Swing the bat!

My daughter the Diamondback had been slumping, taking a lot of called strikes and beginning to doubt herself.

Slumps happen in baseball, of course, and are largely responsible for making ballplayers among the most weirdly superstitious people on the planet: Wade Boggs, for instance, fearing to jinx his hitting streak, once ate nothing but chicken for several weeks on end. And speaking of the Red Sox, the biggest superstition of all is (or was) The Curse of the Bambino.

So what did my daughter do to break out of her slump? Nothing weird -- she just started swinging the bat, piqued perhaps by Dad's challenge to get the ball out of the infield (or at least put it in play). The other night she cracked a pair of solid hits and scored three of her team's six runs, on the way to a 6-3 victory and the game ball.

The life lesson here is clear enough to her, I hope: be aggressive, take some risks, and if you have to strike out occasionally at least make sure you go down swinging. You'll almost certainly be more productive, and you'll definitely have more fun. I have to keep re-learning that too.