What could be worse than failing? That’s easy. Being forced to fail over and over again without the dignity of at least being able to walk away in shame. Now that’s the stuff of nightmares.

And that’s exactly how the 1992 film Mr. Baseball begins. I couldn’t find the original English version of this clip, but even though this one is in a different language, you can still get the gist of what’s going on. When Tom Selleck’s character steps up to the plate, the pressure’s on because he’s already got two strikes. One more and he’s out. And then this happens.

I’ve never seen the fear of failure captured in such a dramatic way as this scene manages to do. It’s equal parts hilarious and painful to watch as the batter strikes out again and again. But instead of being allowed to leave after the third strike, he has to step back up to the plate and keep adding more strikes to his total. It’s such an ingenious concept to have a batter get strike 4, strike 5, and so on because it’s the ultimate insult. He just can’t catch a break – or hit the ball.

A big theme of the film is Selleck’s fear of failure. He knows what he doesn’t want to do: strike out. He spends so much time obsessing over that thought that he forgets to focus on what he actually wants to do: hit the ball. It seems like such a small thing, but this change of perspective is what allows him to finally succeed. It’s quite a revelation when his coach helps him to see this truth about himself.

Let’s apply this to ourselves. We can either go through life trying to avoid making mistakes or we can accept that we’ll make some mistakes as we attempt to move toward our goals. I think it’s better to run toward something good than to run away from something bad. It’s the difference between hope and fear, optimism and pessimism, strength and weakness. If we expect the worst, we won’t be surprised when we end up there, but if we expect the best from ourselves, we’ll just consider failures as temporary detours on our way to success. So the next time you have an opportunity to do something great, knock it out of the park.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

Both video clips are the copyright of their owner.

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