Keeping Cool

Sometimes, you're almost good enough, but you're not quite there yet. Last night during the Phillies game, when the game was tied 1 to 1 in the bottom of the 10th, Carlos Ruiz drove a foul ball down the left-field line that went just 5 feet left of the pole. If I was out there batting, I would have probably been pretty frustrated. You know it is when you're so close yet so far. However, there is a reason that he is a professional and I'm not. No sooner had I thought about this then he launches one clearly fair into left-center field that ended the game and gave the Phillies a 2 to 1 win over the always good Cardinals. There's something to be said for keeping your composure; you need to be able to isolate the failure in order to focus on the future success. However, this is often times easier said than done. How many pitchers have you seen who throw one bad pitch that gets hammered and then proceed to throw 10 more bad pitches simply out of frustration that hammered even harder? If indeed this pitcher could have kept his composure, he could have prevented all of the damage that ensued and kept his team in the game. However, how do we keep our composure? I'm not going to pretend to be a psychiatrist here and be able to understand other human minds. However, to keep my composure I tend to step back and look at the bigger picture. By realizing that a foul ball that is 10 feet and a foul ball that goes 500 feet is still a foul ball leads to the logical conclusion that a 500 foot foul ball should be no more frustrating than a 10 foot foul ball because they both have the same result; one strike down. This is not easy to do especially in the spur of the moment, but I have found that compartmentalizing failure helps you deal with it in a much more efficient manner than dwelling on it will.

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