In the game of baseball, errors are a proper stat recorded alongside the score. If you screw up, it is noted along with the tally of your team’s hits and runs. Other sports have fouls and penalties, but they aren’t as prominently documented as they are in baseball.

The judgment of an error is based on whether the fielder should have successfully made a play. It’s a determination of whether or not the player messed up.  If a ball is beyond the player’s reach, it’s recorded as a hit. If he drops a ball that should have been an out, it’s an error. There are times, however, when the distinction isn’t as obvious.

A portion of a baseball field is dirt and over the course of play it becomes potholed by repeated foot traffic. As a result, any ball rolling across the dirt is at risk of hitting a divot and ricocheting off its natural course. These irregular bounces are called bad hops. If a bad hop causes you to mess up, it is not considered an error. The player isn’t judged for something that was outside his control. Hence, bad hops aren’t errors.

As an adolescent, baseball was my thing. I played several different sports as a youth, but by the time I reached high school, baseball was my sole focus. I was a shortstop and I loved practicing. In fact, I enjoyed fielding ground balls more than any other aspect of the game and would do so for as long as a willing participant would hit them to me. This was often my dad.

My passion for fielding could also spark in me a nasty temper. Repeated miscues would send me into a rage. These miscues tended to be most prevalent at the end of a practice, when my focus was waning and the field was torn up. Most often the errors were my fault, but occasionally they weren’t. In those moments, the distinction was irrelevant and I’d scold myself regardless. It was illogical and counterproductive, but also difficult for me to control. My dad was always patient and would wait for my anger to subside. After I’d collect myself, he’d resume hitting balls and calmly remind me that bad hops aren’t errors.

Throughout our lives, we will all err countless times. In most of those cases, we can retrace our steps and determine what we did wrong. In failed relationships, we recognize where we were stubborn. We understand how we didn’t communicate. With an unsuccessful business venture, a postmortem can identify the holes in our strategy and we can see where we failed to execute. In pursuit of our dreams, we know when our effort was lacking. We know when we cowered from attempting the big leaps.

In life, we know when we committed an error. We know the things we could have done differently. But sometimes, it isn’t our fault. Sometimes we did everything right, but things still went wrong. Sometimes we practice and practice and put ourselves in the right position, and still fail.  Sometimes shit just doesn’t work out. Sometimes you catch a bad hop, and bad hops aren’t errors.