Baseball, like all sport, is about winning. That’s why a score is kept. Athletics for the fun of it is mere recreation, a fine thing in its own right, but not to be confused with competition whose goal is victory. Winning demands ones’ very best, never more so than when opponents are evenly matched. The athlete willing to give the last full measure will prevail over the one who will not.
Anyone can lose. Losing requires no talent, guts, or sacrifice. Winning is reserved for the special athlete who does what it takes to rise above the rest, and therefore the goal of victory elicits the very best from the very best. The higher the level of competition, the greater the demands required to succeed. Through the rigors of athletic struggle, champions are discovered, records are established, and potential is realized. The drive to win builds great people, teams, and nations. Anything less than all-out effort will damn the defeated to wondering how good he, or she, could have been.
Whatever Leo Durocher meant by his most-quoted phrase Nice Guys Finish Last, the locution nowadays evokes the intensity of competition prevalent in the wide world of sport. Such unreserved passion for winning has a long history. One of baseball’s truly great players, Ty Cobb, said, “I could never stand losing. Second place didn’t interest me.” Those who would settle for less than the championship ring may not understand Cobb’s intensity — many in his own day didn’t — but then few matched his success.
Winning requires a player’s complete immersion in the struggle, mind, body, and emotions. “I hate all hitters,” said Don Drysdale, “I start a game mad and I stay that way until it’s over.” Big D knew he could not prevail against the likes of Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and their contemporaries without a total commitment to winning. Another Durocher classic perfectly sums up the prerequisites of victory. “If I were playing third base,” said Leo, ”and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I’d trip her. Oh, I’d pick her up and brush her off and say, ‘Sorry, Mom,’ but nobody beats me.” Winners understand and rejoice in that sentiment. Losers recoil from it.
The Central Washington softball players who carried their injured opponent around the bases, ultimately sealing their team’s defeat and elimination from the tournament, violated everything good and noble about winning. Was their act kind, gracious, loving, and heart-warming? For some. But for those of us who understand the value of winning, the sentimental act equaled a strike-out in the world of athletic competition. Helping the other team beat you diminishes the opponent’s accomplishment and unfairly penalizes your teammates, an egregious violation of the sacred trust that must exist in a team context.
Compassion has its place in competitive encounters, being properly expressed, in the case at hand, through visits to the hospital and well-wishes for a speedy recovery. Helping the other team beat your team is not compassion, but treason, a contravention of the very goal of taking the field in the first place.
Passionate competition in sport has long been hailed as good training for the real world, rightly so. The struggle, striving, and sacrifice required to win at sport translates very well to our tasks as parents, providers, leaders and team players in life’s endeavors. Here too, compassion plays a role, but one secondary to the self-reliance, team loyalty, and drive for excellence necessary to succeed in life. Ultimately, compassion is for those who finish second.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Current Affairs, Sports