As I was thinking about last year and many of the sports headlines that riveted my attention, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern.

2013 could’ve been dubbed “The Year of the Lie”. It was a year that saw Lance Armstrong admit to lying about doping. We saw Heisman Trophy finalist Manti Te’o admit that his cancer stricken online girlfriend was fabricated by a “confused” man who had fallen in love with the Notre Dame linebacker. We saw Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens get passed over for the Baseball Hall of Fame. We heard allegations of more than 600 fixed soccer matches internationally–including the World Cup. We saw a Miami-based performance enhancement drug clinic lead to suspensions of star Major League Baseball players like Alex Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Ryan Braun.

Retired Major League manager Tony La Russa proves that in baseball (as in business), preparation and personal relationships give you a winning edge.

Tony La Russa is considered among the best in his business. Yet nearly half the time he led his organizations into competition, they were defeated—2,728 wins, 2,365 losses. That’s one of the great oddities of baseball: Success is relative. A hitter who fails 70 percent of the time at the plate is a potential member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and many World Championship teams lose more than 70 games during their title-winning seasons.