Trav's Thoughts

You know, we make mistakes.  That's just natural.  Life isn't about the list of mistakes we make.  It's about how we react to the mistakes, and what we do next that counts.

Dee Gordon plays shortstop for my Dodgers.  In last night's game, he committed 2 bad throwing errors in the 3rd inning, allowing 2 runs to score.  My Dodgers had lost 7 games in a row and fallen behind San Francisco by a game in the NL West.

Gordon is a young player.  That first throwing error was a young player's error.  He had plenty of time to make the throw and he rushed.  The second error was baseball cruelty...make a bad play and the next ball finds you before you've had a chance to shrug off the mistake.  But mistakes happen.  Even the best make errors once in awhile.  The best fielding percentage ever by a shortstop was .9982 in 2002.  That's 1 error in 570 chances.

So Gordon made 2 errors, back to back.  What did he do next?

In his next at bat, he singled.  In his next at bat after that, he reached on an error and stole 2nd base.  In his next at bat after that, he singled, stole 2nd base, then stole 3rd base, then scored on another error to start a 4 run rally that put the cap on the Dodgers' first win in over a week.

Of course, because baseball can be a fickle game...in his final at bat, Gordon pulled up with a tweaked hamstring on a ground out.

You know what they call that? 

Life.