THE WISDOM OF BASEBALL

I was listening to the Dodgers post-game show on the radio last Sunday. Charlie Steiner and Rick Monday were talking about how hard it is for young pitchers to make it in the Major Leagues.

“It’s not about talent,” Monday said. “Because if they didn’t have talent they wouldn't have got to the Big Leagues to begin with.”

“Right,” Steiner agreed.

“At every stage on the way up, these players face the very best hitters. From Little League to Pony League, college ball and into the minors – Single A, Double A, Triple A. At each stage, EVERY guy they’re facing is like the VERY BEST guys they faced at the stage before. “

“And they keep moving up.”

“So when they get to the Big Leagues ….”

“The best of the best.”

“Sure. But my point is, in the end, whether you succeed isn’t really about that. Are there differences in ability? Of course. And there are other factors as well – injuries and so on, but I’m not talking about that.”

“No.”

“The point is, that no matter how good you are, you can’t strike everybody out. You have to rely on your teammates. And you’re going to have bad days. And you’re going to make mistakes. Batters are going get hits and score runs and on many days, YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE."

“Baseball is a game of failure.”

“It is. Sooner or later, it comes to everyone. And the point is, you have to learn to deal with that. What I'm saying is, in the end, that’s what separates the players who make it in the big leagues from the players who don’t. You’ve got to learn how to deal with failure. And coaches need to teach young players that.”

* * *

I was listening to this, and at first I was thinking it was just another baseball platitude. But then it suddenly jumped out at me how deep and true it was.

Because when you think about it, life is a game of failure, too.

Whether you operate in the creative realm, the business realm, in government, the military, the academy, failure is a lot more common than success. And the more ambitious the things you undertake, the more likely you are to lose. So, in a sense, your ability to deal with failure is a pretty good measure of the upward limit of your success.

If this is true in worldly endeavor, it is even truer on the spiritual path.

When we enter the spiritual life, whether we know it or not, we begin a journey upstream, against the current of our habits and tendencies, even against the natural direction of our energy and attention, which is accustomed to flow outward, while we seek to direct it inside.

In the first few years, the momentum of our enthusiasm operates to overcome our habits. But those habits are not gone. They are only superseded temporarily. As the enthusiasm inevitably recedes, they begin to reassert themselves. And when this happens, we begin to wonder if our spiritual efforts have accomplished anything at all. Old ways of thinking and acting – ways we thought we had changed – are still there, impossible to ignore. The energy we were trying to redirect inside is still going outside, the same as before. When we sit to meditate, we often seem to get little or no results. In short, it appears we are failures, that our years – perhaps decades – of self-discipline have been wasted. And we have to find a way to deal with that. Because if we don’t, our spiritual life will be over. We will have defined the upward limit of our spiritual success.

So how do we deal with failure?

I don’t know about baseball, but from a spiritual perspective, what helps me is an understanding of the ROLE that failure has on the spiritual path. I remember on one occasion, I was very depressed about some failure or other, and I was pouring out my heart to God about it when I found the following thought powerfully imprinted in my mind:

“And how shall I teach you humility? Through an unbroken string of successes?”

That thought changed my life. Because when I reflected on it, I realized that success --exhilarating though it is -- has never taught me anything. It has only been through failure that I have learned. So it is failure, and not success, that is our spiritual friend. Failure teaches us the things we need to change; failure shows us our weaknesses; failure shows us the limitations inherent in egoity and physical life.

Above all, failure teaches us to surrender our will to God, because in the end, the manifestation of God's will is the very definition of success.