The 12-year-old girl in pink, Hou Yifan, is a Grandmaster-level chessplayer.  She goes toe-to-toe, against scarier, tougher players, with the heart of Rocky Balboa.  She has courage, and fighting spirit, that many MLB players (much less us 'net rats) could never dream of.

So does Sanja Dedijer (below).

A lot of our baseball chats, including mine, go:  "If only we'd signed Teixeira.  Or Matsuzaka.  Or been born in Bangladesh where we could focus on finding a banana peel for breakfast, and not on this compost pile of a team."

Pull a chess analogy for a change:  Even this 92-lb. girls spend 5, 8, 20 years ruthlessly training their minds against the craving to sit there and think, "if only I hadn't moved the h-pawn earlier."  It just is not a productive thought pattern. 

No good comes of it.

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It's okay for discussion, to say, "If we'd only done this or that"… it's conversation, fine.  We're not forbidding it, obviously.

But analysis of the offseason — or of any real-world problem, marriage, teenagers, the budget, your flat tire in the HOV lane, whatever — focuses on the 'real' position on the board. 

This female champions decide what is to be done, given that her King is under attack and that she has light-square weaknesses.  It's not that you spend only 2% of your time wishing you had not moved the h-pawn; it is that you spend 0.00% of your time thinking about what you should have done differently.

There is nothing at stake for us, kibitzing the M's moves, but you play chess the same way you kibitz on other people's games in the analysis hall….  y'can say what you want, obviously.  As for me and mine, we will ask about tomorrow, not about yesterday :- )

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The chessplayer isn't fazed by bad positions; she has them about 50% of the time, against quality opposition.  You can win bad positions. 

But beginners don't win bad positions.  They donate blood.  They're hypnotized by the wish that they hadn't gotten themselves into the mess.  They sit there for the two hours of the 2nd half of the chess game, and beat themselves up, and hope something good just happens.  They sit and wait for the guillotine, and I'm only too happy to give it to them.

Crying over spilled milk just doesn't work.  It's not a good thought habit to get into.

Becoming real, real good at playing well from a bad position, THAT is a thought habit worth getting into.  Incidentally, it's heroic.

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A Dunn offseason, or any offseason in which a real franchise player is added, together with a healthy Morrow and Bedard, will leave the M's with an awful lot of quality MLB talent infusion.  And young, improving blue-chippers, and lots of resources behind the curtain.

Whether the Mariners can win from a bad position, I dunno.  I do know that we can root with good conscience.  :- )   Plenty of time for the funeral if and when the King is mated.

Cheers,

Dr D