Our country loves sports and we consume them with a passion. Our culture is overflowing with sports analogies, motivational quotes, and stories. We can’t get enough of them. And, as our world shrinks and the speed of information quickens, we digest more sports, competitions, and related content than ever before. Yet, despite our ever-increasing pace of life, I have no doubt that baseball, boring, slow baseball, will always endure as the Great American Pastime.

Without question, football is the most popular American sport and the NFL is the behemoth of our sports culture. It’s fast and it’s gritty and it’s impressive to watch. Football also leaves little doubt. At the end of a game, there’s rarely a debate as to who was the better team. The physicality of the contest can determine the alpha within its 60-minute duration. That’s why we only need 16 games a season to decide who’s the best.

Baseball is the polar opposite. Baseball is slow and meticulous. A single game determines a winner, but it rarely determines who’s better. The worst team can sweep the top team and it would be little more than a fluke. A college team could beat a pro squad in a single contest. That’s because baseball is a game of slight variations and success is measured over a slow, lengthy grind. In fact, those variations are so subtle that it takes 162 games to separate the winners from the losers and thus a single game is only a decimal within the collective whole.

A baseball season is played day after day across a long six-month season. Some days are good, some days are bad, but all are soon forgotten because there’s a new game tomorrow and the slate is wiped clean. Consistency is what counts. Day in and day out, consistency is what separates the winners from the losers.

As much as we love fast-paced, athletic sports, baseball feels the most familiar to us. We are drawn to its slow and methodical rhythm and we appreciate the subtle grind it requires. It’s comforting to know the disappointments of a poor outing can be quickly erased by the next day’s contest. We understand and enjoy that most games are mundane, for it contributes to the undeniable tension and excitement for when they are not.

I try to approach my life like baseball. I try to remember that it’s a long season. I try to remember that the pace will be slow, except when it isn’t. I try not to get too high or too low based on a single day’s performance. I try to remember that success will be determined by consistency above all else. And, I try to remember that no matter how I did today, a new game will start tomorrow.