Random musings: Baseball and Business Have A Lot In Common

Monday, June 11, 2018

Baseball and Business Have A Lot In Common

Today's post is from an email that I received from Harvey Mackay:

Baseball teaches many lessons and offers plenty of inspiration, even from decades-old stories. So many examples of innovation and perseverance come from the sport. And they often relate to business.

One example is the following:

We’re often told in business that we should work on our weaknesses instead of our strengths, but let me tell you about Jim Kaat, who pitched many years for my hometown Minnesota Twins. Kaat went in to talk to his new pitching coach, Johnny Sain, during spring training before the 1966 season. Sain asked Kaat to name his top four pitches and what pitches he felt he should work on the most.

Kaat said his best pitch was his fastball, followed by his curve, slider and changeup. He thought if he improved on his slider and changeup, he would have a good season.

His coach disagreed. Sain told him: “I want you to take a different approach. Work on your fastball. I know it’s your favorite pitch so go out there in practice, warm-ups and during games and concentrate on your fastball. Throw your fastball 80-90 percent of the time all year, and you’ll win a lot of ball games.”

That season, Kaat threw fastball after fastball and won 26 games to become the American League’s pitcher of the year.

For many years, the conventional wisdom was to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but it seems to be changing now. From Adventure Associates:

Instead of worrying about your weaknesses, concentrate on your strengths. Numerous studies have shown the benefits of focusing on our strengths. Some of these include increased happiness, lowered stress levels, more energy and better health. Likewise, when we concentrate on our strengths we also develop much faster.

These all sound like good things to me!

I especially liked this one:

A baseball manager made an announcement to his team at the hotel on the morning of the game that there would be two buses leaving for the ballpark. “The 2 p.m. bus will be for those players who need extra work, and the empty bus will be leaving at 5 p.m.”

As Harvey says "The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement."