The beauty of losing beautifully

Interview, Feb, 1996 by Roger Angell

"One of my favorite ballplayers was Catfish Hunter, a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Yankees during the mid-1970s. He won over two hundred games and was highly respected, so it came as a surprise when he lost Game Two of the 1977 World Series. Afterward, the press gathered around, and there was Catfish, smiling and cheerful as always. The sportswriters were all over him, of course, but Catfish said, 'Well, the sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every afternoon.' And he was exactly right.

"When I was in my teens, I think good sportsmanship was taken more seriously. Win or lose, people kept on smiling. I think some of the present sourness about losing can be laid on the owners. After the Yankees lost the 1981 World Series to the Dodgers, George Steinbrenner issued a press statement which said: 'I want to sincerely apologize to the people of New York and to the fans of the New York Yankees everywhere for the performance of the Yankee team in the World Series. I also want to as-sure you that we will be at work immediately to prepare for 1982.' For Steinbrenner to apologize for losing, and to equate it with failure the way he did is to miss the whole point. There were plenty of Yankee players who were disgusted by his statement.

"That was the last game Reggie Jackson played as a Yankee, and his reaction to the loss was in absolute contrast to Steinbrenner's. 'I have nothing to apologize for,' he said. 'I tried my best. It's too bad to lose, but we didn't lose it - we got beat. When you go hard on every pitch and every game and you get beat, you just feel the hell with it, it's over.' Even after that, reporters tried to explain the defeat away, but Reggie was adamant. 'No, no. Don't you see?' he said. 'They beat us.'

"In 1962, when the newborn Mets came to New York they were the worst team ever to play major league baseball, but they were an enormous hit. I was just starting to write about baseball, and as I didn't know many players, I wrote about the fans. So here's New York, the toughest city, a city of champions, and here is one of the worst teams that ever played the game. I remember wondering, What is this all about? And I think I wrote at the time that we identified with the Mets because there's more Met than Yankee in all of us. We are all much more accustomed to losing than to winning.

"I also think it's true that your team has to lose a lot before you can appreciate it when they begin to win. I gave up on the Yankees one summer - they were always winning - and shifted to the Red Sox. I didn't know how hard it was going to be for them to win, but I got a lot more fun [out of] watching them than I ever did with the Yankees. And when the Mets started winning in 1969, it was unbelievable.

"After a championship series, or an important series of games, i make it a point to visit the losers' clubhouse. In the winners' clubhouse, everyone is cheering and drinking champagne and jumping up and down and slapping each other on the back. But what people say, and how they respond in the losers' clubhouse is often more interesting, more to the point. When the Mets won in 1969, they had been the underdogs in the World Series, yet they beat the Baltimore Orioles, who were expected to win easily. After the last game, I was in the Orioles' clubhouse talking to Earl Weaver, their manager, and somebody said, 'Earl, when you were ahead in the seventh inning, didn't you think that you'd be able to hold on and win the game and then go back home for the last two games and win [the series] there?' Earl looked at him and said, 'You can't do that in baseball. You can't run a few plays into the line and kill the clock. You've got to let the other guys come up to bat, and take your chances. That's why this is the greatest game of them all.' He was heartbroken, but losing was something he was prepared for. He understood that without defeat, victory means nothing."