It's Unfair

I've had a run of bad luck.

Baseball player making a diving catch

Baseball is unfair.  So often our hard-hit ball is caught, and their near miss floats out over the infield for a bloop hit.  I’ve felt like giving up watching or caring.  I want to see good rewarded; failure, well, fail.  Why is luck so fickle?  It would drive Yogi Berra to poetry.   

I’m not writing only about baseball. It’s true of many human experiences.

It may start several conversations.  

For instance, how often it is that the unlucky moments of life lodge in our minds and explain our failures.  This is why we so often see unfairness as a likely source of our troubles.

That’s why social scientists collect data and compare the evidence of research to the biases of our perceptions. We need their corrections.

It may even be why we walk away from the game and the team.  It’s not worth the effort.  The sayings of the game confirm our pessimism.  “The ball will always find the weak link (player).” 

Actually, most “bad luck” is the result of the other team’s exceptional skill.  The ball that should have been a double was caught with a diving catch.  “We was Robbed.”

No, we were beaten by a great catch.  Life is played, when it is worth it, against good, even great, players.  The opposite of my “bad luck,” is not good luck, it is outstanding play by an opponent. 

But that’s not the whole story, or if it is, we should always see it that way. We need to see some of our successes and failures as chance. With respect to former, we learn humility and for the latter, we hold on to our dreams.

Chance helps us believe in a final success. Knowing that luck is at play and is governed, at least in part, by chance., we know we have, well, at least a chance.

What if all we saw was that we were simply outmatched by superior forces? What if we thought that was all that mattered.?

We might just stop trying. And then, truly lose.

So keep the umpires calling balls and strikes?

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