The Spirit of Second Chances
Note – even if you don’t like sports, I think that you’ll find a message here potentially relevant to you.
Of all the dreams never fulfilled, lost, taken, or given away in my lifetime, perhaps it’s important (for me) to recognize the one that was fulfilled this past year. It only took 35 years for it to happen. In the same year, my favorite two sports teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Alabama Crimson Tide football team won championships. Oh, I had already experienced the joy of watching the Cardinals win in 2006 (first time in 24 years) and Alabama win theirs in 2009 (first time in 17 years), but to have them come back and win in the same season was special.
For 35 years, I have been an avid sports fan and have always had a passion for competition. But being too short with a pair of bad knees and a pair of visually impaired eyes demanded that I look more towards exploring other less lucrative, less spectator-exciting passions such as reading, writing, and teaching. When it comes to some closed doors, one should tip the hat and move to the next door. When it comes to other closed doors, one should curse at will, get certified to drive the capable piece of machinery that tears the damn door off its hinges, and then step off and walk through the door. And keep walking until you get to the next door.
You see, the beauty and curse of life is that it’s tragic. Jeff Fisher is only partly right when he says, “Here’s the thing about life – you get back what you put into it.” That’s not a rule on which people can hang their hat. Sometimes circumstances get in the way to a degree that one cannot overcome them. On the other hand, the tragic nature of life opens doors for some of the most beautiful combinations of luck, happenstance, and will that one may ever witness. Winston Churchill once said that “success is the ability to go from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.” On face, that might seem a bit dark but I see it as a willingness to look at failure and see opportunities, not shortcomings. It’s a chance for self-improvement, not self-deprecation. Sometimes we knock ourselves down; other times life does it for us. Most times, it’s a bit of both. But in all times, the choice is ours as to how we respond. And in all cases, the only person we ultimately build up or knock down is ourselves. I like to call it the spirit, or the art, of second chances.
My two beloved sports teams this year exemplified this spirit in a number of different ways. For the record, I used to dislike sports analogies, but now in my wise old age I recognize their aptness (over-eager and underprepared high school coach pep-talks notwithstanding). The Alabama football team began its year dominating its opponents right and left and looked to be an early favorite for the crystal ball. Then LSU started looking even better than Bama. Then they both met in the “Game of the Century” during the regular season. Alabama outplayed LSU in every phase of the game but lost in overtime, primarily due to 4 missed field goals throughout the course of the game. Up to this point in the season, Bama and LSU had clearly demonstrated that they were far ahead of all other teams in terms of ability. Whoever won this game would likely cake-walk to the championship game. Whoever did not win it would have to settle for a lackluster bowl game. That is, unless the unlikely happened. That is, unless half a dozen other undefeated and one-loss teams lose between now and the end of the season. In other words, unless hell freezes over. Well, it froze. Week after unlikely week every team lost between Bama and the number 2 spot, leaving voters in the unfortunate position of clothespin voting Bama into the championship game for a rematch. For a second chance. Through a combination of luck (other teams losing) and will (Bama continuing to win after such a hard loss to LSU), Bama made the best of a second chance. They beat a team that had the chance to go down in history as one of the best teams of all time in college football. Instead, Bama showed that they, in fact, were by far the better team, and demonstrated that fact by executing what might ultimately be considered the most dominating performance by a team in a college football championship game. The opposing team crossed the 50 yard line a total of once during the entire game. Yep, roll tide y’all.
As inspiring as it was to watch that team and that game, they simply could not top what will inevitably go down as the greatest comeback team in the history of baseball, if not sports in general. The 2011 St. Louis Cardinals were the perfect exhibition of the art of the second chance. They lost their best starting pitcher before the season even started. They lost 25 games in the regular season in their last at-bat. They lost 11 games they led in the ninth inning or later. They were 10.5 games out of first place with only 31 games left in the season. They had to win their last game of the season and wait for another team to lose their last game of the season in order to make the playoffs. They had to come from behind to win every series in the playoffs, including the World Series itself. In Game 6 of the World Series, the Cardinals were one strike away from losing the World Series twice in two separate innings. That’s more than all previous 106 World Series Champions combined. Out of 19,387 regular-season games in Cardinals’ history, not once had they won a game in which they trailed five times. Out of 1,329 postseason games, no team had ever scored in the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th innings…until Game 6 of this year. Truly, it was a spectacle to behold. The best sports game I will likely ever see in my lifetime. Whether you are a sports fan or not, I think one can watch that game and be inspired by one of the most beautiful combinations of failure, luck, happenstance, and will that one will ever see. The Cardinals, of course, went on to win the subsequent Game 7 and complete the greatest comeback stretch of all time. (Note – thanks to Jayson Stark of espn.com for the above stats). I can’t even watch the highlights without being inspired to tears.
But it wasn’t just will or motivation. It took some luck. Adrian Beltre misfielding David Freese’s game-tying triple in the bottom of the 9th. The rain-out of Game 7 that allowed Chris Carpenter to have an extra day’s rest. (For those Bama fans out there, don’t forget how in 2009 a well-placed arm on a field goal kick saved a season). All comebacks need a little luck. There’s no such thing as a perfect comeback story. No one can ever truly own even their own story. Every story, good or bad, is always already interconnected with other stories, compatible or conflicting.
But we all like comeback stories for a reason. They’re inspiring, even if rare. Their lack of regularity is what makes them so special, and yet so maddening. Why can’t they happen more often? Well, ironically, that’s precisely what would make them no longer inspiring. It’s one of the many riddles of life. In this world, more shit than good has to happen for the good to stand out and be noticed. If comebacks were the norm, we would no longer see them as special. If first chances were largely successful, we wouldn’t get inspiration from having second chances. If success were the norm and failure the exception, success would be rather uninteresting. Such is the lot of living in this world.
It’s therefore up to us whether to make things interesting or not. Do we make the best of things or not? Do we let life come to us? Or do we come to it? Do we practice the art of the second chance when we are so privileged to have it? Or do we settle for the martyrdom of failed first chances? All easier said than lived, of course, but it’s more about an attitude, a spirit, than anything else. It’s just as much about the repetition of mistakes as it is the recognition of them. It’s about seeing failures as opportunities, regardless of how often they happen. It’s about making sure that, regardless of how many setbacks or failures happen in one’s life, there is always an opportunity for an inspiring comeback, even if on the smallest of scales. In our personal lives, we don’t have thousands of people cheering us on in our daily struggles. More often than not, it’s an audience of one. There are those in this world, however, who in the words of Cormac McCarthy “carry the fire.” There are those who have that something within them that never gives up even when they don’t know why. An unwillingness to say “it’s over,” even when all signs point in that direction. The fire might dim at times, but it never goes out.
Sometimes it just takes a simple sports game for us to rekindle it.
Joe Buck called the play-by-play of Game 6 of the World Series. After witnessing the series of comebacks in the game, he made a statement about the Cardinals’ team: “They just. Won’t. Go. Away.” Yep. Neither will I. And neither should you.
Cheers, my friends.
posted by thewalrus at 12:18 PM
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