#30 The lessons in losing

Free edition today with surprising wins, new adjectives and a prediction come true

This week, my son took his first steps. He doesn’t crawl, preferring instead to scoot if he has to get somewhere while focusing most of his energy on pursuit of a bipedal lifestyle. Since he’s made his desire to walk so evident, we’ve been actively encouraging him to cross this rubicon into total chaos agent. It also means we were prepared in the moment, able to capture the milestone on video, which I’ve watched more times than there have been hours since it happened. 

Hey, it’s Hannah and part of what’s amazing about parenting is the way it collapses instants and eternity. The scale of time in your purview as a parent can be as narrow as an infant’s wake window and as vast as the lifelong impact of your decisions — and simply going through a normal day inspires constant flipping between lenses. The milestones are more minute than I anticipated — which of course they are, every incremental step has to be achieved — and yet I’m constantly wondering what this all means for who he will become. Does he still need his clementine segments sliced in half or can he handle them whole now? Also, what will he be when he grows up? 

a still from the video, and a captured moment of unselfconscious bliss

I say this to forestall the judgment that might accompany admitting that his first steps inspired me to imagine him playing baseball. It’s not the first time, to be honest. We hung a wall’s worth of baseball caps in his room before he was born and I once (jokingly!!) texted a former major league manager a video of my son, then 8 months old, throwing a ball for a scouting report (“looks like a short armer…headed towards catching!” came the reply). But a couple of wobbly steps and suddenly I’m forecasting if he’ll be fast or strong or both. Because I am as hopelessly biased as anyone could be, I’m excited for him to toddle around home and also I wonder whether he will be the best there ever was or merely amazing. 

Don’t worry, I’m mostly being facetious and anyway, what I really hope is that he learns how to lose. 

This is barely about baseball (both thus far and what I’m about to say) but I really enjoyed this Defector blog from Tom Ley about the adults who twist themselves into knots of bigotry to campaign against transgender teens competing in high school sports. Specifically about how they’re “pathetic losers” — in the sense that it’s an apt insult, and also because someone always loses in sports and these people do so pathetically. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about youth sports lately for a big freelance feature and a theme that probably won’t make the final piece is that conscientious parents and industry experts want kids to learn how to lose. There’s a whole academic theory of childhood development attributed to a Swiss psychologist from the turn of the 20th century that posits kids do not possess the abstract thought required to learn from failure until they’re around 12. Sports, then, are a useful arena for acclimating to the inevitability of failure and later extracting value from it. 

In that version of youth sports, the grownups have a responsibility to balance encouraging the kids to reach their full potential while contextualizing the losing that comes along the way. 

Here’s what one parent of a very young but very promising pitcher had to say: “The best thing about sports is that the lessons learned are so transferable into so many other facets that the downside of being a great athlete that doesn't make it to the pros is that you've learned how to compete, how to work, how to deal with disappointment, how to be honest with yourself about where you stand in the world and areas that you can improve, so on and so forth. So to me, there's no downside to working hard and being an athlete.”

Contrast that with the version of parenting on display in the ugly instances of trans panic, as depicted by Ley: “The lesson these people want to give to their children is that if circumstance places their athletic failure near the success of someone who belongs to a specifically marginalized group, they are free to huff and puff and stomp their feet until the President of the United States himself intervenes to validate their tantrum.” 

Part of what I like about this particular defense of AB Hernandez, the 16-year-old girl at the center of the hateful maelstrom, is that it allows for the possibility that she might be great. She might beat the other girls. And in fact, she did. That doesn’t make her participation a problem. 

I wonder what my child will love. What will he ask his body to try to do once it masters walking and reliably getting food from the tray to his mouth without it disappearing into the fleshy abyss of his tiny fists? Seeing him strive is thrilling and I hope, if he finds a passion in sports, that it rewards his efforts with visceral returns. To watch him win — at whatever he chooses — would be one of the great joys of my life. But I suspect that to be there when he loses — which he will — is the far more important part of parenting when it comes to sports. I’ll try to remember to remind him that he can grow from the experience — and that the winner that day, whoever they are, is someone’s baby, too. 

The aforementioned freelance feature is sucking up all my time so far this week so we’re doing another bits and bobs issue that we’ll keep free for everyone. We’ll be back on Friday with something more substantive. 

What we’re chatting about 

⚾ Wow, all that highfalutin opining on the inevitability of losing only to learn via Rodger Sherman’s excellent newsletter, that, actually, some baseball teams don’t lose at all. Some baseball teams are the LSU-Shreveport Pilots, who just capped off a perfect 59-0 season with a win in the NAIA World Series. I bet those kids didn’t learn any tough but important lessons about overcoming disappointment. –HK 

⚾ The Rockies secured their first series win since last September by taking the first two games against the Marlins this week. But not before MLB Network’s research packet made an almost unnecessarily rude observation about a particular split. I noted this on Bluesky and was treated to a delightful series of replies attempting to find a split that is flattering to the now 11-50 Colorado Rockies. I’m including my favorite, but you can click through to see others. –HK 

⚾ Doug Glanville wrote recently about Shohei Ohtani that “he has long since exhausted the adjectives we use to describe him” (Glanville introduces “Ohtanic” as a necessary new word for the describing the things only Ohtani himself can do). That’s the problem with Ohtani, he remains fascinating, but how to deliver new dispatches so that they register with the appropriate sense of wonder? Personally, I’m as interested in his unique global celebrity as his on-field feats and I was amazed anew by a handful of details in this LA Times story about the cadre of Japanese reporters writing about everyone and anyone who catches an Ohtani home run ball. It’s funny and light, but also this is about as good a description of sportswriting as I’ve seen: “Everyone has a story. You ask them where they live, where they work and there’s usually something interesting. We’re writing human-interest stories with Ohtani as a cover.” –HK

⚾ The Braves demoted their third-base coach over some “aggressive sends” and hired Fredi Gonzalez to replace him. On its own, that’s a small weird decision for a disappointing team, like replacing the mirrors when your car won’t start. But it’s fun when you remember that Gonzalez was previously the Braves manager, the one who was fired in favor of elevating current skipper Brian Snitker, initially as an interim … after a long stint as the third-base coach. –ZC

⚾ Strapping Royals prospect Jac Caglianone belted what really looked like a promising first hit in his first big-league at-bat until Cardinals center fielder Victor Scott II came screaming into the picture to take that away. Nonetheless, time to give you the requisite lesson on Caglianone in case this is your primary source of baseball news: Jac is not a trendy spelling of Jack, but J.A.C, short for Jeffrey Alan Caglianone. And Caglianone is pronounced “Cag-lee-own,” which is short for no apparent reason.  –ZC

⚾ Lance McCullers Jr. — who debuted a decade ago in 2015 — finally recorded his 50th big league win on Tuesday night. He threw six scoreless innings (against Paul Skenes! Who took the loss after giving up one run in eight innings, which for once is not what we are talking about) for his first win since September 21, 2022. I’m learning a lot about myself from doing these newsletters and one of the things I’m learning is that I am deeply affected by the trials and tribulations of Elite Athletes Thwarted By Chronic or Consecutive Injury. McCullers, a first-round draft pick and a great clubhouse guy who went 915 days between starts before his 2025 debut, certainly fits the bill. Should I unpack with a therapist why I’m so preoccupied by the presumed emotional toll of being “injury prone”? –HK 

⚾ This reminds me that Dustin May, the Dodgers pitcher who debuted in 2019, just threw his very first big-league pitch in the month of June. –ZC

⚾ Rafael Devers spotted on the field pregame with a glove (literally seen just with a glove, not actively using it, but we’re told he was in fact taking some grounders)! Perhaps the franchise cornerstone and the team brass got together to hash out the unproductive and unprofessional divide over whether he could return to defense after they relegated him to DH in the offseason? Surely it’s at least a sign that they’re communicating on the issue! Oh, never mind. –HK 

⚾ Congratulations to Hannah’s husband Jake for successfully predicting, in issue No. 3 of this here newsletter, that someone would get ejected via the helmet tap gesture that signaled a challenge during the spring training automated ball-strike test. Taylor Walls, the light-hitting Rays shortstop, was the man for the job, and he sufficiently freaked out afterward to make it a comedic scene. MLB reportedly told players that this was a no-no before the season, so there’s nothing to complain about on Walls’ behalf, but I do want to note the disappointing meta decision there to discourage clear, performative body language. The more in-game theatricality and concise messaging we can squeeze into the frame, the better. –ZC

⚾ Ok wait real quick, Hannah here now to add some gifs of the above situation because boy does Walls get pissed and quick.

Here’s the head tap:

And here’s Walls about 15 seconds later:

That’s just good theater.