Though I have vowed not to spend every summer evening as I did last year, watching baseball and knitting, I did find myself in front of the All-Star game this week. I happened to be watching when National League first basemen Pete Alonso, a rookie from the Mets, was asked to consider himself at spring training. Did he ever, in his wildest dreams, imagine himself playing in the Midsummer Classic? This was obviously supposed to be one of those feel-good questions, where the rookie says how happy and overwhelmed he is. How he’s having the time of his life, and no, he never dreamed this would happen to him.
Instead Alonso refused to use the word “lucky.” It wasn’t luck that got him and all the other rookies here, he said. While they had been “blessed with opportunities,” what they’d done with those opportunities was entirely their doing. “I earned this,” he said, referring to his spot at first base. “We [rookies] all did. We worked hard and we earned it.”
Funnily enough, minutes before this mini interview, one of the announcers was gushing about the young talent on the field, remembering how intimidated and terrified he’d been back when he first took the All-Star field. Not these guys, he noted. They weren’t intimidated to be playing next to the game’s biggest names. These guys just “own it,” he marveled. And I wondered.
Did he mean the confidence bothered him? Did it feel like entitlement to him, a retiree comparing his own sense of unworthiness to this current crop’s unabashed worthiness?
The last thing I want to be is one of those old people bemoaning the lack of shame in today’s youth. Clearly the announcer didn’t want to be like that either. But a piece of the process was missing from Alonso’s attitude. It stuck with me for the rest of the game, into the night and my walk the following morning. The part of the process that was missing was this athlete’s acknowledgement that his success was a process at all.
I do agree with the rookie on one point: success on any field–athletic or artistic or academic–takes hard work. But I also know that there are no guarantees. Supremely talented people work hard and never make it to the big leagues. Said another, very sober way, hard work and talent don’t always lead to success. It’s rather grim, as I see it: Success cannot happen without talent and hard work, but talent and hard work do not always equal success. Maybe what I mean is that sometimes a person’s definition of success has to change. If you go in looking for one particular outcome, and only that outcome will do, you might be in for some let downs.
Like it or not, luck is part of the equation. Athletics differ from the arts, of course, in part because they rely so heavily on the physical body. Any physical body is going to be strongest when it’s young. Rookies have that advantage. But to believe that hard work and talent alone took him to the All-Stars feels, at my age and stage, wrong headed. Even falsely optimistic.
I hate saying that. I don’t want to squelch any rookies. And I certainly don’t want to discourage young people from recognizing their own talents and working hard to develop them. But god! Any 24-year-old writer holding a publishing contract who said publicly, “Luck had nothing to do with this. I earned it!” would be eaten alive. And should be eaten alive! The rookie ball player isn’t that different from the rookie writer, is he? Those articles in writing magazines that feature “Twenty-under-thirty” or “Ten talents-to-watch” are awesome if you are one of the twenty. But for the thousands of us not on that list, they kind of sting.
Boiled down, what bothered me about Alonso’s attitude was that by refusing to acknowledge the role luck played in his current situation, he was denying the legions of talented, hard working players still in the minor leagues. Who might stay in the minor leagues for a long, long time.
What’s with the rookie obsession anyway? Why do people love prodigies? Why do we get so excited over young talent? We love the concept of ‘a star is born,’ the idea that some are destined to be great. Personally I think it’s because we relish the idea of getting out of all that hard work. I’m talking about practice. Practice is a discouraging slog. The epitome of dullsville: repetition and no glory. Day in and day out, working even when you’re not in the mood, knowing that it may not pay off. Yuck.
We love the talented rookie because he’s skipped the shitty part. The failure, the days, years, even decades of no recognition. The rejection. The feelings of futility and utter meaninglessness. Much more thrilling to think that some lucky fuckers get to jump over all that. Without any slogging, boredom, discouragement or practice, they simply open their mouths and out it comes: genius.
I don’t begrudge Pete Alonso his confidence, but I do think that not admitting to some very good luck makes his confidence feel false. He sounds puffed up. Like a guy living in a system of scarcity. There isn’t room for everyone at the top but there’s room for me. I deserve to be here because I am here. So, I must be better.
The system is flawed. A hundred guys might be as good as he is, if not better. He was at the top of his game and someone noticed. Who knows why? It doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try his hardest. Certainly he should enjoy the ride. But as much as I don’t want to be the bitter old woman bitching about these shameless youth, even more I don’t want to be someone who achieves success on any level in life and forgets, even for a second, how it feels to be in the trenches, working one’s ass off, trying your best and not hitting the home run, not making the All Stars, not being chosen for the prize.
Way to go, girl! You definitely knocked that one out of the ballpark. Beautiful!
Thank you! How nice to see you here! Sorry my response took forever!
oh lord, it’s hard to be humble!
YES!
I find two truths of yours especially inspiring and daunting: “a person’s definition of success has to change” and “we relish the idea of getting out of all that hard work. I’m talking about practice. Practice is a discouraging slog. The epitome of dullsville: repetition and no glory.” Inspiring, because there are so many versions of “success” if we take time to think about them. I just read Mark Manson talking about how to rethink success in his article “Your Goals Are Overrated”. He talks about “compounding habits” that “like compounding returns on an investment, over a long enough period of time, can increase the richness of your life exponentially. Goals, by themselves, generate linear growth and change. Habits are capable of generating exponential growth and change.” In America and American media, the focus is on The All-Star Game, or The Olympics, or The Pulitzer / Bestseller / New Sensation / Greatest of All Time. Manson writes about how we tend to set goals like “I’m going to lose 20 pounds by summer” that force us into a self-discipline / shaming mindset that doesn’t work. But the humble, un-glorious habit / practice of regular exercise and healthy eating brings many long-term successes: more energy, mental clarity, improved mood, better digestion, etc., and then these benefits themselves build on each other.
I have a writing practice I’m proud of that makes me grow as a person even as it sometimes beats me down. I can count some personal goals I’ve reached with my writing, and am striving toward others that still elude me but motivate me nonetheless. But if we pursue something worthwhile, we can always look back and say, “Whaddaya know–I started out trying to do X and didn’t, but I found success anyway when I got Y!”
I love the distinction you are making between kinds of goals. Shame based goals really don’t work. I’m living that right now. Big time.