Transcript of Thought For the World’s thought for the day

Richard Holloway

14th February 2009

Though my daughter has tried to explain it to me, I find it hard to follow the intricacies of American baseball; but even I am moved at the thought of one of the greatest baseball tragedies in the history of the game. It occurred on October 25, 1986, when the Boston Red Sox, the team my American daughter supports, had a comfortable two-run lead against the Mets, in what the Americans modestly call the World Series. The Mets were batting and a veteran of the Red Sox called Bill Buckner was fielding at 1st base. Tragically, inexplicably, he let a lightly tapped ball roll between his legs into outfield, enabling the Mets to get a home run and victory in the series. Buckner was a baseball hero who had won thousands of games for the Red Sox over the years with his line drives and brilliant fielding. All that was forgotten, and he is now famous for the day he lost the Red Sox the World Series.

This incident in baseball history lead the great scientist and baseball fan, Stephen Jay Gould, to pen an interesting meditation. He observed that triumph’s pleasures are intense but brief, while remembrance of our failures remain with us for ever. He went on to suggest that this is a good thing, because it is failure that is really expressive of our common humanity, and is our best teacher. That’s why when people in public life fail in some way, as they all do from time to time, decent minded people will always forgive them, provided they admit what happened. ‘Sorry, folks, I guess I dropped the ball.’ We all know what that feels like, if we are honest with ourselves, because failure is the most common feature of our humanity.

Sadly, there is something about public life at the moment that seems to make it difficult for people to be honest about their mistakes, as though success and not failure were the human norm. The secret in all of this is not to get your denial in first, but your admission that, yes, you blew it. The great thing about failure is that it’s a better teacher of tolerance and modesty than life’s specious triumphs.

Robert Burns, who knew a thing or two about personal failure, got it spot on:

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human

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