Major League Baseball’s regular season, before the playoffs, is 162 games long. Traditionally, any team that wins 100 or more games is considered the best team in baseball, not always the World Series winner, there are a lot of other variables involved, but the best team overall.
That means even the best professional baseball teams lose more than 62 games a year, proving that losing is a big part of baseball. Realizing that, it should be a natural assumption that “how to lose” would be taught as a normal part of learning baseball, not unlike on-field practice.
However, as exemplified by some of the outbursts from coaches and parents, following losses, especially unbalanced or critical ones, tends to suggest that some woefully lack the skills to teach how to become a well-rounded ballplayer.
I was always impressed with Thomas Edison’s make-or-break approach, and to paraphrase, he said, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times to make the invention work… I succeeded 1,000 times in figuring out how the invention wouldn’t work.” What a difference attitude makes.
There are many examples of great men and philosophers, far smarter than I am, offering advice on how to handle defeat, but I’d like to share a few examples I found successful when coaching baseball.
(1.) Lead the team away from the chaos of departing fans or new fans and arriving teams, either under the shade of a tree on foul territory or in the parking lot, for a “Team” discussion .
(2.) Always start the talk with something positive. No matter how bad the game is, there is always something good that happens.
(a.) “Today we hit the ball cap.” Needless to add, we also allowed 20 runs, you know that.
(b.) “Our outfield played a great game today.” Because the other team kept firing rockets at our launchers.
(3.) Name a lesson…ready for this, Trainer learned from the game.
(a.) “I learned that I haven’t done a very good job teaching running.” It doesn’t matter if you’ve talked until you’re blue in the face about running the base. It is never the fault of the players per se. There is a lot of blame to go around.
(4.) If the loss occurred in a tournament-like atmosphere against an unknown opponent, always overestimate the opponent’s abilities even if you know better.
(a.) “I’m proud of you guys/girls for playing your best. That was a hand-picked traveling team and you gave them everything they could handle.”
(5.) Lastly, just admit you got your butt beaten and it happens. One trick is to memorize a date when the city’s professional baseball team or a great historic team like the Yankees was badly beaten. Why not make an appointment? Because with today’s technology, a player will quickly google the date and tell you the team didn’t play that day, spoiling the intent.
(a.) “On May 5, 2011, the Cubs beat the Cardinals 14-2. Now, if the Cardinals can lose to the Cubs that way, it happens to everyone.”
The key for a coach to remember is that a game is just a glorified practice. You wouldn’t jump around screaming if a player missed an easy ground ball during infield practice. (If he does… Get out of practice!) Either I’d correct his mistake, he’d keep the ball or maybe even take it lightly.
Baseball is a game of never-ending learning and learning how to handle defeat is a required skill.