“That’s What Losing Sounds Like…”

By Ben Campopiano
April 19, 2012
www.RDbaseball.org

t’s no secret we got swept in Spokane last weekend. Sure, it’d help our egos a bit if what happened up there, stayed up there. But the reality is that we got beat. And then beat again. And then beat once more.

Losing is never fun. Whether it’s a game of checkers or a Division I baseball game against Gonzaga, nobody wants to lose. Just ask any kid old enough to count. But losing happens. We all know it happens quite a bit. And in baseball, it happens more often than in any other sport. Even the best big league teams lose 40 percent of the time. (The 2011 World Champion Saint Louis Cardinals lost 42% of their regular season games last year.) But as Donny The Bus Driver told me as he drove us to the Spokane airport, “It’s life. It happens. Nothing y’all can say or do to change it now. Just move ahead.”

And that’s pretty much what we do. Since the first day of the fall Coach O’Brien has told the team that baseball – like life – is 10 percent what happens to you, and 90 percent how you react. Much like everyday life, we know that errors will happen. We know mistakes will be made; and we definitely can expect to lose some things. But the 10-90 principal stresses that it’s the response to those moments that make us who we want to be – not the moments themselves. Coach O’Brien stresses to the guys that the best way to handle mistakes, losses, and adversity is to: 1) admit it, 2) learn from it, and 3) let it go.