Baseball Score of Life | Rabbi Bentzion Shafier

Mesillas Yesharim describes life a fever-pitched battle. Every stage, every setting, whether wealth, poverty, health, disease, it's all an opportunity to grow, all a test, but it's a battle. And many people fail, because they don't know how to count. I'll explain to you what I mean. I want you to imagine a professional baseball player, making millions of dollars, world famous, at the top of his game, and you get to watch him. You see him at bat, and the first time at bat in the game, he strikes out. the בושה, the embarrassment. Oh, my goodness. He gets up again. Second inning. Again strikes out. Oh, my goodness. Third inning, the same thing. He struck out three times in a row. He gets up the fourth time at bat. He actually hits a single. Not a home run, a single. He's on base. He gets up the next time and he hits a double. And the game's over. You would imagine this man is crushed. He was at bat five times and three of those five times he struck out, he only got on base twice. He's a loser. They’ll probably cut him right off the roster. And then you watch as he walks into the locker room and one of his buddies says: Whoa, great game. Amazing hitting. Another friend says: Yeah, with that batting average, you’re going to really go up there. You say to yourself: What kind of business? He struck out three out of five times. Until you realize how they count the game. In professional baseball, if you're batting 300, you're a top elite athlete. If you’re batting 400, it's mythical. But that means, if you're batting 300, that means that out of ten times at bat, you're going to strike out, pop out or foul out seven times. Seven out of ten times you fail, and that's a multimillionaire professional who's on the top of his game. In the past 80 years, not a single player has batted 400 across a season. That means no one, the best of the best, do not manage to succeed in getting on base more than four out of ten times. And I believe that's a great principle for life. You're going to face any test in life that's a real test, a Nisayon, and you win three out of ten times, you're doing very, very well. But Dovid Hamelech would have won every fight. I've lost. What's with me? I'm a loser. But you have to know how to count. If you actually won three out of ten, you're doing phenomenal. But you're not going to win every battle, you're not going to win every fight, and you have to understand how the game is played and how it's counted. When you understand that any real test you're going to win some, you’re going to lose some, and if you're batting three out of ten, you have to know how to count your victories. I won today. I may have failed yesterday, I may fail tomorrow, but today I won. I count my victories, I'm happy. And it may be that I'll fail again, but as I'm going to get back in the game, that's how you grow, that's how you accomplish in life, that's what Hashem wants from us.