It's often difficult to explain how something as trivial as sports, and baseball in particular, can mean so much. So many of my relationships, both with family and friends, have been built around sports, and none more so than with the Cubs. It's become part of my identity, not just as others see me, but as I see myself. It's not always been an easy road with the Cubs, though. Before ownership hired Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Jason McLeod to head the baseball operations department, and the organization made a firm commitment to sabermetric principles, I had reached something of a crisis of fandom. I had already started to abandon much of the enthusiasm of my youth when it came to my football and basketball allegiances. Those sports, while still appealing to my romantic side, failed to capture my developing intellectual curiosity. The distinct nature of baseball, however, makes it uniquely able to be analyzed. Within the now popularized and ever-expanding sabermetrics community in baseball, that curiosity flourished. As my interest in analytics grew, I found that my favorite team, the Cubs, increasingly represented an antiquated system. They were stuck in baseball's past. I found myself questioning whether I could continue to support a team who's methods were outdated. A team who ran opposed, not parallel, to who I was becoming and who I wanted to be.
Baseball provided me a foundation for how to think. Everything can be put on trial. There's no value for what you think you know, or what you've been told. The information is there to test a hypothesis and reach a well reasoned conclusion. The sabermetric community cut through the bullshit and found what could and could not be quantified. It can be carried over to nearly every aspect of life. I've changed my position on a countless number of things by just exploring why and how I had reached, or in many cases, started with different conclusions. If I couldn't reason why I felt the way I did, I knew I didn't have enough information to reach that conclusion. All too often we look for evidence to support our conclusions, rather than seek the necessary information to reach an evidence-based conclusion. Baseball taught me to leave behind the conjecture and truly value what can be defined.
Baseball helped me learn to value process over outcome. There's an extreme danger with results-based analysis and we're all prone to this way of thinking. The results are what you feel in the short term, but they don't necessarily reflect the value of an approach based on a long-term series of correct decisions. Sometimes, you'll make the right decision and not be immediately rewarded. Sometimes, you'll make a poor decision and be rewarded handsomely. The results should not be the focus of the scrutiny, but they often are, which leads to one chasing results, instead of establishing a repeatable and beneficial long-term process. Life is nothing but a series distinct events, and over a long enough sample size, those making the correct decisions the most often stand to see the greatest return. The value is in doing what you can, with what's under your control, even through the times when the results are disappointing. That's a very difficult lesson to learn and take to heart.
Baseball helped me deal with failure. Along this line of valuing process over outcome, there comes a therapeutic effect. You can't always control your circumstances, but if you have some control over your reaction and your confidence in your approach. That can be in and of itself empowering. The sport teaches this on a constant basis. From pitch to pitch, when Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in the game fails on the largest stage of his career. From at bat to at bat, when Mike Trout, possibly greatest player in our lifetime, strikes out in 21% of his at bats. Even on a larger scale, the best team in the league any given year, by whatever your measurement, fails to win the World Series 70% of the time. Failure is a constant even at the heights of greatness. If you can't learn to devalue the outcome and embrace the process, you'll crumble, in baseball as in life.
There's a failure in our society to recognize this and properly reward not only outcome, but process, and it's born from an expanding culture of anti-intellectualism. To me, there's no greater analogy for this developing societal problem than the claim that participation trophies make our children weak. The exact opposite is true. Failure is a staple of life. Taking a macho approach to our children in evaluating process/outcome activities is a tremendous disservice to future generations. If we teach our children the only thing that deserves recognition is success and victory, then we're limiting our children's ability to properly value effort and approach. The danger to this really comes as these kids reach adulthood and the only thing they've been taught has any worth is success, most often measured by adults in profit. That sets a dangerous precedent. I'm not sure we want to live in a society that increasingly values only profit and leaves no room for anything but individual advancement. If anyone needs to be taught the value of doing something correctly, to the best of one's ability, and to completion, it's children. By rewarding only outcome, you're instructing them that the process had no value. You're teaching them to chase profit, a rigid individualism, and all else be damned.
So, now that we're here, at the pinnacle of the ultimate success, a World Series, I ask that we don't let the outcome devalue the real success, the process and the approach. If the Cubs win in 4, this has been a tremendous success. If the Cubs lose in 4, this has been a tremendous success. What we're seeing, either way, is the benefit of trusting an objective process.
From an intimate standpoint, the National League Championship was an exorcism of sorts, but the true validation came from everything that led up to that culmination. There's a feeling that, for first the time in my life, the approach of the team parallels my own. As silly as it sounds, seeing this team that's part of my individual identity bring so much joy to so many, to those that I love, is personally rewarding despite the fact I had no real impact on the success. The Cubs right now are a perfect marriage of the emotional attachment to the team that I carry through my own relationships, and the confirmation of personal philosophy. I'm enjoying this more than I ever imagined I would.
Go Cubs Go
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