But they also know that the only score that really matters is the final score. The best teams may get discouraged, disheartened, disillusioned. But they don't give up. The best teams continue to give it everything they've got, knowing that even seemingly hopeless games can be turned around in the ninth inning. And the best players never walk away just because they don't like the score after four or five innings.
Baseball is obviously very different from investing.
But there are some similarities. At the end of a lifetime of investing, or when you are ready to kick back and retire, what matters is how much you have in assets. You either have what you need, or you don't. But like baseball players, the best investors don't walk out just because they dislike the interim score. They know they may have to wait three years or three decades to find out the score that matters, the final score.