"The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man's determination"
About this Quote
Lasorda’s line is motivational, sure, but it’s also a coach’s sleight of hand: it takes a messy world of talent gaps, budgets, injuries, bad calls, and plain luck, and refocuses the camera on the only variable a clubhouse can control. “Impossible” and “possible” aren’t treated as facts here; they’re treated as moods. The trick is in “lies in” and “determination” - soft, almost elastic words that imply the boundary between failure and breakthrough isn’t a wall, it’s a decision.
The gendered “a man’s” dates the sentiment, but it also signals the era and the audience: a mid-to-late 20th-century baseball culture that prized toughness as a moral identity. Lasorda, who built his legend less as a tactician than as a force of personality, understood that belief is a performance you stage for other people. Determination isn’t just inner grit; it’s contagious discipline, the thing that makes a tired roster play like it expects to win.
Subtext: stop negotiating with your own excuses. Coaches use statements like this to preempt the slow creep of defeatism that can infect a season. It’s not philosophical; it’s operational. In a sport built on failure (even the best hitters miss most of the time), “determination” becomes a way to reclaim agency after the thousand small humiliations that statistics don’t dramatize.
There’s a second edge, too: the quote flatters the listener into responsibility. If the possible is just determination, then not trying hard enough becomes the only truly unacceptable loss. That’s inspiring - and slightly ruthless - which is exactly how a clubhouse pep talk is supposed to feel.
The gendered “a man’s” dates the sentiment, but it also signals the era and the audience: a mid-to-late 20th-century baseball culture that prized toughness as a moral identity. Lasorda, who built his legend less as a tactician than as a force of personality, understood that belief is a performance you stage for other people. Determination isn’t just inner grit; it’s contagious discipline, the thing that makes a tired roster play like it expects to win.
Subtext: stop negotiating with your own excuses. Coaches use statements like this to preempt the slow creep of defeatism that can infect a season. It’s not philosophical; it’s operational. In a sport built on failure (even the best hitters miss most of the time), “determination” becomes a way to reclaim agency after the thousand small humiliations that statistics don’t dramatize.
There’s a second edge, too: the quote flatters the listener into responsibility. If the possible is just determination, then not trying hard enough becomes the only truly unacceptable loss. That’s inspiring - and slightly ruthless - which is exactly how a clubhouse pep talk is supposed to feel.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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