Life’s Not Fair (Director’s Cut)
Posted: July 21st, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 76 Comments »
Whenever I write something that several people seem to misunderstand, I see that as a failure on my part. I think a big part of this whole writing game is to express yourself so clearly that, really, no one will miss it. Oh sure, sometimes you will make a joke that people won’t get … can’t do much about that. Sometimes you make a point and, somehow, a couple of people somehow read it backward … can’t do much about that.
But based on comments and emails, quite a few people seemed to misunderstand what I was trying to say in my last blog post about teams that complain about injuries and officiating. A couple of emailers seemed to think I was saying that injuries and bad officiating have NO EFFECT on the game, or that I think that any team that feels unfairly beaten down by injuries or bad officiating don’t have the mystical qualities of a winner.
That is not what I meant, and so I wish I had been clearer. I don’t know if this will help but here you go: My point — my big point, the one I thought was important enough to put in the headline — is “Life is Unfair.” That’s the starting point. Of course teams will lose because of bad officiating. Of course teams will lose because of a unlucky stretch of injuries. The fates do not treat everyone the same — all of that is right there in the “Life is Unfair.”
What I have grown to despise is when teams harp on that unfairness, lean on that, become all about feeling sorry for themselves and delusional about how much the world is against them. Now, in the case of the Royals — my test case — I don’t even think there’s anything to it: They’re complaining about injuries. Well, I think they’ve had a fairly ordinary rash of injuries, the players who got hurt weren’t all that great to begin with, and they are deluding themselves by believing that their problems don’t run much, much deeper than that. As Jose Guillen might say: Injuries isn’t why they suck. Suck is why they suck.
In other cases — and the New York Mets have been brought up a few times and are a good example– the injury issue is very legitimate. Life hasn’t been fair to the Mets — losing Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes, among others, is probably too much for any team to overcome. But even so, in my view, a bad organization (and I’m not saying the Mets fit here — I’m not close enough to that to take a fair guess) allows that bad luck to fester and, inevitably, derail the team. A bad organization takes on the role of victim. Poor us. Sure, behind closed doors, over drinks at a bar, complain all you want about rotten luck. But in my view, you cannot allow that to become your theme, you cannot allow everyone in the organization to really and truly believe, “Well, we would have been great but injuries killed us.” Maybe it’s true. Maybe it isn’t. But in my mind, your job is to be successful no matter what comes at you, and if you just let yourself off the hook … you lose something.
Same thing with missed calls … I’m not saying managers or coaches or players should never say, “Hey, that guy blew the call.” I’m completely on board with those who think umpires and referees should be under the gun more — sometimes they really do cost teams games. But if you have a team that sort of lives on this premise that the umpires are against them and referees are against them, and bad calls are preventing them from success, if that becomes what you’re about, well, that’s a good way to become a lousy team.
And there’s nothing mystical about it. This isn’t about that ineffable “He’s a winner” thing. I think that generally if you spend too much time grousing about your own rotten luck, you are not dong much to change it. I have not known many complainers who were good at their jobs or even good at being happy.
And that’s it: The most successful people I have known at every profession overcome the bad breaks, and some of the least successful people I know at any profession allow the bad breaks to overcome them. Is the first group luckier? Sure, sometimes. Did the second group have more to overcome. Maybe … it’s possible. But I think there’s still something to accepting that life’s unfair and doing your best to win anyway. I don’t know that I 100% believe that old cliche that you make your own luck. But I probably believe it 75%.
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Point taken, Joe, and I’ll admit to having misread you before. I’m glad that’s the case, because I couldn’t bring myself to agree with your point.
As for the Mets, I think they’re a victim of the New York marketplace. They’re addicted to star power and they have some phenomenal top-end talent, but when bad luck comes into play and a few pieces of that talent get hurt, they don’t have the depth to cover for it. Look at their lineup over the past few days. That is NOT a passable lineup.
In contrast to the Royals, there’s the way the Minnesota Twins reacted after they lost on a bad call after blowing a 12-2 lead last night. Here’s a quote cut and pasted from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
“Definitely, Cuddy was safe,” Gardenhire said. “We knew that. … But it’s hard enough to point the finger and say, ‘He blew it,’ because we blew enough of it ourselves.”
win twins.
Fair enough, Joe, thanks for the clarification. I do think that compassion for those who struggle can be a part of this equation as well, and acknowledging that other forces play a role in our failures can be the first step to acknowledging the part we ourselves played.
Anyone watching this second game? Wow. Rock. Friggin. Bottom.
I’m looking at our schedule for the rest of the year and wondering where the wins are going to come from. Against Cleveland? Maybe. I seem to recall blowing multiple games against them already even when things were going “okay”. This just gets uglier and uglier. And more to the point of the article….if anyone thinks this would be any different right now with Coco Crisp and Mike Aviles in the lineup…I would strongly disagree. This team is just brutal right now. Oh look, Bily just lobbed one into the dugout. Nice.
Joe, I thought your “unfair” column was one of your best (even the first time I read it). I go back to the excuses about the payroll–we can’t afford to play in the league with the Yankees and the Red Sox. Except that the Marlins won the World Series and the Twins and the A’s kept making the playoffs.
The whole organization has done a lousy job of identifying talent, developing talent and managing what they have. For example, the Twins got four major league players out of the Chuck Knoblauch trade many years ago. They still have players on the roster whose lineage can be traced back to that trade. What do the Royals have to show for Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye and Carlos Beltran?
Joe – I understood the injuries and the officiating stuff with no problem. My issue with trying to read your confusing statement goes back to your Math Exercise from over a week ago….So, do you despise “We Didn’t Start the Fire” or is it “how much that you cannot despise the song?”
A few of us called you out on that confusing statement then and since you are in the clarification mode, I thought I’d see if we could nail this down also. Personally, it wasn’t one of my favorites but it sure helped get a few people interested in their post WWII US/World History.
Dang. I wrote a really long comment that broke this out in more detail, drawing on personal experience and stuff.
But suffice it to say, Joe is talking about how I perceive myself. Melody and the responders from yesterday that didn’t get it are talking about how I perceive others.
It is a key distinction.
Yeah, BB’s misplay of that grounder was brutal.
I think Frank White threw up just a little in his mouth but managed to nicely say something like, “Billy ranged a little too far, maybe but he needs to set his feet right there to make that throw” – in other words, “Dang, Billy, you went too far and then didn’t even set your feet to make a good throw….don’t compound one dumb thing with another (bad fundamentals)!!”
You are right, Joe. Life ain’t fair. If it were fair I wouldn’t have to watch this sad display of baseball being played in the uniforms I root for…sigh.
I agreed with your point 100%… Winning teams win and take accountability for their actions, win or lose. Losing teams make excuses. Your test case Royals have been making 20 years of excuses…
Good blogs. I know everybody outside of NE hates them but this is one of the reasons that the Patriots have been so good. They don’t talk about injuries or officiating as being reasons for losses. Belichick gets that from Parcells. He used to say at the end of the day they see your record they don’t care who was hurt for that game or if the officiating was bad.
Brianin239 – did you really want to know what we now have to show for Damon, Dye, and Beltran?!?? I found out and now I’m depressed…plus I remembered that we threw in Mark Ellis with Damon and he’s been a serviceable 2B for Oakland for about 3000 ABs since then.
We now have the following to show:
a minor league non-prospect, Teahen, and Buck.
UGH!
Damon
January 8, 2001: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Kansas City Royals with Mark Ellis to the Oakland Athletics. The Oakland Athletics sent Ben Grieve to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Oakland Athletics sent Angel Berroa (TRADED TO LA DODGERS FOR JUAN RIVERA (NO, NOT THAT JUAN RIVERA…THIS ONE IS A MINOR LEAGUE INFIELDER WITH VIRTUALLY NO FUTURE…especially after being suspended for 50 games Friday, April 17, after testing positive for performance-enhancing substances under the minor league drug program.)) and A.J. Hinch (RELEASED) to the Kansas City Royals. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays sent Cory Lidle to the Oakland Athletics. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays sent Roberto Hernandez (GRANTED FREE AGENCY) to the Kansas City Royals.
Dye
July 25, 2001: Traded by the Kansas City Royals to the Colorado Rockies for Neifi Perez (WAIVED).
Beltran
June 24, 2004: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Kansas City Royals to the Houston Astros. The Oakland Athletics sent Mark Teahen (CURRENT) and Mike Wood (WAIVED) to the Kansas City Royals. The Houston Astros sent Octavio Dotel to the Oakland Athletics. The Houston Astros sent John Buck (CURRENT) and cash to the Kansas City Royals.
I have a pet peeve about blaming officiating. Of course there are some obvious miscalls that, because they occur in critical situations appear to tip a game.
But there are 100s of calls in every game, and who is to tell which ones are the critical ones. My example is always the Tino Martinez home run in the San Diego/NYY World Series. It came after what appeared to be strike 3 called a ball. So we have an apparently clear example of a bad call deciding the game.
Except that, aside from the fact he still had to hit the ball, do we know how many other calls might have affected the game in San Diego’s favor? Were there close pitches called balls but that Padre batters did not then take advantage of?
Every call can subtly influence a game’s outcome, and while I agree umpires should be monitored and held accountable, it is folly to blame them for game outcomes.
IMO, Joe, the worst part of your argument here is “the players who were injured aren’t that good anyway”. If memory serves, you rattled off guys who wouldn’t start for the Tigers or another team.
That might be true, but to THE ROYALS, these were key players. If someone told you before the season that Alex Gordon was going to miss half the year, and Coco Crisp would only play a few months, and so on and so on down the line of injuries, what would you have said?
Would you say “No big deal, those guys wouldn’t even start for good teams anyway”? Or would you say “The Royals will have no chance?”
I imagine pretty much everyone would have said “The Royals will have no chance”.
That isn’t to say the injuries are the sole cause of their woes. Far from it. But that branch of your argument is, to me, rather weak. Just because the Royals didn’t lose players the calibur of Beltran and Delgado doesn’t mean they weren’t hurt by losing the guys they lost.
Tonight was a big double helping of suck. I actually hope they lose like 50 games in a row. Then they’ll have to dump Hillman.
Can I safely assume that we’re excluding the NBA from this conversation? We all know the fix is in there, right?
I think what Joe was trying to point out was that Gordon was hitting like .090 when he went down (granted it was only 7 games into the season) while Aviles was barely hitting over .100 and Crisp was just above .200.
So, basically, if you look at the grand scheme of things the team got about the same production – if not better – from the replacements.
Teahen hit the ball very well filling in for Gordon at third…Maier hit for about the same average in center (and played better defense) than Crisp…and Hernandez/Bloomquist hit no worse than Aviles at shortstop. So the Royals were just as well off without those guys in there. It’s not as if they were setting the world on fire or anything.
I think that’s what Joe meant by those guys not being so good anyways.
Going back to what Brianin said about Jermaine Dye, Carlos Beltran, and Johnny Damon, can we just step back and look at that Dye deal? Straight up for Neifi Perez.
Jermaine Dye, straight up, for Neifi Perez.
How would that rank on a list of the worst trades of the decade? Geez.
Also, I’m hoping for an in-depth article on the Royals’ non-Soria relievers coming up soon, The Mexecutioner is the only one who’s keeping them above Cleveland right now for second worst to Washington. I had all the hope in the world for Robinson Tejeda coming in to this season, but ever since the tendenitis and trip to the DL, he just hasn’t been the same guy out there. Hopefully it is just the injury acting up and nothing serious, because he could be a great long term setup man for Soria. It would be awesome to have Ramon Ramirez and/or Leo Nunez on the team right now…
Also, what in the world was Hillman doing in game two playing Callaspo at third base and Bloomquist at second? I know Callaspo isn’t the best defender at second, last I saw his UZR/150 was something like -8.3, but the last time Bloomquist spent significant time there in 2007 he posted a -22.7, and the error in the ninth didn’t really inspire much confidence in me.
Another great post Mr. Posnanski. This post is resonating with me in a significant way right now because I’m going through a rough patch in my life. I must admit that I used to complain a lot about the “bad breaks” I seemed to have encountered during this period. My financial woes, my job and other things to name a few broad topics without getting too detailed and boring. For a while I did feel sorry for myself, I didn’t do anything to improve my situation. I sat around and was pathetic for months. Amazingly my situation didn’t get any better, it just got worse. However over the last few weeks I AM starting to do things to better myself and though it will take time I’m going to get there. Anyway what I’m trying to state is that the things I stopped doing (and until I read your great work I didn’t realize I was doing this and had stopped) a lot of it is mentioned in your post. You now have two games I know you have great wisdom of life and baseball. If I was more interested in the other sports you write about I’m sure I’d find just as equal, incredibly insightful knowledge as you have about baseball and life. There’s a lot of tough, drastic change ahead for me and it’s inevitable there will be bumps in this road. There will be times where I will want to feel sorry for myself and what not but I have this post bookmarked because it is it’s something I’m going to need. Thanks Joe and keep posts like these coming.
@14 (Mike):
I think Tug (@17) has said most of what needs to be said in response to your point, but I would like to be even more stark, if possible. The point, ultimately, is that if your team is relying on Coco Crisp or Alex Gordon to be key contributors to a successful season – that is to say, if you are relying on players who would not start for good teams to be key contributors – well, you’re pretty much screwed from the beginning. Because let’s be honest – if someone showed you the Royals lineup with Gordon and Crisp in it at this point – hell, if someone showed you the lineup with everyone healthy – would you possibly think that it was a team that might contend?
I got it the first time, and I think it’s an excellent point. Our reaction to the obstacles that come our way is what defines us.
My recommendation for anyone who thinks officials are against their favourite team or player repeatedly (and I’m not saying officials are perfect, because they certainly aren’t) is to be an official in a game. My whole perspective changed when I started refereeing hockey. I became much more neutral and objective when watching all sports. It also made me notice how biased my dad was watching his favourites. Another technique may be to have someone film you watching a game. As mentioned above, people don’t notice how much they complain about things in general, because it’s become a habit.
One a those days, huh. Well, a wiser fella than myself once said, sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar, well, he eats you.
Mark W. @ 7 — Joe Poz has repeatedly said that he hates Billy Joel, which should tell you how to read the “We Didn’t Start The Fire” line.
If you search through the archives for the “Most Iconic Song” posts from earlier this year, you’ll find Joe’s take on Billy Joel (and the Eagles, and Elton John, and a bunch of other objectively great musicians).
“We Didn’t Start The Fire” (and the whole — crappy — Storm Front album) is sort of the nexus where Billy Joel decided to stop making Billy Joel albums and start impersonating the Graceland-era Paul Simon. Everything afterwards is unlistenable; listen to “River of Dreams,” for example, and tell me that’s not Joel ripping off Simon ripping off Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
OT: It wasn’t until watching the Rays-Royals series this past weekend that I understood just how atrocious the Royals’ defense really is. It literally seemed like every ball hit up the middle rolled into center field in a way that doesn’t happen on even run-of-the-mill bad defensive teams. The Greinke game was particularly egregious; the box score says he gave up 9 hits, but only about 3 of them were actually hits. The rest were defense-assisted (0r, I guess I should say, defense-enabled). Wow.
Around Father’s Day my son opened up one of those talking greeting cards at Wal-Mart and what Homer Simpson had to say was, I believe, especially appropriate concerning the Royals: “You’re right Mo. That team sucks. They’re the suckiest suck that ever sucked.”
I understood what you were saying in your original post and agreed with it completely. At 46 I’ve learned that in almost every circumstance our attitude plays a tremendous role in how we overcome (or don’t) adversity. Feeling sorry for ourselves never helps.
The dig about Denkinger, however, was below the belt. The Cardinals were about to win the World Series after playing most of the NLCS and all of the Series WITHOUT Vince Coleman, and anyone who watched the Birds that year knew that he was the engine that drove that team. They spent the entire Series walking on eggshells, trying to scratch out runs against very good Royals pitching and they were about to win. Until Denkinger blew that call. Had he made the correct call, no way they lose that game. He blew it big time, they fell apart. Not that I’m letting it affect my attitude.
I pretty much agree with you, but I think there is one exception. There seems to be (or used to be) a class of paranoid “umpires are out to get me” guys who use that paranoia to whip themselves up rather than to excuse themselves out. You know, the Billy Martin, Earl Weaver types.
Jack Nicklaus used to read the newspapers at golf tournaments to see who was grousing about the golf course or the setup or whatever and think to himself, “Good, that’s one less person who I’ll have to worry about beating this week.” The implication is you deal with what you’ve got to deal with, and the ones willing to do that without complaints are the ones more likely to succeed.
Dark Side:
As a fellow Cardinals fan, can I just ask that you let it go? It was a bad call, but the Cardinals had multiple opportunities after that play to win that game and they repeatedly screwed them up. Besides, it’s been 24 years and we’ve got a title since then – it’s time to let it go.
Joe,
Like I said yesterday, your post is right on (Winners win & Losers/Royals make excuses) however, my perception (although you didn’t come out and say it) was that you were pointing the dirty end of the stick at Dayton Moore & Trey Hillman. While I have no problem with this, as they have been on record blaming their sorry state on injuries, I still feel your take should be equally (if not more) pointed toward David Glass. His statements last week that ‘they just don’t have the depth to overcome the injuries’ is insulting to the fans that devote their time and money year after year to see him continually put a sub-par product on the field. Moore & Hillman, like any employee, get their direction from Glass and how he acts (or does not act). Like I said yesterday, the owner usually defines the Mission Statement for their enterprise. Glass’s mission statement is: Pity us, we’re small market, we have no room for error, we can’t get topshelf talent to come to KC so we’re forced to go after quantity over quality.
Excuses abound from this organization, yet they somehow make money every year. When David Glass took over the Royals, ACCOUNTABILITY was replaced by ACCOUNTANTS.
Every team is constructed so that IF injuries happen someone else can step up. The team should continue to win. Or at least be competitive. Complainers in general tend to forget that there are many whose situations are much more unfortunate.
If you focus on what is important (the at bat, the current play, the game situation, the season) you dont have time to think about excuses. That thinking power is going into looking for solutions.
Isn’t one of the best feelings in the world when you have been beat up and knocked down and they ask “HOW did he do it?” – excuse makers and complainers never get that far…
Well, Sabby pretty much summed up my response to Mike [#14]. The problem with the Royals isn’t that Crisp, Aviles and Gordon got hurt. The problem is that those are the indispensable guys who they figured they couldn’t lose and still remain competitive.
On another note, does anyone else notice that it’s going to be much harder for lower-payroll teams to compete now that the big boys seem so much more reluctant to deal away their top prospects? A few years ago, a team could trade a solid veteran for a couple of good-to-great prospects. As we saw with the Johan deal and now with the talk of a Halladay deal, smart management isn’t dealing away the Hanley Ramirezes (or the Jobas, the Phil Hughses, the Clay Buchholzes.) It seems like every big market considers their top couple of young guys untouchable.
Florida’s been able to constantly restock their team by trading for potentially awesome guys. Now, they may be left to use their own draft picks without being able to complement them with other top guys from other teams’ systems. I’ll be interested to see how this increased valuation of prospects – if it lasts – affects their chances of being competitive in the long run.
They spent the entire Series walking on eggshells, trying to scratch out runs against very good Royals pitching and they were about to win. Until Denkinger blew that call. Had he made the correct call, no way they lose that game. He blew it big time, they fell apart. Not that I’m letting it affect my attitude.
If Clark’s throw had tipped off Worrell’s glove and it had ben an error rather than a blown call, nobody would talk about that play, except maybe Cardinals fans. The Cardinals choked. It was one of the biggest choke jobs in history. Clark’s error on a foul pop-up, Porter’s passed ball, the whiney, absurd effort in Game 7… The 1985 Cardinals are a perfect example of Joe’s point. Once they had their excuse, the Cardinals dwelled on it and couldn’t get past it.
There’s no way the call cost them the game anyway. They were up by one with no outs and a guy on first with the bottom of the 1985 Royals’ order coming up. That’s not a dire situation, unless you are letting the means by which the man reached first completely ruin your composure, which they did.
Orta never even scored. He was forced out at third on a botched sac bunt attempt (which was the only out the Cardinals managed that inning), so the out was ultimately given back to them anyway.
Coleman was injured, but the Royals played without their cleanup hitter all Series because of the silly DH rule. You have to overcome obstacles, and after the Denkinger call, the Cardinals fell apart. That was their own fault.
I was watching the NFL Network (no, really) and they had a show on the Top 10 Controversial Calls. Watching the program, I was struck by how whiny most of the players on the wrong end of the call were, blaming the entire game on the refs. The 1970s Raiders had this “the refs were out to get us” attitude, even now, complaining about the Immaculate Reception but glossing over their good luck in the advanced fumble against San Diego or the roughing the quarterback flag against the Patriots. The crazy calls kind of balance out.
The one exception, I felt, was the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL. And that’s because it wasn’t one bad call, but it was four close calls, all going in the Steelers favor. As a neutral fan, that is about the only team I can think of that really has a good case on “the refs cost us a title” front. Just from the sheer volume of calls. If it’s one bad call, get over it.
What do you think of as the four blown calls in Super Bowl XL?
In my admittedly biased view there was one clearly wrong call in that game, the personal foul against Hasselbeck on an INT return.
It was four close calls, not bad calls. I think any one of them in isolation was fine, but the fact every close call seemed to go for the Steelers really hurt the Seahawks. The calls were:
1) The offensive PI on the touchdown, which was an extraordinarily ticky tack call. One of those things that’s technically a penalty but is never, ever, ever called.
2) Big Ben getting in the end zone. Even Ben thought he was short.
3) Probably the worst call of the game: the erased first down on a holding call, when the lineman held only because the Steeler lineman was offsides by about two steps. It was a horrible missed call, and it was when the Seahawks were overcoming their bad luck.
4) The personal foul had no real impact on the game, but really was like pouring lemon juice on the wound. An awful, awful call.
Now, I have no love for the Seahawks particularly or any real hatred for the Steelers. But it’s about the only game, as a neutral fan, I can ever really remember walking away from thinking that one team got absolutely and completely hosed by the refs. The Seahawks have a legit beef.
Well, look, I’m a lifelong Steeler fan and I’ll never convince anyone that XL was officiated fairly, but….
The OPI in the end zone was in fact OPI. The argument against it, as you say, is that it’s a penalty that often goes uncalled but it was still a penalty committed right in front of the official.
The Ben TD. I’ve watched that play literally hundreds of times and I’ll never know if he got in. I thought he did but who knows.
The holding call. Watch it frame-by-frame. Haggans just gets a phenomenal jump on the ball, and he really was held.
Always left out of this conversation is the play on which Hasselbeck fumbled and Pittsburgh would have taken over in Seattle territory but the ruling on the field was overturned by an inconclusive replay.
I think of that game as a perfect illustration of Joe’s point. Seattle went 5-17 on third down, gave up the longest TD run in SB history, and gave up another long TD on a gadget play that PIT had run for a TD earlier in the season…..and then they came home and blamed the refs for their loss.
“But if you have a team that sort of lives on this premise that the umpires are against them and referees are against them, and bad calls are preventing them from success, if that becomes what you’re about, well, that’s a good way to become a lousy team”
See: Seahawks, Seattle. 2006-present
Raiders – tuck rule game. They folded like a cheap suit.
Couldn’t move the ball on offense and couldn’t stop the Patriots on defense after that call (which as everyone who’s not a Raiders fan knows was the right call, and had been called against the Patriots and other teams earlier that very season).
The Seahawks were on the wrong end of those calls, but they didn’t play well at all, Holmgren had a terrible game regarding clock management and they put themselves in position to lose (or to have the officials’ calls possibly influence the game).
The complaining about teams getting help from the refs is absurd, of course. Except for Duke. Those guys ….
It was well said the first time, Mr. Posnanski. But the second post was a good read as well. There is another old wise saying that goes something like: If it seems that it’s always me against the world, maybe the world has it right and the problem is me.
The Royals are seriously pooched, but it’s nothing that young talent couldn’t fix. So the first order of business is to fix the talent evaluation. The second order of business is Trey Hillman. The guy just isn’t the right guy for this point and time in the Royals history. If you could find another Madden or get permission to clone him, he is the perfect replica of the model to build a winning atmosphere.
Somebody early on commented on Tuesday’s doubleheader and suggested it was Rock Friggen Bottom.
Please. This team is just getting started. I doubt they can even see the bottom from where they are right now.
Well, I remember back in 2004 when the officiating in the Wolves-Lakers series was so bad that after the game, Charles Barkley’s comment was, “Well, I think we all know what happened there.”
Again, we are all looking from the outside and pointing out times when officiating or injury affected the outcome of a game or a season. Joe’s point is about looking at ourselves, so it really is irrelevent to his posts. But fun!
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
As an O’s fan, given our recent history, I love the complaints and general rhetoric regarding the Royals, particularly this year. Andy MacPhail seems to be operating with the diligence and acumen of a successful GM. Before that I personally knew more people that could’ve ran the O’s better than Flanagan, Beattie, Duquette, Thryft, and the Angelos sons so strongly empathize with the helplessness and pain the Royals fans must feel.
To look at your team and cringe at the stupidity of some of the moves and to know that you can’t possibly compete because anyone who makes moves X,Y,and Z is incapable of making the multitude of moves necessary to put the Royals in serious contention.
I hope I don’t come off as condescending. The Lord knows the O’s still stink. For as much top level pitching talent they have in the minors and for the hand full of very good offensive players they seem to have they’re offense still stinks, they’re bullpen is upsetting, and they’re fundamentals (especially baserunning) is atrocious. The major difference and main reason I have some hope is they seem to be run by a guy (MacPhail) who is capable of putting a good team together. He’s done it before, albeit not in today’s AL East, and he seems to have the requisite intelligence to do it again.
It’s not much, but it’s more than O’s fan have had in over a decade – and he seems to have the owner’s “ear”, and that’s saying something when it comes to that stubborn, Napoleonic, fan-hating Angelos.
P.S. – Nefi Perez for Jermaine Dye… Oh, that is brutal. I don’t know if it’s Schilling, Harnish, and Finley for Glen Davis brutal, but it just might be. Perez was a relatively slow, powerless, out machine middle infielder (playing in the thin air of Colorado) who was older than Dye. What the hell were they thinking? At least Schilling, Harnish, and Finley were unproven and Davis was just about to be crushed by injuries. That’s a close one. I can almost live with the Davis trade compared to the Dye trade simply because it was semi-reasonable at the time.
Bad teams find ways to lose.
In the football season, you’ll hear fans of some teams saying, “but four of our losses were by a field goal or less.” Yes, and…? They’re still losses.
For virtually all of the 70s I heard the Lions complain about injuries; even as a kid I thought that maybe they just didn’t train very well.
No, not everybody who is having a bad season or life “deserves” it. But putting the blame outside of control almost always means that solutions or improvements are impossible.
(And I don’t know that Coleman’s absence is that big in 1985–the Cards lost 6-1, 6-1, and 11-0 in the non-controversial games.)
Got to admit, the Royals just have had the bad luck of having the worst owner in professional sports.
I’m not a Royals fan. I mostly follow the NL and root for the Dodgers. But I’ve got to point the finger at Hillman.
For a good team (say, any team within 5 games of a playoff spot) there is probably no team in baseball with a bigger gap between their best player and their second best player than the Dodgers. Manny Ramirez has the stats to be a future HOFer. Nobody else on the Dodgers has those stats; some guys have had seasons or stretches of close to those stats, but nobody has had a career like that. Who is the second best Dodger right now? Very hard to say. Probably Kemp, who is having his best season ever, but maybe Kershaw (extremely young), maybe Billingsley (All Star but bad recently), maybe Broxton (only his first season as the closer), maybe Martin (in his worst season ever). So Ramirez is a big part of the team. The gap between Ramirez and whoever’s next is huge.
The Dodgers lost their best player for 50 games (after already losing their opening day starter for what would be about that long) and went out and won 29 of those 50 games. Joe Torre kept them focused on what they had, not what they didn’t have, and they played well and won. In fact, since Manny came back they probably haven’t been playing as well overall. They’re still winning (I mean, Manny is a great asset) but the defense has loosened up, the concentration doesn’t seem quite as much there. Outfielder (not even Manny!) have let fly balls drop. Hudson made an error. Mental mistake. Torre had better work on that.
Similarly, the Angels had a starting pitcher killed, two other key starting pitchers on the DL, two other less key starting pitchers on the DL (they became more key in the face of the first three), had a couple of DL stints for their future HOF type slugger, and Scioscia made no excuses. He made them all aware that they were the players responsible for what happened while they were on the field, and they kept on playing hard, and now they’re getting some bodies back and they’re back in first place.
The Royals don’t seem to do that.
Back in my Strat-O-Matic days in the early to mid 1980s, we had a Replacement Player card. Teams that were rebuilding *hard* could trade away all their valuable players and use lousy guys (effectively minor leaguers) who hid poorly and fielded worse, but wouldn’t drive us over our at bat or innings pitched limits. I used a lot of them when I inherited a bad team (a team that might not have had enough outfield at bats to make it through the season even if I’d kept Dave Winfield). Those guys represented minor leaguers who weren’t quite there yet. If you are accepting the value of a stat like VORP, then these were the RPs.
The Royals problem to me seems to be at least as much that they have no Replacement Players at many positions (especially shortstop) as that the RPs they use are too bad to motivate to succeed. So maybe it’s Moore more than Hillman. It’s really hard to tell. I feel sorry for you guys.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I hate teams that just whine about bad breaks and don’t do much about it. The Red Sox are a great example of a team that always seems to have a contingency plan and Theo Epstein is never afraid to go to a plan B when he makes a mistake or someone gets hurt.
You sign Julio Lugo and he doesn’t work out? A bad team would just keep running him out there cos “hey,we’re paying him all this money anyway”. Theo has the guts to admit his mistake and find a guy like Nick Green in AAA to fill in until Jed Lowrie is ready. Yeah, it’s embarrassing for him and they have to eat the rest of Lugo’s contract but he wants the best guy available playing SS no matter how much it might hurt his ego
The Red Sox starting pitching is so deep that if even ywo or three of their starters get hurt they wouldn’t suffer too much with Buchholz/Masterson/Bowden in the rotation. At least in the short term.
I also hate when teams use lack of money as an excuse. Look what the Tampa Bay Rays were able to accomplish last year with an extremely low payroll. It’s all about good scouting, good drafting and not being too arrogant to admit your mistakes and move on.
For me, the most memorable example of Joe’s point was Super Bowl XL (Steelers-Seahawks). If you remember, the Seahawks were on the receiving end of a lot of tough calls … I won’t say the refs necessarily blew any of the calls, but a handful could have gone either way, and they always went against the Seahawks. Yet they were only down 7-3 going in at the half, when Mike Holmgren was stopped for his in-game interview, during which he just trashed the officials nonstop. When I saw that, I thought, “Now, he may be correct, but there’s no way the Seahawks come back and win this game.” Once you acknowledge that you have an excuse for losing in place, I can’t imagine that you can have the same focus that is required to win a game of that magnitude.
Whoops, that’s what I get for not reading the comment section first!
football is a lot easier to discuss when talking about a single call (or series of calls) turning a game. the cardinals have a decent argument in last year’s super bowl, and i can think of countless others (the chargers losing to the broncos last year being the most obvious example).
sure, those calls were game-changing, but them’s the breaks. the officials are just another human element in the game, which is what makes sports so great, and one of the main reasons i’m opposed to using instant replay on every possible situation (balls and strikes especially).
the royals are awful, and any team who starts tony pena, jr. for a year and a half while also trotting out the likes of sidney ponson, et al deserves to lose. the rays, twins, a’s, and even the marlins have all built strong organizations with small payrolls thanks to supreme scouting, great farm systems and an eye for talent. the royals are doomed losers and it will probably never change until they change the administration.
the pirates are making some pretty good trades and the nationals have a great offense. i would be surprised if the royals turned things around before either of them.
brad: i think you might be underselling the orioles a bit. they’re building a ridiculously talented young team, and they have all the makings of a team about to hit it big. i give them 2 or 3 years before they’re in the playoffs. they’re becoming one of my favorite teams in the league.
richard: i completely disagree with your assessment of the dodgers as well. kemp is one of the best young players in the game and will be an absolute star as he enters his prime. ethier is unbelievably underrated, and blake and hudson are almost all-star caliber players. the dodgers are absolutely stacked with offensive talent. manny’s great, sure, but there’s not that much disparity.
Richard Aronson’s comment at 48 exemplifies why I am still skeptical of even Joe’s clarified point, or at least what it so easily becomes.
What Richard seems to be saying is that the Dodgers lost their best player (a debatable point dependent on how one evaluates defense, but never mind) and triumphed over the unfairness of it all. This shows off their winnerness.
But how did they triumph? By coming up with a brilliant recovery plan? By anticipating the worst with a brilliantly deep bench? By banding together in a silent but still manly protest of the steroid policy?
No, they did it by having Matt Kemp play like a superstar, Juan Pierre briefly catching lightning in a bottle, and other assorted baseball-y things. They are winning the NL West not because they are winners who adapt so well to diversity, but because even without Manny they had the best team in the NL at playing baseball. Had they moaned and complained and demanded compensation from Bus Selig for their loss they would…still have been the best team in baseball, and still be leading the NL West.
On a game-by-game level, fine. In an individual sport like golf where psychology is king, of course. But when you’re talking about a baseball season (not a post-season series, but a 162-game season), Jose Guillen is right. The determinant of success is how much you suck, and a positive attitude won’t change a thing.
Now where I do agree with Joe is that one needs to let go of the past and deal with the real and unfair present. Going into the trade deadline, the Mets can’t pretend they have anything but a joke of a line-up. The Royals can’t pretend they are a .500 team, etc. You have to look at where to get from where you are to where you want to be. But I don’t see how an assessment of the roots of past failures that accurately blames the injury bug prevents that.
But then, I’m young, and I firmly accept that Joe and the rest of his brilliant readers are smarter than me.
Yeah, the difference between Manny and Kemp is certainly less than the difference between Pujols and the next best Cardinal, for example.
@49 – it’s much easier to have those back up options when you have a virtually unlimited budget. yes, the royals (and Twins) sign players to stupid contracts. But, that’s not the point. The Sox and other rich teams have depth partially because they have more money to buy depth. They can easily supplement their drafting and development by buying a japanese or cuban player, for example.
That said, I agree with Joe’s point. Success in anything is a lot about attitude. That is more true in an indvidual sport, but I believe (with no stats to back me up) that for a team sport, that attitude is partially (enough to matter) set by the tone of the ownerhship, front office, and manager/coach. You knew Seattle would lose when Holmgren walked off the field whining about the refs. You knew Tomlin would be successful. (but, it can’t be false bravado and “confidence speak” for the public).
Michael Q,
I also hate when owners use payroll as an excuse. Every owner in the league can afford at least ONE top self player ($20M/year). Every one. Therefore, I have no sympathy for an owner the likes of David Glass who cries poor, poor, pitiful me. But what I also hate are fans of big market teams that act like there are no systemic problems with MLB and that the system is not set up to propogate the continued success of said big market teams. Theo is no genius. His mistakes are less costly because the Red Sox have tons of revenue from sources that just aren’t available to small markets. This is just fact. He can afford to bench Lugo & promote from within because eating Lugo’s salary does virtually nothing to the payroll. It doesn’t tie his hands with the trade deadline approaching. The organization’s goal (and rightfully so) is winning, not revenue. But they have the luxury of knowing that regardless what they spend, they’ll have the revenues to compensate which makes it easier to make ‘winning’ the goal. Contingency plans are great but one team’s contingency plan is to plug in Jed Lowrie at SS when Lugo sucks. Another team’s plan is to plug in Tony Pena Jr. (.098BA) when Aviles (.325 BA last year & .185 this year) goes on the DL. The Red Sox & Yankees are simply playing a baseball in a different league than the Royals & to compare the them is, well, wrong. Like I said, the Royals’ ownership is pathetic & should not be given a pass because they don’t even TRY. But to use the Red Sox (or Yankees) as a comparison to the Royals is simply arrogant & out of touch.
Joe’s point was not that winner’s “winnerness” make them win but that in life, everyone has adversity. People who overcome adversity best are those who refuse to take whatever adversity they have as an excuse for not achieving rather than looking at other factors and thus choose not to change or to take responsibility. It’s much more about the losers than the winners, really.
It is frightening that the Royals are taking their injuries as an excuse for how horribly wrong the season has gone, and then insisting that they are actually on the right track, as if this bad team we see is a mirage created by injuries. It’s not.
Why don’t Royals hitting prospects develop?
Why do they keep acquiring hackers?
They need to find out the answer to the first and remedy the second or the team will never score runs, and unless they score runs, they will never win.
But it’s the injuries, really.
How about, “Losers whine and suckers spend hundreds of millions of dollars rebuilding the looser’s stadiums.”
I didn’t bring up the ‘85 Series, Joe did. All I’m saying is with Coleman it would’ve been different. The whole vibe about that team was different with him in the lineup. I realize the “vibe” think will drive some stat heads crazy.
I don’t know that I’ll ever let that disappoint go, but the last 10 years of Cardinals baseball, the three subsequent World Series they’ve been in since 1985, all are good salves for Denkinger’s mistake.
#60 – And maybe the ‘82 Series would have been different if the Brewers had Fingers available. Stuff happens. It’s how you deal with it that matters. The Cardinals won five in a row after the Coleman tarp incident, so they had it in them to rise above it. But it didn’t happen.
Whenever I hear someone complain about how their team has lost a star player and it’s costing them games, I ask the complainer, “So your team is taking the field a man short until this guy gets back?”
And one constant I’ve noticed in fifty-plus years of watching sports is that injuries to star players time and time again open up opportunities to otherwise overlooked up-and-comers.
This correction isn’t really much better, Joe. I really don’t buy the argument that whining = quitting for professional athletes. It’s true the Royals aren’t losing because of injuries. But it’s also true that they aren’t losing because of whining about injuries. They’re losing because they have pathetically little talent and management that doesn’t have a clue how to evaluate it.
It’s also not as though the complaining is preventing the organization from realizing its problems. It’s the fact the organization is incompetent that is producing the complaining. They’re trying to explain all the failure; they’re just wrong out of ignorance.
#61- And the ‘87 Series would’ve been different if the Cardinals had Jack Clark and home field, the ‘04 Series might have been different if Chris Carpenter had been available for Game 1, etc. etc. That 1985 team, I think one missing player and that particular missed call at that particular time changed the outcome. I’m not whining- I think the Series would have ended differently. It didn’t. Life goes on. The Cardinals keep winning.
This subject reminds me of what Bert Gordon told Eddie Felson in “The Hustler,” one of the best sports movies ever made. “No trouble losing when you got a good excuse. And winning! That can be heavy on your back too. Like a monkey. You drop that load too when you got an excuse. All you gotta do is learn to feel sorry for yourself. It’s one of the best indoor sports: feeling sorry for yourself — a sport enjoyed by all, especially the born losers.”
make all the excuses you want but the man is keeping me down
“it’s also true that they aren’t losing because of whining about injuries.”
If whining about injuries is impeding the Royals from acquiring better personnel. If it is breeding a “nothing we can do” attitude of acceptance of poor performances than I think it is entirely possible that whining is contributing to their losing.
I think that is what Joe is trying to get at.
I just want to point out that at 10:17 am I noted that it was waaaay premature to say the Royals have hit rock bottom.
Tonight’s 8th inning collapse is just further proof of that.
And how about Jose Guillen actually going to the hospital after leaving the game in the 2nd inning? He has an acute case of Bump-itis.
If only the Royals could call up Roy Hobbs and inspire Jose to run full speed into the outfield wall.
“The holding call. Watch it frame-by-frame. Haggans just gets a phenomenal jump on the ball, and he really was held.”
Indeed. A jump so phenomenal he moves before the ball!!
Ineffable, that’s a good word.
If you want a good example of a team really being battered by injuries, the management coming out and saying so and then coming back next year with no excuses, one that comes to mind is the 2006 Red Sox.
Only three pitchers got 20 starts and it took 13 guys to cover all the starts. Only four position players made it to 140 games. I think the moment that I gave up was when the Sox brought up a new prospect, watched him get off to a great start and then have to go on the DL – with cancer!
And they took their licks and came back next year to win it all.
I think David Glass’ business acumen may be what really is the problem with the Royals. Remember, Glass was the guy who let his son who knew nothing of baseball be president of the team. I think as a businessman, Glass doesn’t have a competitive bone in his body. In the beginning, the Wal Mart business model was to go into small towns and put the local merchants out of business. The local mom and pop stores couldn’t compete with Wal Mart. It wasn’t a fair fight. Wal Mart didn’t want to be in a fair competition. Now as owner of the Royals, Glass is put in the position of the local mom and pop store. He has no idea how to compete and thus we get the horrendous on-field product year after year. Glass is the worst owner in professional sports. Royals fans should start a movement to get him to sell the team to somebody who might actually care about it and, you know, attend the games. I think Marc Cuban is a complete jackass but I would prefer it if he owned the Royals. Season ticket holders need to cancel their subscriptions. People need to let the shiny new K go empty. Maybe if Glass starts losing money he will sell. The Royals don’t just lose, they don’t play the game right. The Glass family sucks.
I like these old quotes:
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
Branch Rickey: Luck is the residue of design.
Also, I like what Jim Leyland said the other day. He interrupted a question about his team’s injuries to say “hey, I don’t care about the guys on the DL. They can’t help us. I care about the 25 guys who can help us win. Period.
Just read a book about Lou Gehrig with my oldest daughter, and showed her his famous speech. She learned a thing or two about facing bad breaks yet holding onto gratitude and perseverance.
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[...] the context of sports, Joe Posnanski recently wrote two blog posts about the best way to cope when life is not fair, the second post being a clarification of the [...]