The only sport that interests me anymore is baseball. Sadly, the team I follow, the Phillies, are in a bit of a rut right now. Last night (a rare thing for me) I watched an interview with the manager, Charlie Manuel. (It's a rare thing, because, to me, there is nothing less interesting than hearing athletes or managers sum up a game by saying, "Well, we lost, because we didn't put runs on the board..." or, "We made key hits and plays tonight." Right. Got it.)
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| Charlie, explaining... |
As I watched Charlie field the questions, I felt sorry for him. But then I thought: something has shifted. We are so arrogant. We think we can find the answers for everything.
Why did they lose? Because they lost. Baseball is a difficult game. Teams lose. Some players get hot while others go cold and then it switches. While baseball games are sometimes won by strategy, they are never won by studying the minutiae of a pitcher's delivery. A pitcher doesn't come out of a hole by changing his arm angle by .89933 of a degree. He wins by coming out of a mental place he is stuck in. And, when he comes out of it, he doesn't know why or how and he doesn't
want to know. He goes with it.
