What Are Failure Sports?

Playing professional sports at the highest levels of competition is incredibly difficult. Most people who try, fail. Those who succeed and climb the ranks are rewarded handsomely. That’s how they can tell they are great at a professional sport – they succeed all the time. Say you’re an NBA player. You can tell you are awesome at it because you make the majority of your shots, even when playing against the best defenders. You’re succeeding over and over. You expect to succeed, and when you do it reinforces how great you are. The rare occasions when you fail aren’t a big deal, because you’re going to succeed next time. If you start to fail more often, you know you’re losing your touch, and if you don’t get it together you’ll be out, because you failed too much.

Most sports are similar to that model. But some sports are different, and more importantly, certain situations and positions within the world of sports where success and victory can only be attained through near-constant failure. These situations are where I find the true test of the mental determination of an athlete. All pro sports take an exceptional physical talent. Failure sports also require something extra in the mind and heart of the competitor. When Stephen Curry misses a 3-pointer, he doesn’t worry because he knows he is going to make the next one. He knows he is the best, and his knowledge is constantly reinforced with success.

When Mike Trout comes up to bat, he knows he is probably going to make an out. It doesn’t matter how big the situation is, as a hitter, he has been failing close to 7 out of 10 times for his entire professional career. It is a constant drumbeat of failure, and no matter how many home runs you hit, next time, you’re going to walk back to the dugout with a zero. And the time after that. And maybe five more times in a row. And you still have to remember that you are the best in the world, and that no one is better than you. You’re not even in a slump, in fact, you’re “hot”. Tomorrow you can go 1-4 with 3 Ks and still be “hot”. Maintaining the confidence and positive mental outlook required to succeed in the face of all that failure demands a different kind of determination from the competitor.

Failure Sports was created to salute the competitors who are able to succeed by failing. I find great inspiration in the struggle of an athlete willing to failing over and over, undaunted, knowing that success will come. I find beauty in the victories attained by overcoming constant failure. Baseball is the purest example of a “failure sport”, and many of the observations you’ll find here are centered around the game. Ted Williams famously said that hitting a baseball is the most difficult task in all of sports. Ted failed a lot less than most hitters to hoist a bat, but if his batting average was his shooting average in the NBA or his pass completion percentage as an NFL quarterback, he would have been out of either league in a hurry. Hitting a baseball is certainly the easiest “failure sports” concept to understand, but if you follow along, I’ll show you many more examples of where I’ve been able to draw inspiration from a competitor whose determination is immune to repeated failure.