You've Got To Be Proud of the Effort
by Jake Bertalotto on Jun 1, 2009 6:54 PM PDT
in Baseball
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We've been talking a lot today about whether this year's team underachieved, meet expectations, or overachieved. I'll say that I'm still in the "meet expectations" camp, but I think we're overlooking something here:
You've got to be proud of the effort.
Over the weekend, the team played three games in the span of 24 hours, and pushed the Horned Frogs to the limit in Sunday's nightcap. Like any disappointing loss, there's going to be some quibbles, which there were. The Beavers would have liked for things to go differently in Sunday night's game, but TCU should be commended for their efforts to come back in the game, and for winning Saturday's game to put themselves in a position where they only needed one win against the Beavers to win the regional.
Although this year's team didn't accomplish as much as we would have liked them to in the regular season and into the post-season, you can't say that the effort wasn't there. That's really all a coach and a group of fans can ask for. If you give your best effort and come up short, well, that's baseball.
In the grand scheme of things, it's also about the dedication and hard work the players have put into the program. It's also about their development as individuals, and I know that Pat Casey is very big on making sure his players leave Corvallis as better men.
His post-game comments:
"I wish that our whole club could sit in here because I can't tell you how proud I am of Oregon State's baseball team. These guys put up one of the finest efforts today, battled for 11 hours and I can't tell you how proud I am of them. Just a wonderful effort and a great bunch of guys. It was a great ball game. Congratulations to TCU, they are a very good club. Once again, I'll just tell you that this club fought, battled, scratched and proved what kind of character they have and what kind of men we have at Oregon State."
It's easy to pick out the negative things and just talk about that, and it's especaially easy to do after a devastating loss. As fans, it's very easy to put on orange colored glasses and sip orange kool-aid and just talk about how we got screwed on the call at second base or with sleeve-gate. But I also think we need to look on the bright side of the coin.
--Jake (jake.buildingthedam@gmail.com)
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Santos's post-game comments...
“It was a great season. I’ve been on a lot of teams from junior college to summer to high school, but once I came here, the team is a family. Everybody is for each other; we pick each other up. We got out together. Everybody has everyone else’s back and we showed that tonight. Unfortunately, we lost today, but it has been a great season and I’m glad I was here. I love my coaches and my players. It was a long road and every road comes to an end.”
--JB--
www.buildingthedam.com
by Jake Bertalotto on Jun 1, 2009 6:56 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs
I've got a real stick up my butt, because I'm not sure why I have to be proud and of what effort?
I say it once, I’ll say it again, these guys underachieved and did not play to their potential. Growing up, all I was taught was do your best, that’s all anybody can ask of you. And that’s all I asked of this team. And if someone is going to tell me that that is what we got, was this team’s best, then I call BS. How do I know they didn’t play their best? Look at what we did with Arizona State. We nearly beat them in Tempe early in the season, and then won the series from them. We put ourselves in positions to win against Washington State- all 3 games!- and we choked. Am I disappointed with their 2nd game effort against TCU? Absolutely not. Yes, we put ourselves in a position to win and lost it again (recurring theme all year). But I don’t think its fair to expect those guys to play their best on 2 hours rest after playing in 100 degree heat. But after those conditions to lose by 1, we were clearly matched up well with them. So what happened in game 1 when we got shelled 13-1?! These guys did not give themselves a chance to win. We should have been hosting a regional, and instead, had to travel and couldn’t overcome the adversity (heat, fans, a jersey issue) and now our season is over. I am just so frustrated because I know what this team could have done this year, and they didn’t pull through. I knew last year was going to be a struggle after losing so much from the previous two years. But this year was our year to rejoin the elite of college baseball, and we didn’t do it.
I support Takimoto in his effort to support Roger Kieschnick in his quest to becoming the best Kieschnick ever to play professional baseball.
by The VD Special on Jun 1, 2009 7:04 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs
So do you think that you can control playing your best?
I’d argue that you can control your effort, but I’m not sure you can control when you play at your best.
--JB--
www.buildingthedam.com
by Jake Bertalotto on Jun 1, 2009 7:31 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
I think they are one in the same
Yesterday, there effort was outstanding. And I truly believed we played our best. But Saturday? Not so much. WSU, USC, UCLA, and UW? We had a game in each of those where our effort was there. I believe we won game 1 in two of those series, only to drop the final two. You went to the USC series. The effort wasn’t there. The WSU series? Looked like the guys were going through the motions. I’d understand having a down series as a result of sometimes not being able to control your best. But this was 4 series that we should have won at least 3, and we didn’t. Same goes to when we lose to some of the lower tier schools (before this year, losing 6 straight to Gonzaga?!), it’s not about not doing your best, because if they had given the right effort, the game wouldn’t have even been in question. No doubt we were in a tough bracket. Texas A&M and TCU were both quality teams. And quite honestly, I’m not too surprised that we couldn’t pull it out in those conditions yesterday. But my point is, we should have been HOSTING a regional, and not having to deal with the conditions. And how we get to HOST the regional is by putting forth the effort in those above mentioned series.
I support Takimoto in his effort to support Roger Kieschnick in his quest to becoming the best Kieschnick ever to play professional baseball.
by The VD Special on Jun 1, 2009 7:40 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Because
Maybe you don’t have to as a fan, but at the same time as much as I agree with your arguments about having high expectations the players and coaches do need to celebrate what they have accomplished, which wasn’t all that bad this year. This is not the MLB and part of the experience is to learn from it all, part of this learning and growing is to look at what went well and what did not both. If the players totally feel like junk about how they played then really what is the motivation for next year beyond “being the best” which is a VERY challenging goal.
If you are a player who never feels good about playing because you are not meeting championship expectations then your desire to play will go down for I do agree with Jake and you can’t win it all all the time. There are VERY few players over the history of sports who can push themselves to this level of never ever expecting second best and even they lose and have to balance the positives and negatives of their play (Tiger Woods is a good example). As such it is a huge fine line for the coaches to create an environment that is both rewarding/positive and challenging (and sometimes negative), but you have to have both. Oregon State fosters this type of balance pretty well I think (Casey and Riley).
Same goes to when we lose to some of the lower tier schools (before this year, losing 6 straight to Gonzaga?!), it’s not about not doing your best,
This is actually kind-of funny if you think about it isn’t it? They beat Gonzaga easily (by the way a post-season team this year who actually played pretty well in their Regional), yet in 2006 and 2007 the National Championship teams lost to them. Kind-of shows it is all a bit more complicated than just always “doing your best” isn’t it?
-RVM
by rvm on Jun 2, 2009 9:41 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
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