Handling disappointment is measure of a man

One from the baseball season of 2010:

I had a column half-written, you should know, with complete and perfect answers to the country’s energy crisis, solutions to the Gulf oil mess and the national debt and even some tea party uprisings mixed in.
But I set it aside because something really neat happened earlier this month. Yes, about it much has been written, clips have been shown and many pundits have done their best to underline the hidden themes. But a few more words, if you please, about Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce.
And maybe some thoughts about disappointment, the theme I see woven into this split second of history and its aftermath.
In a nutshell, you may recall, Galarraga pitched a perfect game — well, it's tempting to call it a perfect game, even though the record books will never list it as one of the 20 perfect games in major league history — until the final out of the final inning, when an umpire — that would be Joyce — badly missed a call at first base, giving a runner a hit and taking away Galarraga’s place in history.
Or did he?
It what now has been a well-chronicled saga, Joyce apologized and Galarraga accepted the misstep with a smile on his face. The pair talked that night as Joyce explained he was just doing his best and Galarraga accepted his fate of being just an asterisk in baseball history. The meeting between the two the next day at home plate is a MBL baseball treasure, right up there with Lou Gehrig’s famous last speech, I think.
Even before the 90-second highlight of this life-in-miniature lesson had ended on the Whywitness News two weeks ago, my mind was pricked and went on a quick review of Harvey Haddix and what most MBL historians consider to be the greatest game ever pitched.
Speaking of asterisks.
Haddix pitched perfect game into the 13th inning of a game against the Milwaukee Braves on May 26, 1959. He retired 36 consecutive batters before a fielding error allowed a Brave to reach first base. After a sacrifice bunt, an intentional walk to Hank Aaron, Joe Adcock hit a home run, ending what would have then been a no-hitter. On this strangest of nights, though, Aaron left the base path on his run to home and was actually passed by Adcock. The umpires huddled and finally gave the Braves the win over the Pirates 1-0.
Rewind. Yes, I said a perfect game for 12 and two-thirds innings. And he will never be on the list of 20. Talk about disappointment. If 27 batters up and 27 down makes a perfect game, shouldn’t 36?
His widow — Haddix died in 1994 at age 64, he being a pack-a-day smoker and smitten with emphysema — said he never did grinch about the snub and “never talked about the game unless someone brought it up.” He was often heard to say of not having his name on the list: “It’s OK. I know what I did.”
Now there’s more to the story, really — a lot of baseball intrigue and minutia, including the stealing of signs from the Braves’ bench, who was in the lineup that night and who wasn’t, what pitches Haddix used — but what I am really fascinated with is Haddix’s and Galarraga’s handling of disappointment.
We’ve all seen friends or family members or know of those who have not handled disappointment well. We’ve seen celebs and athletes melt in the stew of disappointment. Many people make decisions while wallowing in disappointment that have life-altering results, often on more than just themselves.
On a smaller scale, just this past week, I spent an afternoon at Lagoon and watched two grandchildren handle disappointment differently. Playing the midway games — $2 for three tosses at something to get a mini-stuffed animal — both little boys did not win. Shocked, aren’t you?
One immediately fell into deep sadness and despair. Tears were shed and howling heard for an extended period. The other? He immediately wanted to fight back, take another turn, beat this game, regardless of what it took — and as it turned out, what it took was grandpa’s money.
Some deep thinkers of the psychological genre suggest that there are really only about four or five primary emotions, usually listing joy, anger, sadness, fear and love as those. Others, like nervousness, irritation, frustration and, yes, disappointment are subsets of those primary emotions. So, is disappointment a subset of sadness or of anger? Which was it for my grandkids? I saw one as a subset of anger and another of sadness.
How do we deal with disappointment? That answer alone tells us a lot about ourselves.
Gallaraga and Haddix, near as I can tell, handled it perfectly. Joyce was, in retrospect, so smart to be open and humble about his error, but Gallaraga was, well, unnatural in the way he worked through his disappointment. As I look at the layers of learning here, I think there are only three keys to overcoming disappointment: Look at a bigger picture; don’t look for someone to blame; and examine how selfishness is motivating your actions.
Haddix often said winning a World Series and a World Series Game 7 was his biggest achievement. Gallaraga must believe that there will be more chances to get his name on a list, must understand that when you look at the big picture, baseball at any level really is still just a game. Haddix never was heard to blame teammates, stolen signs or the commissioner. And neither was heard to cry, “What about me?”
Disappointment is inevitable. Appropriate responses to it are enviable and noteworthy.