Tigers Minor League Baseball Blog

Dealing with success and failure in the game of baseball really boils down to a few main things. Either way a player must be able to shed his emotions after 12 hours because any more than that this could carryover into the next game and you want to have as clear a mind as possible to focus on the task at hand. For a pitcher, the rules change a little in that starters can take a little more time to think about their outing due to the long time between starts, but relievers need the same mindset as I mentioned earlier. Personally I have found it beneficial after a game, whether good or bad, to look back at what I did well that night to build on for the next time I throw. There is plenty of analysis after a game which comes from coaches and also myself which focuses on what I need to do better, and this is something which cannot be ignored either. However my thought is that if I continue to build on what I am doing well, eventually the mistakes won’t happen as often. It has been said that baseball is a game of failure and the numbers we use to determine how good a player is speak to that testament. Three for Ten at the plate is a hall of fame career, which means he is failing seven out of ten times. An ERA is based on how many runs the other team can expect you to give up. This is what makes baseball so great, it’s hard. The challenge of trying to beat the game is what motivate players to keep going. The other team can beat you every now and then, but the game will get you every time if you overlook what is happening at that given moment. Baseball is too hard to always be good, there will be downs and it is how a player is able to deal with them and bounce back for the next pitch or at bat. As Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) said in A League of Their Own, “Baseball is what gets inside you. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”