Handling Success the Right Way

As the 2006 Columbia baseball team retreats from its first weekend of Ivy League activity with a successful split against Penn, I can't help but feel a little excited. Perhaps these butterflies in my stomach can also be attributed partly to the fact that it is above 50 degrees for the first time in months and MLB opening day is right around the corner, but I'm willing to share it with the Lions' relatively successful Ivy opener... for now.

Although baseball is often considered to be the premier spring sport among the Ivies, it has never really been so for Columbia and its fans-or at least not for a good 30 years. I mean really, when you take into consideration that the last time the Lions finished over the .500 mark most of Columbia's undergraduate population was still rocking out to Ace of Base, you begin to realize just how long this program has been struggling to regain its footing in the Ancient Eight.

Plenty of thought has been put into how the team's successes could be revived, and some key staffing changes were made over the summer to help expedite this process, yet it seems the annual question lingers: could this be it?

As anyone who has ever competed in a team sport knows, one of the key factors behind a flourishing group is the confidence that they bring with them into competition. Over the past few years, though, as I have both followed and covered the Columbia squad with a somewhat disturbing devotion, I've come to believe in the very opposite when it comes to this particular program: the less cocky they are, the better they seem to perform.

Now, of course I'm not saying that the secret to success for this year's team is for them to take the field thinking that they're not good enough to be out there. The Lions program has taken great strides in recent years to increase the talent level in their recruiting classes-though, quite frankly, they haven't made nearly as many improvements or received quite as much attention from the athletics department as the larger marquee football and basketball programs-and should be right on par with the rest of the Ivy League.

No, what I'm talking about is a different sort of attitude adjustment that can only really come from a reordering of team objectives and self-image. It seems like every year the team emerges from winter break promising that this is the group that will catapult the program to the top of the Ivy's Gehrig Division. And thus, every year there is invariably disappointment.

When the Lions do seem to actually flourish is when they find themselves with their backs up against the wall, trying desperately to prove that they are better than their record would indicate. Only when their faults are realized and the team must dig in and fight to even slightly resurrect their season do they begin to hit their stride. But, when they actually do reach relative success, they seem to hit a sort of autopilot and lose the ability to pull through in the final stretches.

Two years ago, when I was one of Spectator's baseball beat writers, the team's difficulty in establishing the right attitude was especially apparent. While the Lions featured some extremely talented players who could pull out amazing performances when they were really needed, the team also projected a belief that, even when they lost, it was never really their fault. Whether it was because of the supreme efforts of the opposing player or their biased representation in the school newspaper (ahem... if you lose, we're going to have to write how it happened, even if it isn't all that pretty-deal with it), it seemed as if they just couldn't focus on the roots of their own problems because they were too busy focusing on all the cards that had been dealt against them. Because of this, a strong team was wasted, and, despite leading their division for the majority of the season, the Lions faltered to an 8-12 final Ivy record.

So, as this year's Lions team celebrates their big doubleheader win over Penn on Sunday, I ask-no, beg of them: please, don't let it go to your heads.