Winning is Distracting, Which Makes it Hard to Win
Chicago Cubs fans celebrate outside Wrigley Field in Chicago after the Cubs defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 5-4 in a baseball game to clinch the NL Central title, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)
Congrats on finally getting out from underneath that rock you’ve been living under. I know the culture shock can be difficult, so I want to bring you up to speed on a couple of things. First, the billionaire mouthpiece from that NBC TV show is president, Princess Leia passed away, and the Chicago Cubs are World Series Champions. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s just dive into it.
Baseball is an incredibly hard sport to succeed in. We have all heard the cliche, you fail seven out of ten times and you’re a hall of famer. Well, that is true because hitting a baseball is incredibly hard. Catching a baseball is hard. Throwing a baseball is hard. Doing all of it consistently is near impossible. So impossible that of the two million kids that play in little league baseball and softball every year, only 900 play in MLB. Of those 900, only 210 are regular starters, and of the regular starters, only 66 are considered “All Stars.” To widdle it down more, only five players in a given year might be Hall of Fame worthy.
That is a 0.00025% chance that any of the kids playing in little league, could become a great baseball player.
Baseball is this hard because, like other sports, you need to be gifted, but also put in the work to become great at your craft. That means weight rooms, running, fielding groundballs when the rest of the team is eating dinner. It means taking an extra hour of batting practice when the rest of the team is still trying to find their cleats. Even when you do these things, a good baseball player might not be great if they cannot master the mental aspect of the game.
What separates a lot of ballplayers is the ability to mentally be “on” for 9 innings, every day, for six months. Even taking a single pitch off could be separate the very good from the greats. To have a team good enough to win the World Series takes an entire roster of those types of guys, able to stay mentally strong from March until November.
It has gotten even harder for players to be able to do this. Gone are the days where a player shows up to the ballpark as a relatively unknown. These guys are tracked, sometimes from high school, and a more savvy fan knows how many dingers they hit during their first year of Pony League.
The media has created more visibility into these players, and the players lean on that to create more opportunities outside of baseball. Then, if so lucky, the team is able to win, those opportunities become bigger, and more distracting. This is in part why team’s struggle after they win a World Series.
This is, in part, why the Cubs have struggled out of the gate. But remember, these Cubs defied odds and history by breaking a 108 year drought. This has added to the attention, to the media, and to the glaring microscope over this team. So far this year we have seen events for Joe Maddon, Kris Bryant hitting balls into the Chicago river, Javy Baez getting a street named after him, and even Willson Contreras in car commercials.
Ask the 1985 Super Bowl winning Chicago Bears. Winning in Chicago allowed them access to hundreds of opportunities, promoting products, car dealerships, and radio shows. These opportunities are still available to them today, 32 years later.
While these sponsorships are a great for athletes, all of these opportunities take time away from active players. That time could effect play on the field. At the very least it changes the players routine.
Then there is the media presence. The Cubs have always dealt with the media, just not as much add there is now. Requests for interviews, five times the amount of microphones after the game, ESPN exposès, all of this changes the routine and how a player manages their daily life at and away from the ballpark.
I’m not saying there will be a major letdown this season. I do believe the Cubs’ players will eventually figure how to manage. I saw recently that after the teams first five series’ in 2017 and their first five in 2016 have the same result – Win, Win, Win, Loss, Win. While the domination might not be the same, and the actual Win – Loss might not be the same, the Cubs are still grinding it out.
If there is a team that can defy the odds, this is that team. The pedigree of these players are different than we’ve seen in Chicago. We have seen that shine with their World Series run, and recently in their three consecutive come from behind wins. The sky’s the limit for these young Cubs, and their championship seasons aren’t done yet.
