I am pretty sure one of the hardest things to do in life is to deal with failure.
Thankfully, I play a game where when you fail 70% of the time, you are one of the best. So, I feel like I have a head start on everyone else because I have to deal with it on a daily basis. Although it is on a slightly smaller scale than life because I am talking about a game, it still has some gravity because right now this game is how I make my living. I think failing is a formality in this game and in life, but I think how people deal with failure is more important.
Baseball is the most humbling game on the planet. As soon as I feel like I have figured it all out and I should never make an out again, the game finds a way to bring me back to reality. My coach at The Citadel, Fred Jordan, used to say that you don't play the opposing team or pitcher as much as you play against the game of baseball itself. The more I play the more I believe he is right. As a hitter you can do everything right: get a good pitch to hit, put a good swing on it, hit the ball where it's pitched, and still make an out. Watch any baseball game and you will see pitcher's make mistakes in the middle of the plate, the hitter smashes the ball but it goes right to one of the fielders. Now, the pitcher made a bad pitch, the hitter did everything right, and the fielder stood in his normal position and put his glove in front of the ball. In my opinion, the opposing team did nothing to create this out. The game did. There are countless examples of this, but my point is that sometimes failure is just a part of playing this game even when everything is done exactly like it’s supposed to be.
I used to get frustrated when things like this happened. Don't get me wrong I have gotten myself out by taking bad swings or swinging at bad pitches plenty of times, but it seems like the really bad slumps start when the game starts fighting you. Your bloopers don't fall and your line drives all get caught. I have struggled dealing with this in the past and never really knew how to correct the shaken confidence that goes along with it. However, I have learned a few new things down here in Colombia this season.
First of all, I have learned to trust myself and the things that I am working on to get better. I have done this through working with Jeff Albert, who has been my hitting coach (and pretty much my hitting mentor) for the majority of time I have been in professional baseball. We we're together for the entire season in Batavia in 2008 and for parts of 2009 and 2010 in Palm Beach. He has helped me mold my swing to where it is now, but more recently he has helped me with the mental side of it. He has encouraged me to trust what I am working on in practice and that although the results may not manifest themselves immediately in the game, they will show up eventually. Even if you fail, it is the manner in which you fail that matters, and how you respond to it.
This brings me to the second thing I have learned to do, accept failure and learn from it. In the past if I hit a line drive and made and out, I would get frustrated. That would carry over into my next at-bat or next few at-bats and they would gradually get worse until I was in a slump. I've learned now (by talking to teammates and coaches about it) to take the positives out of every at-bat. Yes, I did make an out and if I would have hit the ball 3 inches to the left or right it would have been a hit. However, I did what I was supposed to do. Get a good pitch and hit it hard. I did everything I was working on leading up to that at-bat. So, from my point of view I have to look at it as a successful at-bat.
This type of progress I feel I have been making has never been more evident than after our series in Monteria last weekend. I went 1 for 11 and struck out a few times. I started to get frustrated, but a few timely words from Jeff turned me right around. He showed me a little bit of video from my at-bats that showed I was doing exactly what I had been working on in practice. Just that my timing was a little bit off. I was still putting good swings on pitches. The results just weren't quite there. Sure enough, in the next 5 games I tallied 9 hits. In the past I feel like I may have gone into a prolonged slump, but in this case I trusted myself and didn't worry about the game fighting me a little bit in the results column. It has worked out great so far.
We are still in first place at 14-5 and enjoy a 3 game lead on our next closest opponent, Los Leones de Monteria, who will come into our house for a 2 game series starting tomorrow. This should be fun.
-Chris Swauger
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