Monday night, on the drive home from Lloydminster after my baseball game, I was recapping the game my team lost 5-1. I was breaking down the pitching performances and stats as well as the batters numbers, broken bats and any other thing that could give good reason as to why the other team ended up with more runs than my Wilkie Brewers.
In the end, the Twins ended up with a few more hits, but other than that it was a similar game as far as errors made, strikeouts and other minor stats.
It got me thinking, which, yes, could be a scary thing, but maybe what matters more than the stats in sports is the sheer luck of the game.
My team scored one run in the second inning and they scored five in the bottom of the second and in the end that inning was all that mattered. In the other five and half innings played, nothing was accomplished.
So, maybe instead of how many hits were made in the game, it is more important when the hits were made. One two-out single with no one on base doesn't quite match up with a two-out single with bases loaded.
The Twins had at least one runner reach base every inning except one in the game Monday and thanks to two double plays my team was able to escape without allowing anymore runs.
If we had won that ball game, the timing of the double plays to end the inning would have been much more important than a simple strikeout in the first inning. I mean all outs are important, but when it comes down to it all that matters is if your team has more runs, more goals, more points, less strokes, whatever the sport is, than the opponent,
Think about hockey, you could have two 50 goal scorers - one could be on a team that won 15 games by a goal and ended up clinching the final playoff spot by a single point. Another could play on a team filled with superstars who sit in first place. His team maybe won their games quite handily and possible half of the stars; 50 goals where in two- or three-goal games with a few empty netters. Is it safe to say they had the same stats? Obviously they did and both would get the same praise and honour, but maybe one of the scorers' 50 goals are more of an accomplishment than the others.
In the end, maybe all the stats don't tell the whole story. I got this idea from Bob McCown's book, except he used hockey as the example - what if the ball game was taped in Lloydminster from Monday night and the TV crew blacked out the second inning when all the runs were scored and played the rest of the game. Could anyone tell who actually won?
Think of that with hockey now. It is more of a moment-by-moment, reaction sport, there are so many changes made and the players have to compensate for the speed and bounces of the puck.
In the end, the stats don't really show who the better team was, the debate of what play in the game was the turning point can be made for over a dozen situations in any game so maybe the stats mean nothing and all that matters is timing and luck.
Who is to say a leadoff hit in the first inning isn't the turning point - it gives a team confidence from the start and the ability to possible make a late game charge. Or in hockey establishing the fore check is always so important, maybe setting the tone in the first shift is more important than the gloves save in the final 10 minutes. Maybe that first kill in volleyball was the turning point for a team.
Momentum and attitude are so important in sports and confidence is key. During the hockey season our team had a quote hung on the dressing room wall after going into a losing skid. It read, "Hard work beats talent, unless talent works hard."
If football were a game of inches, what would baseball be? A player can be called out running the bases for being an inch off the base, or a player could go down looking on a strike three pitch he thought was outside by an inch, or a batter can miss the sweet spot on his bat by an inch and, instead of a line drive base hit, it is a two hopper to the shortstop.
Like Al Pacino said in his Any Given Sunday speech, "The margin for error is so small, I mean, one half a step too late, or too early, and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast, you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us, to pieces for that inch. We claw ith our fingernails for that inch"
Maybe all sports are simply about inches, luck and momentum ,not strikeouts and hits. If that were the case, I would say the job of sports reporters like myself would soon be obsolete; all that matters is which team was luckier in the end. I guess now that the secret is out, I should start looking for a new job.
Maybe not.This is a pretty good gig.
