When I was younger, I thought I was going to be the best ballplayer in the world. It wasn’t so much that I was cocky — well, maybe just a little — I was simply a product of my environment, and the limited exposure I had to really talented opponents.

When my family returned stateside, we settled in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, and I attended a really small school. As early as my junior year in high school, I was already throwing over 90 mph, and I was touching 94 by my senior season. And when you’re a teenager doing things no one else around you can do, your ego tends to swell — there’s no way around it. (Being left-handed didn’t exactly hurt, either.)

Back then, I was being recruited by a dizzying number of universities to come play college ball for them. There were pro scouts at all the games, too, and it felt like everything revolved around me. Eventually, I was offered a full scholarship to attend Gonzaga University, my hometown school, but I ultimately decided to declare for the Major League draft. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I would be lying if I didn’t believe that I would quickly ascend to the Show, and that nothing was going to stand the way of my achieving greatness.

Ignorance, of course, was bliss.

I was a third round draft pick of the Kansas City Royals in 1997, but to say my minor league awakening was rude would be putting it lightly. During one season, I led the entire Royals’ organization and the Single-A league I was playing in with 15 losses. My time in the minors wasn’t all bad, of course, but I rarely gave up a hit in high school, let alone a run. The level of competition I had faced was was far inferior to what I saw in the minors.

All of a sudden, in the pros, everyone was able to hit my stuff — and that was an incredibly difficult thing for me to deal with.

I didn’t understand that giving up hits was part of the game. I had no perspective about how experiences — especially the kind where I got beat — were opportunities to learn something, to dust myself off and get better. I simply wasn’t used to failure, and I certainly wasn’t equipped to admit that being the best wasn’t necessarily in the cards for me.

At some point early on, playing became less about being great, and more about simply fulfilling my goal of making it to the Majors. I know it will make me sound like a stereotypical, out-of-touch and entitled athlete, but at the time, I was completely consumed with worry that if baseball didn’t work out, and the big payday never came, I might end up as some 25-year-old washout, with no education — forced to go find a “real job.”

Thankfully, my dad was there to set me straight. In his job, people’s lives were at stake when he failed. I was just playing a game, after all, so how could I ever consider quitting when my father had sacrificed so much in service of his country to do his job? Walking away just wasn’t an option, no matter how badly I felt about myself, or how hard I was getting hit.

Four years later, I made the Show at the age of 22, but it was more of the same. The hitters were bigger, stronger, faster and more experienced. The ball went even farther when hit. There was simply no room for error; even the briefest of mental lapses would lead to mistake pitches being crushed, and innings spiraling out of control.

Things went on like that for the majority of the first five years of my Major League career. I was rarely able to make it longer than five innings as a starter, and even when I was pitching relief, I had no idea what I was doing out there on the mound. I had no approach, I was just throwing stuff hoping it wouldn’t be hit.

And therein lied the problem.

In baseball, even the best hitters make an out 70 percent of the time. The entire game revolves around failure! To be successful, a player needs to realize that he isn’t going to have things go his way all the time — a concept which is especially valuable for a pitcher.

It really wasn’t until I arrived on a one-year in Cincinnati in 2008 that I finally embraced the idea of failure. A veteran hurler by the name of David Weathers helped open my eyes to the reality of the game. “Look, you’ve got good stuff,” he said, “but we pitch in a small ballpark, and you need pitch to contact around here. If you want to stick around in this league as a reliever, you need to get contact earlier in the count and let guys hit into outs. I am going to teach you how to throw a sinker.”