Hope Lost?

It happened. My beloved A’s lost the first game of the season. Shut out no less! The opportunity of going undefeated is over. There are however, 161 more games to be played this season. It might be premature to hang up hope already.

One of the reasons I like baseball is the fact that there are so many games, that any team is bound to win a number of them. In fact the difference between the good teams and the bad teams is not all that different, except in extreme cases. A good to great team will win 80-100 games. A very poor team will win 30-50 games. The average team’s victory totals are somewhere between those numbers. That is still a lot of opportunities to enjoy victories.

To start off the season with a win or a loss is irrelevant. To start off with a streak of wins or losses is irrelevant. The season lasts from April until September. Each day is a new game and has no connection to the game or games already played. Anything can happen on any day, on any pitch.

Isn’t life the same? Each day is its own “game”? Yes it’s true consequences do extend past the length of a day and can be really significant, but doesn’t each day live a life of its own? If we started each day having learned the lessons of the days before and yet set out fresh each morning, wouldn’t we also not be able to celebrate the “wins” as they come.

Life is full of victories and of setbacks. Enjoy the victories. Learn from the defeats. Both are fleeting. The trick is to work at it until the victories outnumber the defeats.