You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you.

In the annals of sport and of wisdom disguised as jest, none spoke with such paradoxical clarity as Yogi Berra. His sayings, clothed in humor, often carried the weight of truth, like riddles whispered by the ancients. Among them was his immortal line: “You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.” To the careless ear, it is nonsense; to the careful heart, it is revelation. For in these playful words lies a reminder of inevitability, of the simplicity of victory and defeat, and of the ways truth can be hidden within absurdity.

At its heart, Berra’s saying is a tautology: if one team had been victorious, the other could not have been. Yet by stating the obvious with such earnest humor, Berra awakens us to the strange clarity of competition. In the contest of life, as in the contest of baseball, there can only be one victor. It is as simple, and as profound, as that. His words strip away excuses, analyses, and debates, leaving only the bare reality: the outcome is decided by what was done, not by what might have been.

The ancients, too, treasured such riddles. Consider the oracle of Delphi, whose pronouncements often seemed tangled and perplexing. To Croesus, king of Lydia, the oracle declared, “If you go to war, you will destroy a great empire.” He went to war and indeed destroyed an empire—his own. So too with Berra: his playful tautology, though amusing, is truth wrapped in irony. If his team had prevailed, the other would not have triumphed. What could be simpler, or more profound, than the plain acknowledgment of reality itself?

Berra’s humor also reminds us of the futility of regret. How often in life do men say, “If only I had done this, then I would have won, I would have succeeded.” But Yogi’s words cut through such laments. If you had won, the other would not have. But you did not win, and so the truth stands. His saying is a call to live not in the world of if, but in the world of is. Victory belongs not to those who dwell in hypotheticals, but to those who act and secure it in reality.

A story from history echoes this wisdom. In the American Civil War, after the bloody battle of Gettysburg, Confederate generals lamented what might have been had they charged differently, had they held a hill, had they attacked at another hour. But as Union General George Meade said simply, the result was what it was: they had held, and thus they had won. The Confederacy could lament forever, but the truth remained. As Yogi might have put it, “You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.”

Thus the lesson is clear: do not dwell endlessly on what might have been. Learn from your failures, yes, but do not build castles in the air of fantasy victories. What happened is what matters. What is done is done. Let your regrets become your teachers, not your masters. Step forward into tomorrow with clearer eyes, for the past cannot be changed, only remembered.

So let the playful wisdom of Yogi Berra be carried as teaching: “You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.” Embrace its humor, but do not miss its truth. Life is not lived in the land of might-have-been; it is lived in the realm of what is. Accept reality, laugh at its simplicity, and then prepare for the next contest with courage. For laughter clears the heart, and truth, however plain, is the surest ground upon which to stand.