On Being Better

It’s early March of 2023 as I am writing this.  That means there is snow on the ground but baseball is streaming in from Florida.  I like baseball.  There are many reasons for this with some being typical and others being less so.  I also like the NY Mets.  I was watching a NY Mets' Spring Training game the other day and the ESPN booth interviewed Buck Showalter, the manager of the Mets.  They asked him about the new rules and why his players had not publicly complained about them. Buck said the normal things but then mentioned that the slogan the team was using is, “Play better.”

That struck me.  I shared it with some friends.  I wanted it on a t-shirt.  Play better.  More often than I should, I use the Voltaire quote about perfect being the enemy of good.  I think “Play Better” is going to work itself into my speech more. Why did it strike me?  It’s not that different from the Beckett quote about failure, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Baseball is a game of failing better but failing has an implication of negativity.  When batting, success is measured when you only fail seventy percent of the time.  Some of those failures are productive.  Tactical. Some of those failures are hilarious. “Fail better” for a ball club does not relate to success.  “Play better” does.  

I am as much of a pop culture obsessive as I am a baseball fan.  There are a handful of television shows that I return to, comfort viewing such as it is, where the protagonists struggle to get a little bit better every day.  They are Community and The Good Place.  Without getting into spoilers for either of them, they feature ensemble casts in situations of their own creation and they need to work with each other, helped by a liberal education, in order to be who they need to be.  Unlike Seinfeld, there is hugging and there is learning. (Here is where if I were a better writer or a little bit smarter, I would make the connection between Mets’ great Keith Hernandez being on Seinfeld to the Mets trying to play better, but I am not.  Fail again.  Fail better.)

By the end of both series, we see our heroes not where they wanted to be at the start of the show but where they deserve to be because, in the language of therapy, they did the work.  They made a commitment, unspoken in some cases, to their friends, their teammates, to be better, to play better.

After the Mets’ game, I hopped on my treadmill.  I am trying to get into shape for a number of races, including some that scare me, and I have been bitten by the injury bug a lot over the years.  All of my injuries have been because I tried to do too much too soon. Running, like life and baseball, is a process of getting a little bit better every day. One of the trainers I follow on iFit is Tommy Rivers-Puzy, aka Tommy Rivs.  Tommy Rivs is fascinating and has a compelling story. Tommy was talking about growing up, his parents, and greatness.  I was struck again, because he was talking about striving for better, which is a through-line in his Road to Recovery series. Better is a process.  Good or great is an endpoint. Better implies practice and dedication. Like Voltaire, Rivs wants us to look for good, not perfect.  

On my running journey, I am too old for great and I am never going to be good, but I can be better.  I can be a little bit better every day.  

And I can do it with a smile on my face.

Play Better.