As we reach the latter end of the dog days of summer, as a baseball fan, I think about the impending pennant races and excitement to come as the fall approaches.
Recently, I was at a baseball game and watched as one of the players from my home team (the San Francisco Giants) battled against the opposing team’s pitcher, fouling off 7 or 8 balls before getting a solid hit to left field. These types of at-bats happen all the time in the major leagues, but for some reason this one stuck with me.
I realized how the type of mentality this batter had was exactly the mentality of those who are successful in their careers (and I would venture to say, in their lives in general).
For those not familiar with baseball, hitting a moving ball thrown at you from a little over 60 feet away at speeds as fast at 100mph is not easy. In fact, it is considered by some to be one of the hardest things to do in all of sport. With something coming at you so quickly, it is important to anticipate.
Not all balls that pitchers throw are fastballs straight down the middle of the plate. Many are curveballs (that change directions on their way toward the batter) or are change-ups, that look like fastballs but are as much as 20mph slower than the same pitcher’s fastball. As a batter, if you use the same swing and believe that every ball thrown would be a fastball, then a large portion of the time you would be swinging and missing.
In our careers, things aren’t always straight forward (fastballs). Many times things quickly change (change-ups) or something unexpected happens that we have never experienced before (curveballs). To be successful, we can’t always assume that things will be straightforward. We can’t assume that we will always get the next promotion opportunity. We can’t assume that if we always consistently produce the best results that rewards will flow to us in-kind. To be successful, we must anticipate curveballs and expect the unexpected.
What good baseball players (and this particular batter from the game I recently watched) do is strategize and look for a specific pitch. Depending on the count (number of balls and strikes), the game situation and the pitcher, the batter will make a plan for the pitch he thinks will be thrown. He will prepare for a low or high ball, a ball thrown inside or outside. This is analogous to goals that we set and opportunities that we look for. Often, however, the pitch you guess is not the pitch thrown.
Good players not only make a strategy according to where they think the ball is going, but more importantly, they make sure that they have a way to make contact with the ball even when what they anticipate is wrong. In the game I watched, this batter defended against the unanticipated pitches by “fouling” them off (where he would make contact with the ball but would hit it off a sub-optimal part of the bat, making the ball land outside of the field area).
Pitch after pitch, he received balls that were either unexpected or not what he was looking for. Yet he kept his at-bat alive, waiting for the pitch he really wanted.
The career equivalent is patience and resiliency. We will all face adversity and obstacles (i.e. the unanticipated or undesirable pitches) and it is important that we are able to persevere and wait for the moments where we can be truly successful. Yet we must get through all the other obstacles before we are faced with the right opportunity. For this batter it took over 10 pitches for him to find the one he was looking for, and he still needed to foul-off the others to get to the right pitch.
Finally, the batter connected with the ball and got on base. Eventually the batter ended up scoring and represented the go-ahead run that won the game for his team.
Remember to strategize to determine the opportunities you want (the pitches you are looking for) and more importantly, be able to persevere and be patient through all the obstacles you face (the pitches that are hard to hit). Eventually if you keep your at-bat alive, you will find the pitch you are looking for and will get a hit that may very be the success that defines your career.
