Fair warning to non sports fans: This does start out as another baseball story. But the point goes way beyond baseball; it’s about the basic difference between life as success and life as failure. 
 
     Barry Zito, starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, has had a horrible season. At the beginning of this week he had won two games and lost 11—bad enough to lead the major leagues in losses. In his start on Wednesday, June 18, he was pummeled by the Detroit Tigers for five runs in only two innings, after which the Giants’ manager mercifully sent him off to an early shower. Predictably, the Giants went on to lose the game. This performance comes from a player who, in 2007, signed a seven-year contract for $126 million.
 
     Zito, 30, won the Cy Young Award, baseball’s highest honor for a pitcher, in 2002. That year he had a win-loss record of 23-5. Though it was his career pinnacle, he pitched well through the 2006 season.

After signing with the Giants, he had a mediocre 2007 season, winning 11 and losing 13, but still experienced outbreaks of dominance over batters. It was just a year of transition with a new team in a new league, fans hoped. He’d be back to his winning form in 2008.

But in 2008, Zito’s skills dropped off a cliff. Other players, coaches, the manager, and Zito himself were stumped. Who was that guy wearing Barry Zito’s uniform? It did not appear to be Barry Zito.

That was true until the game last night against the Cleveland Indians. On three pitches, Zito struck out the first batter he faced. Then he struck out the second batter. He retired nine of the first 10 Cleveland batters. He pitched six scoreless innings in a game the Giants eventually won, 4-1.

So now who was this guy in Zito’s uniform?

After the game, it seemed everyone interested in the Giants had an opinion about Zito’s transformation. Some pointed to a meeting between Giants’ senior management and Zito last week following the Detroit debacle. Some credited intentional tweaks in his body mechanics.

Zito himself said it was about trusting himself. “You have to stop trying to control everything,” he said. “When you throw it and let loose, trust your mechanics and trust yourself . . . that’s what it’s about.” Well, we’ll see if it continues to work for him.

But what about the rest of us—we who earn fewer pennies than Zito does dollars? Is our success dependent on the trust we place in ourselves?

 Zito does have a point. Little is accomplished by people who lack confidence. But why does a person like Zito suddenly lose his confidence after years of success?

The way our brains work is not something we can ever fully figure out. “If the human mind was simple enough to understand, humans would be too simple to understand it,” wrote Carnegie Mellon University Professor Emerson Pugh. Try arguing with that logic.

But here’s another question: Is building confidence always about trusting yourself? I don’t know what makes Barry Zito tick. For him, at least for now, it may be confidence in himself. But think about this. Do you believe “self” is the source of your confidence?

Moses, Daniel, Paul, and Jesus were men of abundant confidence. They literally redirected the course of history in their time. But they would not have claimed that their confidence came from trusting themselves, as Zito suggests.

It is true, of course, that as we develop our own sets of skills, we do develop confidence in our abilities to accomplish tasks in line with those skills. I’m a better guitar player than I once was, and as a result I have a reasonable degree of confidence that I can play the guitar publicly without embarrassing myself or others. So it is not my intention to dismiss Zito entirely. Self confidence is not without value.

But if we take Zito’s comment as the ultimate formula for success—as many seem to do—we are heading a much different direction than Scripture would take us. Consider:

• Proverbs 3:5—“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
     • Isaiah 26:4—“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.
     • Psalm 125:1—“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

Consider especially the implications of the last two references.

What happens when a person loses his confidence, as Zito apparently did in April, May, and most of June, but his entire mode of operation is based on trusting in himself? The result is painfully evident.

Then think again of Moses, Daniel, Paul, and Jesus in this context. The basis of their confidence was not themselves. So if they did lose their nerve at some point, they were not left with nothing. They could renew their confidence in the Lord and carry on against the odds.

In both modes of thought, confidence is essential. In the things that matter most in life, I am glad I have something more than myself to trust as a basis for my confidence.

B.W.