Adversity

The other day, I ran across a comment by White Sox GM Rick Hahn, about how much he regretted that ex-Sox second baseman Gordon Beckham didn’t experience failure until he reached the major leagues.  I don’t know quite what to make of that.

Beckham was picked in the first round of the 2008 draft and called up the following June, which translates into parts of two seasons in the minors.  In 2009, he hit a combined .326 at AA and AAA.  Now, compare that apple to the beautiful orange that was—and for the Red Sox, now is—Chris Sale, signed by the White Sox on June 20, 2010, and making his major-league debut not even two months later, on August 6; Sale logged all of 10-1/3 innings in the minors before his one and so-far only call-up to the majors.  Did he have time enough to fail?

Players learn to adjust in baseball, or they learn to get on with their lives.  The advantage was with Beckham in his rookie season of 2009, when he hit .270 with 63 rbi’s and a .347 on-base percentage.  Then the league adjusted, and Beckham struggled.  He also broke the hamate bone in his left hand in 2013, which may have affected his swing.  But I doubt that career .240 batting average is the product of insufficient minor-league failures.

What I learned with my daughter is, stuff happens.  Clare had barely a year and a half of softball when she made varsity as a freshman.  She started off 17 for her first 40; then came big-time failure, a slump to the tune of 4 for 40.  Clare figured things out—and I’ve always been thankful her coach gave her the playing time to do it—and ended her freshman year hitting .286.  Two years later, she started the season in another terrible slump, to the point I thought she’d never play in college.  That was the season she hit .425.

Barring injury, we all end up who we’re meant to be, ballplayer and person alike.