"You Got to Go With What You Got" is a central tenet
of baseball philosophy

one of the great things about it is that each word is
short, simple and awkwardly placed

also, its grammatically incorrect; and at first, you're
not really sure what it refers to

it seems like something the great baseball philoso-
pher Yogi Berra might have said - a Yogiism

and therefore you sense that there is some deep
meaning hidden among those simple and jumbled
words

in baseball, "You Got to Go With What You Got" is
often applied to pitchers

each pitcher has a repertoire of pitches; for example,
a fastball might be his best pitch - his strikeout pitch

he may also have a decent curveball and slider,
pitches he can rely on

but one of the mysteries of baseball is that on any
given night, one, two or all three of the pitches in
his repertoire may be ineffective and -

he gets knocked around in the early innings

you might hear the TV play-by-play announcer say,
"He just doesn't seem to have his fastball tonight."

to which the color commentator will respond,
"Yeah, he's just gonna have to go with what he's
got, his curveball and slider"

and all this is part of the greatness of baseball,
part of its philosophy; a philosophy we can apply
to our daily lives

you and i may not have a repertoire of pitches
per se; but we have repertoire of skills and assets;

and we rely on these when we "take the field"
each day to go up against challenges at our place
of work

your "best pitch" might be the love that you bring
to the job

or maybe your best pitch is smarts - your
intelligence and experience

then again maybe it's will - persistence and
determination to see things through

but whatever the repertoire of skills; whatever your
chief skill or asset happens to be -

some days you just don't got it, it just isn't there;
you are without your best pitch, and maybe another

like the savvy, veteran pitcher, you have to make do -

You got to go with what you got.