When I first began playing truly competitive baseball I was 11 years old. Up until this point my playing career consisted of having a daily catch with my father in the cul-de-sac outside of our house, and the bi-weekly games played in the local Jewish Community Center league. Hubris and arrogance aside, most would say that for me, playing in the JCC league was unfair. An early growth spurt allowed me to tower over most other players, most of whom did not care about winning or losing but wanted more than anything for their parents to take them out for ice cream after the game. My perspective remained extremely different. As the best pitcher in the league I loved racking up the strikeouts, forcing my Dad to record the number of pitches I threw and to analyze the stats in order to fix my mistakes during the cul-de-sac sessions. Many say that competition is a natural instinct, a statement I agree with, but competition is like an unlit match, dormant until a quick strike causes the match to burn itself into extinction.
In JCC baseball my competitive attitude surfaced. After only a few seasons, my parents and I realized that I needed better competition. After all, it is difficult to keep the competitive fire stoked when half of the batters I faced stood barely above 4 feet and wore long skirts that disguised the bottom of the strike zone. I immediately moved from the JCC league to the Lower Merion Little League. Here I was matched up against 10-12 year olds from all over the township, a much greater source of talent that hopefully would feed this recently cultivated competitive nature. Finally, to play in a league in which my teammates and the coaches all took the games seriously and wanted to win, as opposed to merely "have fun" and yearn for the post game ice cream. This experience began with "fall ball," which obviously occurs in the fall and not the spring. Only the truly dedicated play baseball in the fall, right? This led me to believe that the other players would be committed to winning. To my dismay, few of the players and coaches interested in winning in the fall resided on my team. My coach viewed fall ball as a counterbalance to the competitive spring Little League season. Instead of playing the best players at their most effective positions, he played everyone where they wanted to play, so everyone pitched, in rotation.
I distinctly remember driving home with my Dad after one game, complaining to the point of anger about playing center field. Another player on our team with little athletic talent but a strong desire to pitch gave up the lead and lost us the game. For some reason I exclaimed, "no one else wants to win but me." Now Dad has never been a sports playing type of person. Despite not being a great ballplayer, he has experienced loss and gave me some good advice. He said, "Be patient, in the spring you will play for a different team, one where you'll feel more comfortable." As an 11 year old I didn't truly understand patience, so I continued to complain, lamenting my team's lack of desire to compete and win. Obviously, losing did not sit well with me.
Skip forward to next spring. A whole winter of growth and practice behind me, I was ready for baseball to start again. This time I intended to play for a team with a coach and teammates who shared my competitive desire to win. Due to the high volume of players in the spring in comparison to the fall, the league holds tryouts to determine at what level everyone should play, the majors or the minors. I felt confident in my abilities to make a team in the majors, but even still I hoped that the team on which I was placed would be a better fit for my competitive nature. Luckily, I was drafted to a team coached by a father my parents and I both knew. Let's call him coach "K," but not because his coaching skills measured up to the famous Coach K at Duke. He and his son both wanted to win very badly; he had thus strategically constructed a team with experience, talent, and most importantly, a will to win.
Our team performed well, winning most of our games, and making it to the playoffs. I was named to the township All-star team along with three of my teammates. In the first game of the playoffs, we faced a team that had won fewer games than us and against whom we felt very confident. Most likely due to our over-confident demeanors, and probably a little bad luck, we lost the game, thus moving into the losers bracket. This meant that another loss would end our hopes of capturing 1st place. Following that first playoff game I remember feeling frustrated. I blamed others, my teammates, my coach, and even the weather. Losing isn't easy. True competitors, the ones spoken of in stories, never blame their teammates; they look within themselves for answers and push themselves to be better. This was a lesson I had not yet learned. After 3 more games we found ourselves playing in the championship game against the second best team in the league. I was charged with pitching and I promised myself that no matter what happened I would put forth everything I had. I pitched well for 5 innings. In the 6th and final inning, with the game tied the other team's best hitter came up. Instead of using my best pitch, my fastball, I decided that with 2 strikes on the batter I would fool him by throwing a changeup, something I almost never did. I hoped that the batter would swing through and strike out, thus giving us a good chance to win the game in the bottom of the inning. Instead, he hit the first and only home run I ever surrendered in Little League. We lost the game.
| A sign from the Phillies 10,000th loss |
Losing
isn't easy, no matter level competition. When a franchise has compiled
10,000 losses at the professional level, losing becomes
the default culture of the fans and the organization. Just ask
the Phillies, still the only professional sports team to compile at least
10,000 losses. I attended the Phillies 10,000th loss, a Sunday night
against the St. Louis Cardinals. That loss felt similar to the hundreds
of other losses I had witnessed as a fan. Each loss stung, but every
successive loss brought less frustration and more acceptance.
Fortunately, the Phillies forsook their losing ways, made the playoffs in
2007, and then won the World Series in 2008. Since 2007, the Phillies
have not missed the post-season, a testament to the change not only
in the product on the field, but in the attitudes of the players, coaches,
front office staff, and even the fans. For as much as losing is
difficult, winning is easy. Why do Yankees fans bemoan every Yankee
loss, thus making a name for themselves as the crankiest and some would say
most annoying fans in baseball? Perhaps, to a large extent, because they are
used to winning.
 |
| Jimmy Rollins and the Phillies are last in the NL East |
Losing
isn't easy, no matter level competition. When a franchise has compiled
10,000 losses at the professional level, losing becomes
the default culture of the fans and the organization. Just ask
the Phillies, still the only professional sports team to compile at least
10,000 losses. I attended the Phillies 10,000th loss, a Sunday night
against the St. Louis Cardinals. That loss felt similar to the hundreds
of other losses I had witnessed as a fan. Each loss stung, but every
successive loss brought less frustration and more acceptance.
Fortunately, the Phillies forsook their losing ways, made the playoffs in
2007, and then won the World Series in 2008. Since 2007, the Phillies
have not missed the post-season, a testament to the change not only
in the product on the field, but in the attitudes of the players, coaches,
front office staff, and even the fans. For as much as losing is
difficult, winning is easy. Why do Yankees fans bemoan every Yankee
loss, thus making a name for themselves as the crankiest and some would say
most annoying fans in baseball? Perhaps, to a large extent, because they are
used to winning.
Recently, Phillies fans have had to deal with the difficulty of losing (28-31 record to this point). The other day, I read an on-line article on the Philadelphia Daily News sport page. It concerned the no-trade clauses in Chase Utley and Cliff Lee's contracts. In the comments section, an obviously frustrated fan claimed that General Manager Ruben Amaro is awful and that his "raj" needed to end in order for the Phillies to regain their winning ways. Can this fan write off all of the Phillies recent success, calling for a man to be fired due to one bad third of a season? I too disagree with many of the Phillies recent moves, but instead of complaining about the past, I hope the Phillies rebuild their underwhelming farm system by trading big names like Cole Hamels, Hunter Pence, and Shane Victorino.
As my father taught me back in Little League, "patience is key." Sometimes you have to experience the frustration of losing to properly value the joy of victory. Winning is difficult to sustain, and often times teams need to prepare to win in the future by accepting failure in the short term. Little League taught me that losing is grueling, exhausting, and above all else, disappointing. Competition and the will to win fuels all of us, from Kevin Garnett, to the young Little Leaguer, to every Phillies fan out there. So with all this in mind, let's take a lesson from our Little League selves: while losing may be difficult, we must respond with patience and discipline. Instead of bitching and moaning about the Phillies recent losses, including a current 6-game losing streak, let us think critically about the team's issues and how best to resolve them in order to bring back the winning spirit that has fueled Citizens Bank Park and the entire city for the last 5 seasons. Complaining gets us nowhere; just as Kevin Garnett uses his desire to compete to get himself ready to play every game, Phillies fans should channel their competitive spirit in constructive ways, instead of complaining like petulant children.
