I guarantee some won’t understand this and some will say “You’re wrong!” But here you go. This was part of my growth as an athlete.
I was the same as dang near every youth athlete. I would hold onto mistakes. I would get upset with what I thought were umpires mistakes. I would blame my coaches. I would play scorekeeper in my head when my teammates made errors. When the game was over I would think way more about all of the mistakes everyone else made except my own.
These moments of weakness would turn one walk into two. Turn a bad inning into a bad game. Turn a bad game into a month long slump. And make seasons seem more like a roller coaster than steady progress.
Looking back on it, I had to go through these moments. They were completely necessary to get to where I would eventually get. I had to get knocked down enough times but get back up more. But when I finally snapped out of it and stopped being a weak competitor and teammate, everything changed.
I finally got to that point of “it doesn’t matter!” “I don’t care!” “So what!”
I walked a batter, so what, let’s get the next guy to hit a ground ball. Teammate made an error, so what, let’s get the next guy. The umpire missed a pitch call, oh well, let’s execute the next pitch.
For me, I became a better competitor when I stopped caring. I know that sounds weird and wrong but that’s the best way I can describe it, in the moment I had to not care how we got there to be all in on the next pitch. That was my job.