My dad always used to say this about hitting. This was most true when I was in Little League: the 11-year-old fielders were unreliable, so if you could avoid striking out there was always a realistic chance that a "good thing" would happen.
(I apologize if this is not obvious to some of my audience. I'm talking about baseball! I'd also like to make it clear that my dad was not an 'overbearing American sports father,' I'm grateful for the fact that he never yelled at me from the stands like other parents did.)
Maybe the same is true of photography. Instead of 'put the ball in play,' it's 'click the shutter.' I went through almost a whole roll of Golden Half pictures at the recent King Khan show here in San Francisco, and I was surprised to find a couple of pictures that I thought were not "half" bad, if nowhere near great.
In baseball, having a good eye means being able to lay off pitches out of the strike zone. In photography, is it just knowing how to throw out all your crap?