By the time you read this, the Oakland A’s may have won their 20th straight game, an American League record and the first streak of its kind since the 1947 New York Yankees. After a tumultuous offseason that featured the A’s losing their star and leader Jason Giambi, leadoff hitter Johnny Damon, closer Jason Isringhausen and rookie of the year candidate Eric Hinske, the A’s were given up for dead. Their probable descent would have characterized the inability of small market teams to compete in baseball.
While playing in a NFL-sponsored beach flag football game during the Pro Bowl in 1999, then-Patriots running back Robert Edwards ripped apart his left knee. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament, his posterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament; his fourth knee ligament, the lateral collateral, was frayed. When doctors performed surgery they were worried that they would not even be able to reestablish blood flow to Edwards’ lower leg. Amputation was an option, and according to doctors, the best case scenario involved Edwards walking again with the aid of a cane. Last week, after grueling years of training, Edwards made the Miami Dolphins as a backup running back, trying to rekindle the spark that allowed him to run for 1,115 yards and 12 touchdowns as a rookie.
This offseason, the New York Mets seemingly made all the right moves. Last season, their outfield offensive output was anemic and their pitching was unstable. Therefore, the Mets upped their payroll and acquired big boppers Mo Vaughn and Jeremy Burnitz, run producers Roberto Alomar and Roger Cedeno, and pitchers Pedro Astacio and Shawn Estes. On Tuesday, the Mets won the second half of a doubleheader with the Florida Marlins. It was the New Yorkers’ first win at home in 16 games; their 15 straight losses were a National League record for futility.
Last month, Canadian Football League running back Lawrence Phillips skipped out on his team, the Montreal Alouettes, because he was frustrated with a nagging knee injury; it was the second time this season that Phillips took an unauthorized leave from the team. While he has been around long enough this year to lead the CFL in rushing, Phillips ruined his NFL career by performing similar stunts as well as being convicted of a DUI and hitting a woman in a nightclub while he was with the St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers. He was hoping to have another chance at making the NFL.
The difference between the A’s and the Mets and Edwards and Phillips is that one of the two in each comparison can stare defeat and adversity in the eye and deal with it with perseverance, hard work and heart. When the other team or player sees troubles, it collapses like a punctured lung. While the message may be said far too often to have any more than a trite meaning, experience shows us repeatedly that those who are strong willed are the ones who succeed and those without it fall by the wayside.
