usually does, and the other team hit him hard. Finally, after an inning and two batters, he called me out to the mound and said his elbow hurt too much, and I pulled him out of the game.

As I said, we lost this particular game. My son, an athlete, knows something I don't know (obviously, to anyone reading this blog) -- and that is how to lose and move on. He can. I can't. Even if his arm is injured now, and he can't pitch ever again, he has the emotional strength to handle that. But I hope (and would pray, if I believed) that we caught this soon enough, and whatever is wrong can be repaired.

To players, I always say "it's not how you fall but how you bounce." He bounces, and I admire him for that. I don't, however. And that makes all the difference in how our stories play themselves out.