Failure Is Harder When You Suck

It wasn’t nice when the middle school bullies made fun of the retarded kids, so it may be unfair of me to pick apart a column by Kevin Millar. And yet.

The thing that separates the Major League player from your collegiate guys or the ones that are still in the Minor Leagues is how we deal with struggles and deal with getting out on a daily basis. If you get 500 at-bats in a season and you get out 350 times, you need to deal with failure 350 times. That could be a lineout, a robbed home run or a strikeout.

Kevin Millar, your facial hair is cute, as is the fact that you bat cleanup at age 590, albeit on a terrible lineup. But you are bum-fuck backwards here. Major leaguers are major leaguers because they are the most talented players. They actually need to be less good at dealing with failure than minor leaguers, because they fail less. And when they do fail, life looks less bad. Which situation is more conducive to level-headedness:

A. Major leaguer: I struck out. Still, I’m making $4 million per year to play baseball, and my hot wife will fuck me tonight.
B. Minor leaguer: I struck out. I’m making $25 a year. My girlfriend just left me for a plumber. And she was ugly. Minor leaguers need to be outrageously good at failing.

I truly believe that this game is 70 percent mental. We all can throw and we all can hit at this level. What separates the great players from the common players is the mental side of it and the ability to not deviate from your plan on a daily basis.

So the way to be Barry Bonds is to think: I will hit home runs. I will hit home runs. And not deviate from this plan when anyone reminds you, you’re Julio Lugo and you’re lucky you're in fucking baseball. Or when they fire you for striking out in 95 percent of your at bats.

The great players stay in the batter’s box after third strikes so they can keep swinging; they don’t let some self-proclaimed umpire tell them their plan didn’t work.

Seriously: Why not note that major league success is significantly a function of natural talent? What’s the hangup with acknowledging the pretty obvious truth?

Personally, when I go through struggles, I know there are more eyes on me…I try to run harder on popups, because I think it looks 10 times worse when a guy is struggling and he starts to dog it. When a guy's struggling and giving you 100 percent, you can't really say anything.

When a guy’s struggling and giving 100 percent, one can justly say a variety of things, such as: You suck. You’re benched. You’re fired.

Hey, you don’t think Millar, having said that success in the major leagues results mostly from all-out effort, will do something nutty and say effort can hurt you and never explain the difference between effective effort and ineffective effort? Nah, me neither. Until:

But sometimes, all that extra effort even works against you. You can try too hard, and then it snowballs on you. You're trying harder, then you look up at the scoreboard and you've gotten two hits in a week. Guys go through struggles where they haven't hit a home run in 100 at-bats, but they're trying to hit five home runs in one game.

Okay then. Players, in Millar’s view, need to moderate their effort level to suit their talent level, so that they’re not trying to hit home runs when it’s unrealistic to expect such an outcome. Natural talent sneaks in Millar’s framework. Julio Lugo is fucked.

I snapped in high school. I threw stuff. I used to tear my helmet and my batting gloves off. But when I got to the big league level, I used to watch teammates of mine, like Jim Eisenreich and Gary Sheffield, handle themselves like professionals. When they struck out, the batting gloves came off and the helmet went back in the box. They never threw anything.

Gary Sheffield? Professional?

Gary Sheffield? Professional?

- September '92 on his days in Milwaukee: "The Brewers brought out the hate in me. I was a crazy man. . . . I hated everything about the place. If the official scorer gave me an error, I didn't think was an error, I'd say, 'OK, here's a real error,' and I'd throw the next ball into the stands on purpose.'"
- July '05 after punching a fan in the right-field stands at Fenway: “What did I do to be a villain?" Sheffield listened patiently as someone recounted the reasoning. "Well, I mean you can't look at it that way. I didn't initiate it. It's a situation where I showed restraint, and I moved on from there."
- On his having two kids with two women by age 17: "That was part of my plan. I didn't want to be the typical athlete who's single all his career. I wanted the all-American family, and I did it the wrong way."
- There is so much more.

One of the two guys to whom Millar points as a paragon of professionalism punched a fan. He punched the fan at Fenway, when Millar was on the Red Sox!

Here's a logic puzzle:

Premise 1: Sheffield punched a fan at Fenway in 2005.
Premise 2: Millar was on the Red Sox in 2005.
Premise 3: The Red Sox play at Fenway.
Premise 4: Okay, Millar definitely played in the game in which Sheff swiped at the fan.

Conclusion: What the fuck, dude?

[Orioles Manager] Dave Trembley's done a great job of understanding that April is just the first month of a six-month season. He understands that April's not a fun month on the East Coast anyway. You can count on three fingers how many games we've played in 80 degrees, and Dave Trembley's done a great job of showing confidence in players through their struggles.

Millar is obviously talking about his own struggles and Trembley’s dubious decision to keep Millar in the cleanup hole while Millar gets to first base less often than Bill Gates in high school.

The Orioles played remarkably well in April, with a W-L of 15-11. At that pace, they’d win 93 games and be the biggest surprise possibly ever. Of course, they won’t maintain such a pace. It’s either because they don’t have the talent or because they don’t think of ponies and rainbows when they come to bat. Not sure which. Let’s take a vote:

Me: talent.
Millar: ponies et al.

I win.

You just keep fighting, and overall, this club has really handled itself great through its struggles.

Millar, you have struggled. The Orioles have done incredibly well. Why do I get the sense you go home after every game only to cry, masturbate, and cry more?

Millar’s musings continue in like fashion. I’m hungry, and willing food to appear on my desk isn’t working.

TekWatch: Profiling Tek, Working Class Hero

It didn’t take long this postseason for the Tek Kool-Aid to look good and sugary. Let’s get to it.

Heart of the Order: Jason Varitek

Careful readers always check MLB.com’s ample footnotes; the one here clarifies that “heart of the order” means below the heart of the order, near the tubes that discharge excrement like Julio Lugo.

When you mention the word "leader" in baseball circles, the image of Jason Varitek probably comes to mind first in the minds of many.

If you mean the many who think first of the bottom of the leader list, then float up to the middle, and back down, then yes, Jason Varitek pops to fucking mind.

Since [Varitek became starting catcher in 1999], the Red Sox are 14-3 in potential elimination games, and it isn't a reach to point to Varitek's leadership and refusal to panic as a reason for that impressive mark.

It isn’t a reach if you’re listing every possible factor. Then again, it isn’t a reach to think that the Sox might be 15-2, 16-1, or 17-0 if they had a catcher who could hit the ball really well.

High school and college students probably don't use as many loose-leaf binders as Varitek, who is a picture in preparation. Varitek doesn't just study scouting reports -- he breaks them down and dissects them.

This is the most compelling evidence I’ve seen. Let’s see if there’s any evidence that this preparation makes a significant difference in Red Sox pitching performances.

When Josh Beckett arrived at Spring Training this season, coming off a disappointing 2006, he was asked if there was a lesson he learned that he could convey to the newcomer of this year, Daisuke Mastuzaka. "If I could tell Matsuzaka anything, it would be, 'Trust 'Tek’”….All that trust later, Beckett had a dominant regular season, winning 20 games, and his brilliant postseason work has fueled the Red Sox to the World Series. It further exemplifies the type of things that can happen when pitchers put their faith in their so-called "guide."

After all those binders, Varitek realized in 2007 that Josh Beckett should once in a while throw one of those shit-kicking curveballs he, you know, has in his arsenal of pitches. Tek’s a little slow, but so methodical. Or maybe Beckett did not throw any curves in 2006 because of blisters on his hand! Which factor could matter more?

Excuse me. I’m having a sargasm. I just can’t get over the dominance of Jason Varitek, Working Class Hero. When you work hard and don’t shave, nothing can stand in your way. Someday you, too, boys and girls, by the grace of the mediocrity God gave you, can get credit for things that are mostly the doing of others.

Along with wife Karen, Varitek has become a fixture in community endeavors. This season, he hosted the second annual Jason Varitek Celebrity Putt-Putt Tournament, with proceeds going to Boston Children's Hospital.

If it’s the Jason Varitek Celebrity Putt-Putt Tournament, who are the celebrities? The guy who used to buff the floor of the Boston Garden before Celtics games?

Seriously, Tek's smart. It’s hard to swing and miss in putt-putt.

For the last four years, Varitek has run a "Tek's 33" program, in which kids from Children's Hospital come to Fenway Park and meet Varitek, while enjoying batting practice and watching a game.

Our Working Class Hero is also a Pretty Nice Guy. I just hope the kids get to see Manny Ramirez so they don’t leave disappointed.