Equilibrium

One of the continuing themes this season for the Dodgers is Manager Grady Little’s repetition of the “Never too low, never too high” mantra, which you hear echoed by most of the players. When you have a bad game, don’t get too broken up about it — there’s always tomorrow. And when you’ve won a crazy number of games in a row, don’t get all freaked out and worked up, thereby putting in jeopardy all the reasons you were winning in the first place. Like most things in sports, you can extrapolate this to “real” life quite readily.

There’s another sports cliché that I dearly love — Act like you’ve been there before. — that ties in with this idea of equilibrium in your winning and losing. Had a bad day today? No kidding, I’ve bet you’ve had a significant number of those in your life already and will have even more. But you’ll also get some good days mixed in there. If you’re lucky, you’ll have more good than bad.

Grady Little was a consultant on the movie Bull Durham, not too surprising seeing as how he was the manager of the real-life Durham Bulls at the time. And out of the many fine quotes from that movie, here’s one that applies:

A good friend of mine used to say, “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Think about that for a while.

Sometimes, yes, life does throw you a curveball. But just wait it out and look for your pitch.