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Failure: The Blog  

August 2018

  • When This Executive Was Fired, He Took Charge
  • Obeying The Speed Limit Has Never Been More Fun
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  • Bette Graham Created A Product To Fix Her Mistakes
  • Flamin' Hot Cheetos Had An Interesting Start

July 2018

  • Fear This Instead Of Failure
  • Re-Releasing Songs Created Success
  • A CEO's Purposeful Mistake
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June 2018

  • A Surprising Mistake In The Oxford English Dictionary
  • US Army Embraces Mistakes
  • Blocking A Hymn
  • Eddie Shore Was Truly A Tough Guy
  • [Video] Elon Musk Didn't "Pivot" He Failed

May 2018

  • 8 Examples of Mental Toughness Part 2
  • Necessity Turned Accessory: Allen Iverson's Sleeve
  • This Doctor Has Continued To Fail
  • 8 Examples of Mental Toughness
  • MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process

April 2018

  • Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
  • Cruise Control Came Out of Frustration
  • Time Spent Gaming Pays Off In The Navy
  • Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
  • Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged

March 2018

  • Superman Couldn't Fly
  • This School Shares Failures
  • Jim Croce's Parents Hoped He Would Fail

[More archives...]

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On Failure and Baseball

August 2nd, 2012 - by Robby Slaughter

You get three chances at the plate, three outs to an inning, and up to nine innings a game. Baseball is also the only major sport that tracks errors. But failure, according to one expert, is even more fundamental in this pastime.

Here’s the quote:

Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often – those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of it’s rigorous truth. – Francis T. Vincent, Commissioner of Baseball

baseball failure
Photo © Flickr User Rajiv Patel (Rajiv’s View)

Comments about failure and baseball are easy to find. You may have heard before that the best hitters in the game have a .300 batting average, which means seven out of ten times they step up to the plate they fail. Or in the words of legend Mickey Mantle:

During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.

Thanks to reader Kelli Schmith, who caught this quote in a Twitter picture.

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