When Everything Goes Wrong (And What Youth Sports Teach About Leadership) Youth Sports Lessons: When a Baseball Game Falls Apart Sunday morning, my son was on the mound.
Two outs in the first inning.
Throwing strikes.
In control.
Then baseball happened.
Ground ball to second — through the legs.
Ground ball to third — under the glove.
Line drive to short — missed.
Three outs. None recorded.
And just like that, the inning unraveled.
A few batters later, he had hit four guys.
The other team put up 10 runs.
Game flipped completely.
If you’ve watched enough baseball, you know the feeling.
You can almost hear the baseball gods laughing.
When Effort Doesn’t Match Results in Baseball (and Life) Here’s the part that stuck with me:
He didn’t pitch that badly.
That inning should have been over.
He did enough to get out of it.
But the result didn’t match the effort.
And that’s where things got hard.
You could see it on his face.
Frustration. Shoulders slumped. Energy gone.
He still hit well later.
He played fine in the field.
But his attitude?
It never really recovered.
And that was game one of a doubleheader.
Leadership in Youth Sports: Why Attitude Matters After the games, his coach pulled him aside.
Simple message:
“You’ve got to have a better attitude. The team feels that.”
That one stung.
We drove home mostly in silence.
Then we talked.
I told him something we’ve talked about before:
It’s great to be individually good.
But the real goal is to make the team better.
Anyone can show up when things are going well.
Leadership shows up when things aren’t.
That’s something I’ve written about before in
discipline over motivation —because showing up when you don’t feel like it is the real cheat code.
Derek Jeter vs Aaron Judge: Leadership vs Individual Greatness I explained it to him like this:
Be a Derek Jeter.
Not just a Aaron Judge.
Both are incredible players.
Both will be Hall of Famers.
But one difference stands out.
Jeter’s teams won five World Series.
Judge’s teams haven’t.
That doesn’t mean Judge isn’t great. He is.
But Jeter was the consummate leader—on the field and off.
He brought a level of grit, composure, and presence that lifted the entire team.
In the biggest moments, those Yankees teams believed.
That’s not just talent.
That’s leadership.
Taking Ownership: The Most Important Leadership Skill The next morning, I talked to his coach.
He told me something I didn’t know.
Gio had texted the team after the game and apologized for his attitude.
I never told him to do that.
He didn’t tell me he did it.
That’s what made it hit.
That wasn’t for me.
That wasn’t for show.
That was ownership.
Accountability in Sports and Life: Why It Matters That text matters more than the hits, the strikeouts, or the bad inning.
Because accountability is the foundation of leadership.
Not:
“I got unlucky.”
“Those plays should’ve been made.”
But:
“I could’ve been better for the team.”
That’s a different level.
That’s someone starting to understand what it means to lead.
Baseball and Life Lessons: When Doing Everything Right Isn’t Enough This is why I love baseball.
It mirrors real life almost perfectly.
Sometimes you do everything right…
…and it still doesn’t work out.
You make the right pitch.
You get the ground ball.
You execute.
And you still get burned.
That happens in business all the time.
You prepare.
You show up.
You do the work.
And it still falls apart.
It reminded me a lot of a moment I wrote about in
grace under fire , where keeping your composure mattered more than the outcome itself.
Parenting and Leadership: A Proud Dad Moment What stuck with me most wasn’t the bad inning.
It wasn’t the loss.
It was the text.
A quiet decision to take responsibility.
To own it.
To be better.
But more than that…
I think what made me most proud is where he is right now in life.
He’s almost a teenager.
Starting to step into that space between being a kid and becoming a young adult—which is really the whole goal behind
raising adults, not just kids .
And that was a very adult thing to do.
As a parent, you try to instill the right things.
You talk about accountability.
But you never really know what’s sticking.
You don’t know when it’s going to show up.
Or how your kids are going to show up in the world.
In a lot of ways, it feels like an experiment.
You put all this care and intention into raising them…
and then you wait and see who they become.
And in that moment, I saw something.
Because what he did?
A lot of adults don’t even do that.
He showed ownership.
He took responsibility at a time when it would’ve been easier not to.
And as a dad…
I’m just really proud of him.
Leadership Is What You Do When Things Go Wrong Because that’s the real lesson.
Leadership isn’t about when everything is going well.
It’s not about stats.
It’s not about talent.
It’s not about being the best player on the field.
It’s about how you show up when things fall apart.
It’s about how you respond when the result doesn’t match the effort.
It’s about whether you make the people around you better… even on your worst day.
That’s what those five World Series teams had with Derek Jeter.
And that’s what I saw, in a small way, starting to show up in my son.
And for me…
that’s enough.
“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”
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