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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, all the rest of the month is available for your curiosity, about either baseball or Tarot. Leave a comment with a prompt if you want in. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
Humans are risk-averse creatures. Given the choice between a small payout with low or no risk and a large payout with a real possibility of getting nothing or losing money instead, the small payout wins for most people. The studies say this, anyway. The safer a life can be, the more it is preferable - at least to a point. Too much safety sometimes sparks rebellion and significantly increased risk with the intent of feeling alive again, or other motivations that stem from the reality that a life lived safely often lacks excitement. In this regard, baseball follows life. The fanatics are often displeased with teams that they feel are playing conservatively, regardless of what the score is, as a team that is behind clearly needs to play more aggressively to catch up, and a team that is ahead needs to play more aggressively to add to their lead. The conception of "running up the score" is mostly absent from baseball at the professional levels, because all teams at those levels can, with the right at if circumstances, score a bundle of runs in a short time. No lead is truly safe in baseball, because the game progresses by outs instead of time, and one big inning early in the game can be beaten by several small innings in sequence. Trying to hold a lead requires taking risk, because one can only record outs by risking the ball being hit somewhere that can score runs.
An example of play that is too conservative manifests on the basepaths with the idea of "hugging the base". While in the learning leagues, the idea of taking a lead is quashed because the physical capabilities of the defense aren't able to reliably record outs against steals, at any level that does allow leads from bases, to not take the lead and stay with one of both feet firmly in contact with the base is generally seen as a problem that needs correction.
Hugging the base provides safety - there's no way the runner can be put out by a pickoff of they're touching the base, so someone who worries about being fooled by such a move, or has heard about the effectiveness of a pickoff move, may find the easiest way to not worry is to make it not possible. Taking the surety provides peace of mind. Unfortunately, taking the safe behavior always has consequences, too. In this case, hugging the base means that the runner has to cover the full distance between bases on a batted ball. Unless they are a particularly speedy runner, it's much more likely that the runner without a lead will be out on a ground ball to the infield that is handled cleanly by the defenders. By not taking a lead, the runner is trading being put out by a relatively rare occurrence (the pickoff) for being put out by a relatively common occurrence (the ground ball).
Hugging the base is thus a failure of risk assessment. Being too concerned about remote possibilities can mean being unprepared for common ones. Trying to remove all risk from the situation at hand often means being exposed to a greater risk in the future. This is one of the dilemmas of parenting a child - as the child matures and can engage in complex thinking of their own, how much freedom do they have to engage in risk-taking of their own? The law prohibits them from operating multi-ton instruments of destruction until a certain age, and even then places restrictions on how and when they can do so as a matter of trying to prevent high-risk behavior. The insurance companies charge higher premiums for the young because they are likely to take their freedom and do risky things with it. Being away from home opens up the possibility of loss of new experiences for the young - sometimes in a relatively controlled environment, sometimes with the freedoms of being an adult in the eyes of the law. Depending on how much control parents and guardians want to exert, even trips to the library could be dangerous activities, since the books on the shelves may contain concepts that the adults feel aren't appropriate for the child to be learning about (either at that point of life or at all). Trying to find the balance between too much freedom and too little is difficult and only gets more so once independent thoughts and ideas about fairness get involved and young adults start making decisions of their own without parental input. There's only so much a coach can do - the players have to execute, and that means trusting them at the appropriate points to do their jobs. Which can mean encouraging them not to hug the base and not to be afraid of things that are less likely to happen.
The card ,should it appear in your reading, is a signal that the way you are thinking about things right now isn't a realistic assessment of the possible danger involved. Something is occupying your mind and transforming small things into large, scary ones. You may need the help of someone else to figure out what it is, or it might be that you're in a situation where you've been hurt or suffered negative consequences before. While it may seem to be the most practical thing to hold still and defend what you already have, the truth is that there are other batters coming behind you and they need you to be able to get to the next base. You will have to take a lead at some point to be able to progress. It will be scary, and you will want to dive back to the base at the first sign the pitcher is going to throw over, but with time, and with surviving a few attempts to pick you off, you can build the confidence needed to take a safe lead, and maybe even attempt at steal.
This is also the card of letting go. Not in a full fire sale sort of way, necessarily, but humans remember what hurt them and keep that in mind to avoid being hurt the next time. It helps build the armor that seems necessary for interacting with the world. Too much armor, though, and it becomes impossible to move. Perhaps it is worth letting a little bit of that armor go so that you can stretch your limbs and explore a bit. At your own pace, of course, and with as much support as you can muster, because it's no good to send you out into the world from nothing. But there's a lot of great things to be done out in the world that you'll enjoy. Honest.
Humans are risk-averse creatures. Given the choice between a small payout with low or no risk and a large payout with a real possibility of getting nothing or losing money instead, the small payout wins for most people. The studies say this, anyway. The safer a life can be, the more it is preferable - at least to a point. Too much safety sometimes sparks rebellion and significantly increased risk with the intent of feeling alive again, or other motivations that stem from the reality that a life lived safely often lacks excitement. In this regard, baseball follows life. The fanatics are often displeased with teams that they feel are playing conservatively, regardless of what the score is, as a team that is behind clearly needs to play more aggressively to catch up, and a team that is ahead needs to play more aggressively to add to their lead. The conception of "running up the score" is mostly absent from baseball at the professional levels, because all teams at those levels can, with the right at if circumstances, score a bundle of runs in a short time. No lead is truly safe in baseball, because the game progresses by outs instead of time, and one big inning early in the game can be beaten by several small innings in sequence. Trying to hold a lead requires taking risk, because one can only record outs by risking the ball being hit somewhere that can score runs.
An example of play that is too conservative manifests on the basepaths with the idea of "hugging the base". While in the learning leagues, the idea of taking a lead is quashed because the physical capabilities of the defense aren't able to reliably record outs against steals, at any level that does allow leads from bases, to not take the lead and stay with one of both feet firmly in contact with the base is generally seen as a problem that needs correction.
Hugging the base provides safety - there's no way the runner can be put out by a pickoff of they're touching the base, so someone who worries about being fooled by such a move, or has heard about the effectiveness of a pickoff move, may find the easiest way to not worry is to make it not possible. Taking the surety provides peace of mind. Unfortunately, taking the safe behavior always has consequences, too. In this case, hugging the base means that the runner has to cover the full distance between bases on a batted ball. Unless they are a particularly speedy runner, it's much more likely that the runner without a lead will be out on a ground ball to the infield that is handled cleanly by the defenders. By not taking a lead, the runner is trading being put out by a relatively rare occurrence (the pickoff) for being put out by a relatively common occurrence (the ground ball).
Hugging the base is thus a failure of risk assessment. Being too concerned about remote possibilities can mean being unprepared for common ones. Trying to remove all risk from the situation at hand often means being exposed to a greater risk in the future. This is one of the dilemmas of parenting a child - as the child matures and can engage in complex thinking of their own, how much freedom do they have to engage in risk-taking of their own? The law prohibits them from operating multi-ton instruments of destruction until a certain age, and even then places restrictions on how and when they can do so as a matter of trying to prevent high-risk behavior. The insurance companies charge higher premiums for the young because they are likely to take their freedom and do risky things with it. Being away from home opens up the possibility of loss of new experiences for the young - sometimes in a relatively controlled environment, sometimes with the freedoms of being an adult in the eyes of the law. Depending on how much control parents and guardians want to exert, even trips to the library could be dangerous activities, since the books on the shelves may contain concepts that the adults feel aren't appropriate for the child to be learning about (either at that point of life or at all). Trying to find the balance between too much freedom and too little is difficult and only gets more so once independent thoughts and ideas about fairness get involved and young adults start making decisions of their own without parental input. There's only so much a coach can do - the players have to execute, and that means trusting them at the appropriate points to do their jobs. Which can mean encouraging them not to hug the base and not to be afraid of things that are less likely to happen.
The card ,should it appear in your reading, is a signal that the way you are thinking about things right now isn't a realistic assessment of the possible danger involved. Something is occupying your mind and transforming small things into large, scary ones. You may need the help of someone else to figure out what it is, or it might be that you're in a situation where you've been hurt or suffered negative consequences before. While it may seem to be the most practical thing to hold still and defend what you already have, the truth is that there are other batters coming behind you and they need you to be able to get to the next base. You will have to take a lead at some point to be able to progress. It will be scary, and you will want to dive back to the base at the first sign the pitcher is going to throw over, but with time, and with surviving a few attempts to pick you off, you can build the confidence needed to take a safe lead, and maybe even attempt at steal.
This is also the card of letting go. Not in a full fire sale sort of way, necessarily, but humans remember what hurt them and keep that in mind to avoid being hurt the next time. It helps build the armor that seems necessary for interacting with the world. Too much armor, though, and it becomes impossible to move. Perhaps it is worth letting a little bit of that armor go so that you can stretch your limbs and explore a bit. At your own pace, of course, and with as much support as you can muster, because it's no good to send you out into the world from nothing. But there's a lot of great things to be done out in the world that you'll enjoy. Honest.
