Sean Newcomb was just one out away on Sunday from becoming only the 15th Atlanta Braves pitcher to throw a no-hitter. Then a two-out single in the ninth by Chris Taylor of the Dodgers broke up his bid. After the game, he fielded the standard questions you would expect after almost reaching such an achievement. But 30 minutes later, Newcomb emerged from the locker room to answer a wholly different set of questions.

This time about his social media history.

Back in 2011 and 2012, Newcomb tweeted a racial epithet and several other of his tweets included gay slurs. The 25-year-old pitcher was just a senior in high school at the time, but he had to answer for his actions all the same. “I just wanted to apologize for any insensitive material,” Newcomb told the press. “It was a long time ago, six or seven years ago, saying some stupid stuff with friends. I know I’ve grown a lot since then. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just something stupid I did a long time ago, and I didn’t mean anything by it, for sure.”

When Newcomb says, “I didn’t mean anything by it,” that is disingenuous at best. Of course, he meant something, he posted it. Did he really not consider that using that kind of language was wrong in some way? No, what he really meant was that, at the time, he thought that his language and actions on social media didn’t matter. At 18 years old, he didn’t envision a world where his lack of sense would be put on display and rob him of a pretty special moment of professional glory.

Eventually, as Newcomb learned under the bright lights, our actions on social media catch up with us.

Ghosts of Social Past is not just a problem for Newcomb, it’s haunting people across sports, politics, and entertainment. Just in the last month, Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader and Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner had to apologize recently for their offensive “teenage tweets.” Inappropriate tweets brought down former Congressman Anthony Wiener. Even big Hollywood directors aren’t immune. James Gunn, director of the $1.6 Billion (and counting) Guardians of the Galaxy franchise was removed from the third installment because of some exceedingly questionable and inappropriate tweets commenting on pedophilia and rape.

As I write this, a handful of golfers have a legitimate chance later today of hoisting one of the most coveted of all trophies in golf. He will lift the Claret Jug to his lips, and drink deeply of victory and triumph. He will have won the British Open. The other 155 players who started this tournament last Thursday will toast with plain, regular-sized mugs, drinking the bitter ale of loss. One has to wonder, why do the lower ranked players even compete? If you’re the 150th ranked golfer among the 156 in the tournament, do you have a chance to touch Greatness or feel the thrill of victory?

We saw the same thing at Wimbledon last weekend. During the single’s event, 128 men and 128 women gathered to compete, but only one man and one woman were victorious. Novak Djokovic and Angelique Kerber won their respective events, but that means 254 tennis professionals, men, and women who play the game at a higher level than you or I ever could dream…lost.

That’s what I love about studying the mindset of athletes for hints into how we can perform better. When most sports professionals enter a competition, they understand that the possibility of loss is almost certainly greater than their chance at what everyone else would define as “glory.” Sometimes they can go years without winning. After losing time and time again, how do you get back up and try just as hard, or even harder, than before?

How can you lose, again and again, and still come back?