Renowned American Humorist Will Rogers once wrote,
There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
"You've got a gift Roy - but it's not enough - you've got to develop yourself."
The magazine was Men's Journal. The issue was November, 1997. The contentious question hanging in the air was who would replace Michael Jordan as the NBA's iconic face? Who would follow him like he followed Bird and Magic, yet in following them went on to set a new standard of excellence that might never be replicated? Could anyone be the next Jordan?
"Jordan is the greatest team athlete this country has ever produced. He accepts the responsibility, every night, of being that kind of star, of being Michael Jordan."
Okay, that made sense to me, but the author introduced a story I'd not heard, one that had been told to Jordan about Joe DiMaggio.
DiMaggio came to the ballpark each night thinking "there must be someone in the stands who was watching him in person for the first - and only - time. And how that motivated him to at least try to be at his best."
Jordan, like DiMaggio, and Musial and Gibson (homer footnote here) never mailed in a performance. He was renown for his practice intensity right up to the day before he retired. He won everything he could win in his sport, multiple times, but never stopped bringing his intensity.
I've told this story many times to many sales training classes. Each time I challenged them to think like Jordan or DiMaggio.
Approach each office as if there's at least one customer who is encountering them for the first and perhaps only time and represent their company and themselves the best they can. Get up each day, look in the mirror and tell yourself, I'm going to encounter people today who will judge me on my performance and this is the only day they'll see that performance so I need to be at my best.
It's unbelievably difficult to bring that level of intensity and excellence to your personal playing field every single day. But it's doable. Not once did I have to make a sales call with Patrick Ewing on my back or Bill Laimbeer trying to take my head off. Michael Jordan had to work his way through human land mines every game.
I've reminded sales trainees and product managers that every spring the best baseball players in the world go to spring training - to train and practice.
Sports are so competitive now that most athletes never stop training. During my time as president of Abbott Canada I was invited to play in the Montreal Canadiens annual golf outing. Each three- person team was allowed to draft a Canadiens' player. We drafted, a goalie, Jeff Hackett. About the third hole, I asked him what he did in the off-season. He looked at me like I had twenty-five clubs in my bag and asked incredulously, "Off season?"
"Man there is no off-season. It's so competitive out there that when this season is over, I'll be training for the next one."
Yet, many of you have trouble convincing your sales people they need to role play and practice with sales material. There is no off-season in sales or marketing or managing your business and as Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back. Someone might be gaining on you." Trust me. They are.
Each summer the best football players in the world show up for training camp. The best hockey players in the world arrive at training camp. The best basketball players in the world practice every week.
Yet rising above all these greatest in the world players was Michael Jordan and Joe DiMaggio and Joe Montana and Walter Payton, because they knew that each and every day they were being measured and they wanted to be the best every single time.
Roy Hobbs, the fictional ball player in The Natural, had a gift, but it wasn't enough and late in his career, he echoed the lament of every athlete whose dream didn't match up to their career.
"And then when I walked down the street, people would've looked, they would've said 'there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there was in the game.'"
It's never too late to develop your gift, to be the best you can be - in your game - every day.
"Jordan is the greatest team athlete this country has ever produced. He accepts the responsibility, every night, of being that kind of star, of being Michael Jordan."
Okay, that made sense to me, but the author introduced a story I'd not heard, one that had been told to Jordan about Joe DiMaggio.
DiMaggio came to the ballpark each night thinking "there must be someone in the stands who was watching him in person for the first - and only - time. And how that motivated him to at least try to be at his best."
Jordan, like DiMaggio, and Musial and Gibson (homer footnote here) never mailed in a performance. He was renown for his practice intensity right up to the day before he retired. He won everything he could win in his sport, multiple times, but never stopped bringing his intensity.
I've told this story many times to many sales training classes. Each time I challenged them to think like Jordan or DiMaggio.
Approach each office as if there's at least one customer who is encountering them for the first and perhaps only time and represent their company and themselves the best they can. Get up each day, look in the mirror and tell yourself, I'm going to encounter people today who will judge me on my performance and this is the only day they'll see that performance so I need to be at my best.
It's unbelievably difficult to bring that level of intensity and excellence to your personal playing field every single day. But it's doable. Not once did I have to make a sales call with Patrick Ewing on my back or Bill Laimbeer trying to take my head off. Michael Jordan had to work his way through human land mines every game.
I've reminded sales trainees and product managers that every spring the best baseball players in the world go to spring training - to train and practice.
Sports are so competitive now that most athletes never stop training. During my time as president of Abbott Canada I was invited to play in the Montreal Canadiens annual golf outing. Each three- person team was allowed to draft a Canadiens' player. We drafted, a goalie, Jeff Hackett. About the third hole, I asked him what he did in the off-season. He looked at me like I had twenty-five clubs in my bag and asked incredulously, "Off season?"
"Man there is no off-season. It's so competitive out there that when this season is over, I'll be training for the next one."
Yet, many of you have trouble convincing your sales people they need to role play and practice with sales material. There is no off-season in sales or marketing or managing your business and as Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back. Someone might be gaining on you." Trust me. They are.
Each summer the best football players in the world show up for training camp. The best hockey players in the world arrive at training camp. The best basketball players in the world practice every week.
Yet rising above all these greatest in the world players was Michael Jordan and Joe DiMaggio and Joe Montana and Walter Payton, because they knew that each and every day they were being measured and they wanted to be the best every single time.
Roy Hobbs, the fictional ball player in The Natural, had a gift, but it wasn't enough and late in his career, he echoed the lament of every athlete whose dream didn't match up to their career.
"And then when I walked down the street, people would've looked, they would've said 'there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there was in the game.'"
It's never too late to develop your gift, to be the best you can be - in your game - every day.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Is Hell Endothermic or Exothermic? Back to College Night on Crownfire212
A University of Washington chemistry professor put the following midterm exam question to his students:
Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with proof.
While most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant, one enterprising and damn creative student wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today.
Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls will go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperture(sic) and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.
#1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
#2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during my freshman year, "That it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic.
The student received the only A on the exam.
If you fail at something today.......
Babe Ruth said about striking out: "I'm that much closer to my next home run."
Thomas Edison said he never failed, he just "found a thousand ways that didn't work."
Ralph Waldo Emerson on failure: "Our greatest glory is not in ever failing, but in rising up every time we fail."
"Only dead fish swim with the stream." Anonymous
Thomas Edison said he never failed, he just "found a thousand ways that didn't work."
Ralph Waldo Emerson on failure: "Our greatest glory is not in ever failing, but in rising up every time we fail."
"Only dead fish swim with the stream." Anonymous
Saturday, April 23, 2011
If I Leave Here Tomorrow, Would You Still Remember Me?
Yesterday's obituary retrospective led me to another recent obituary of someone whose life would be ordinary if it weren't for a young man he marched to the principal's office because his hair was too long.
During the late '60s and early '70s Lynyrd Skynyrd was making Sweet Home Alabama a multi-Platinum hit. Same with Freebird. What most of you don't know, though I'm willing to concede that only I wasn't aware, is how the band came by its name. It's a story that leads us to last September's obituary for a former Jacksonville, Florida school teacher named Leonard Skinner.
Leonard Skinner was a gym teacher and a hard nosed, red neck, passionate enforcer of his Jacksonville, Florida school's long hair ban about the time I was a high school student in Ellisville, Missouri. He became famous the day he sent Gary Rossington to the principal's office for his hair. Rossington was a member of a local band that would go on to become Leonard Skinnered, a not so celebratory tribute to Skinner. In 1972 the band would change it's name to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
As I read about Mr. Skinner I was taken back to my years in Lafayette High School, '66-'70. Somewhere in that nearly half a decade, I was the manager of a band called Plush; The Acid Rock Sound of Plush was printed on our business cards. The reason I was manager to a group of my buddies - Bill, Ronnie, Terry and Joe -was my mom's station wagon. No one else had room for the drums.
We did not have a gym teacher named Plush. Had we named our band after the toughest teacher we knew it would have been called Harold Lackey or The Green Weenies, his football affectionate title for the freshman players.
Like Gary Rossington and his fellow band members, we were getting walked to the principle's office. We were a generation searching for an identity; a search running head long into authority. So we decided the only way to deal with that authority was to disobey it. Hair was one of the best ways, but there were plenty of others.
Go to class? Nope, skip class.
Don't pull this handle. Forget it. Pull the handle.
Sit there. Not on your life. I'm sitting where I want.
Be quiet. Talk.
Get a haircut! Grow the hair. No matter how bad it looks. Throw in a mustache too.
Hard on our ears were Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride and Born to be Wild; The Doors' Touch Me; Richard Harris's McArthur Park and John Lennon's Hey Jude. Plush played all of these songs with an awkwardness that likely mirrored our rebellion, purposeful but uncertain, dedicated but easily detoured. Our rebelliousness grew as we entered our senior year. Amplifying our particular form of rebellion was a world that felt more uncertain than any since World War II.
Our country seemed to be dissolving into anarchy. ROTC buildings torched. Marches on Washington, marches on state capitals, marches on everything set in concrete and in place more than one hundred years. The most visible signal we could send to our own local institutions - parents and high school teachers and principals and police and the managers of the fast food restaurants we all did a stint in - that we were rebelling was to grow our hair, wear jeans with flared bottoms, try to grow mustaches, listen to albums the lyrics of which frightened our parents; lyrics like
Like a true nature's child
We were born to be wild.
Little did we know that we were really born to be sales people, product managers, computer programmers and truck drivers.
Chief of the Lafayette High School hair growers, the Dalai Lama of Long Hair was a young man named Dennis - Denny - Bond aka Hair as he was called in the 1969 year book. He was just about the coolest guy in a school going through a transition not unlike the country we lived in. From rural and red neck to suburban sprawl cool. Our school was a microcosm of this change, loaded still with rural, red neck tough guys running right up against change and not liking it one bit.
A lot of us spent a disproportionate amount of time finding unique ways to leave the school grounds without passing within a mile of the rural, red neck, tough guys who were determined to prove that suburban sprawl cool was no more than a fad and could be beat back with a few good beatings ...... of guys like me. Denny Bond was our savior. A great athlete - perhaps the best in a school transitioning into a state athletic power - and tougher than any of us understood until the day when we rounded that symbolic curve in the road and came hard upon - Hair taking on the toughest of all the tough guys. After school. In front of a crowd that would rival an Ali-Frazier fight. And winning. Big.
That day one of our searches ended. We could quit searching for a way to leave the school free from five knuckles in our face. Though I'm certain before we fell asleep that night we knew we had a lifetime of searches ahead, and our worries were far from over.
No band was named after Denny Bond. Plush had already disbanded, partly a victim of the unrepairable damage I did to my mom's station wagon.
In Jacksonville, Florida Leonard Skinner walked Gary Rossington to the principal's office for having long hair and became what the NY Times called "arguably the most influential high school gym teacher in American popular culture." In Ellisville, Missouri Denny Bond walked out of the school, and fought for long hair and the rebellion it represented then drifted into anonymity.
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling now,
Cause there's too many places I've got to see.
-Freebird, Lynyrd Skynyrd
During the late '60s and early '70s Lynyrd Skynyrd was making Sweet Home Alabama a multi-Platinum hit. Same with Freebird. What most of you don't know, though I'm willing to concede that only I wasn't aware, is how the band came by its name. It's a story that leads us to last September's obituary for a former Jacksonville, Florida school teacher named Leonard Skinner.
Leonard Skinner was a gym teacher and a hard nosed, red neck, passionate enforcer of his Jacksonville, Florida school's long hair ban about the time I was a high school student in Ellisville, Missouri. He became famous the day he sent Gary Rossington to the principal's office for his hair. Rossington was a member of a local band that would go on to become Leonard Skinnered, a not so celebratory tribute to Skinner. In 1972 the band would change it's name to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
As I read about Mr. Skinner I was taken back to my years in Lafayette High School, '66-'70. Somewhere in that nearly half a decade, I was the manager of a band called Plush; The Acid Rock Sound of Plush was printed on our business cards. The reason I was manager to a group of my buddies - Bill, Ronnie, Terry and Joe -was my mom's station wagon. No one else had room for the drums.
We did not have a gym teacher named Plush. Had we named our band after the toughest teacher we knew it would have been called Harold Lackey or The Green Weenies, his football affectionate title for the freshman players.
Like Gary Rossington and his fellow band members, we were getting walked to the principle's office. We were a generation searching for an identity; a search running head long into authority. So we decided the only way to deal with that authority was to disobey it. Hair was one of the best ways, but there were plenty of others.
Go to class? Nope, skip class.
Don't pull this handle. Forget it. Pull the handle.
Sit there. Not on your life. I'm sitting where I want.
Be quiet. Talk.
Get a haircut! Grow the hair. No matter how bad it looks. Throw in a mustache too.
Hard on our ears were Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride and Born to be Wild; The Doors' Touch Me; Richard Harris's McArthur Park and John Lennon's Hey Jude. Plush played all of these songs with an awkwardness that likely mirrored our rebellion, purposeful but uncertain, dedicated but easily detoured. Our rebelliousness grew as we entered our senior year. Amplifying our particular form of rebellion was a world that felt more uncertain than any since World War II.
Our country seemed to be dissolving into anarchy. ROTC buildings torched. Marches on Washington, marches on state capitals, marches on everything set in concrete and in place more than one hundred years. The most visible signal we could send to our own local institutions - parents and high school teachers and principals and police and the managers of the fast food restaurants we all did a stint in - that we were rebelling was to grow our hair, wear jeans with flared bottoms, try to grow mustaches, listen to albums the lyrics of which frightened our parents; lyrics like
Like a true nature's child
We were born to be wild.
Little did we know that we were really born to be sales people, product managers, computer programmers and truck drivers.
Chief of the Lafayette High School hair growers, the Dalai Lama of Long Hair was a young man named Dennis - Denny - Bond aka Hair as he was called in the 1969 year book. He was just about the coolest guy in a school going through a transition not unlike the country we lived in. From rural and red neck to suburban sprawl cool. Our school was a microcosm of this change, loaded still with rural, red neck tough guys running right up against change and not liking it one bit.
A lot of us spent a disproportionate amount of time finding unique ways to leave the school grounds without passing within a mile of the rural, red neck, tough guys who were determined to prove that suburban sprawl cool was no more than a fad and could be beat back with a few good beatings ...... of guys like me. Denny Bond was our savior. A great athlete - perhaps the best in a school transitioning into a state athletic power - and tougher than any of us understood until the day when we rounded that symbolic curve in the road and came hard upon - Hair taking on the toughest of all the tough guys. After school. In front of a crowd that would rival an Ali-Frazier fight. And winning. Big.
That day one of our searches ended. We could quit searching for a way to leave the school free from five knuckles in our face. Though I'm certain before we fell asleep that night we knew we had a lifetime of searches ahead, and our worries were far from over.
No band was named after Denny Bond. Plush had already disbanded, partly a victim of the unrepairable damage I did to my mom's station wagon.
In Jacksonville, Florida Leonard Skinner walked Gary Rossington to the principal's office for having long hair and became what the NY Times called "arguably the most influential high school gym teacher in American popular culture." In Ellisville, Missouri Denny Bond walked out of the school, and fought for long hair and the rebellion it represented then drifted into anonymity.
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling now,
Cause there's too many places I've got to see.
-Freebird, Lynyrd Skynyrd
Friday, April 22, 2011
Catching Up: Celebrity Obituaries
From time to time, on the anniversary of their death, I look forward to recognizing iconic figures that have shaped my life and our culture; people such as Dean Vernon Wormer.
Dean Wormer died February 1, 2005. Noted for his leadership of Emil Faber College, Dean Wormer was renowned in education circles for his innovative disciplinary methods including the double secret probation. Surviving Dean Wormer and oft quoted among education leaders today:
"Put Niedermeyer on it. He's a sneaky little shit just like you."
"Put a sock in it boy, or else you'll be out of here like shit through a goose."
And of course, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
One of those oft-disciplined Faber students, Bluto Blutarsky, aka, John Belushi died March 5, 1982. It's impossible to imagine planet earth without Belushi's many contributions:
"Food fight!"
"Toga! Toga! Toga!"
"No Coke. Pepsi."
"How much for the women? We want to buy your women."
Christ! Seven years of college, down the drain."
and of course,
"Nothing is over until we say it is. Was it over when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
And finally, March 14, 2006 Ann Calvello died. Ann Calvello and Roller Derby. Epic duels with Joanie Weston. Seven decades of being the queen of the penalty box. Enough said. I'll never forget a visit by the Roller Derby greats to the University of Missouri in Columbia my senior year, 1975. (We were a cultural hot bed.) Classic headline in the Columbia Missourian the following morning:
Roller Derby Marred by Few Minutes of Skating.
Celebrities I'll feature in the coming months: Elden Auker, the last living pitcher to face Babe Ruth; Rodney Dangerfield and Chris Farley. Let me know who shaped your life, so we can give that person(s) the appropriate recognition.
Happy Easter!
Dean Wormer died February 1, 2005. Noted for his leadership of Emil Faber College, Dean Wormer was renowned in education circles for his innovative disciplinary methods including the double secret probation. Surviving Dean Wormer and oft quoted among education leaders today:
"Put Niedermeyer on it. He's a sneaky little shit just like you."
"Put a sock in it boy, or else you'll be out of here like shit through a goose."
And of course, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
One of those oft-disciplined Faber students, Bluto Blutarsky, aka, John Belushi died March 5, 1982. It's impossible to imagine planet earth without Belushi's many contributions:
"Food fight!"
"Toga! Toga! Toga!"
"No Coke. Pepsi."
"How much for the women? We want to buy your women."
Christ! Seven years of college, down the drain."
and of course,
"Nothing is over until we say it is. Was it over when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
And finally, March 14, 2006 Ann Calvello died. Ann Calvello and Roller Derby. Epic duels with Joanie Weston. Seven decades of being the queen of the penalty box. Enough said. I'll never forget a visit by the Roller Derby greats to the University of Missouri in Columbia my senior year, 1975. (We were a cultural hot bed.) Classic headline in the Columbia Missourian the following morning:
Roller Derby Marred by Few Minutes of Skating.
Celebrities I'll feature in the coming months: Elden Auker, the last living pitcher to face Babe Ruth; Rodney Dangerfield and Chris Farley. Let me know who shaped your life, so we can give that person(s) the appropriate recognition.
Happy Easter!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Laws of Golf - Sent by a Good Friend and an Excellent Golfer for Whom the Vast Majority of These Laws do not Apply
The fundamental laws of golf
Don't buy a putter until you've had a chance to throw it.
Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during
your swing.
When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either use one
more club or two more balls.
If you're afraid a full shot might reach the green while the foursome
ahead of you is still putting out, you have two options: you can
immediately shank a lay-up or you can wait until the green is clear and
top a ball halfway there.
The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas
about the golf swing.
No matter how bad you are playing, it is always possible to play worse.
The inevitable result of any golf lesson is the instant elimination of
the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for
all of your many other errors
Everyone replaces his divot after a perfect approach shot.
A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponents' luck.
It is surprisingly easy to hole a thirty foot putt . For a 10.
Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like
expecting him to make fun of his own haircut.
Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts
It's not a gimme if you're still away.
The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a
straight line that passes directly through the centre of a very large
tree.
You can hit a two acre fairway 10% of the time and a two inch branch 90%
of the time.
If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a
much earlier age.
Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually
the beginning of the next group of three.
When you look up, causing an awful shot, you will always look down again
at exactly the moment when you ought to start watching the ball if you
ever want to see it again.
Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two double
bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.
If you want to hit a 7 iron as far as Tiger Woods does, simply try to
use it to lay up just short of a water hazard.
To calculate the speed of a player's downswing, multiply the speed of
his back-swing by his handicap; i.e., back-swing 20 mph, handicap 15,
downswing = 300 mph.
One of my pe rsonal favorites:
There are two things you can learn by stopping your back-swing at the
top and checking the position of your hands: how many hands you have,
and which one is wearing the glove.
Hazards attract; fairways repel.
A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.
If there is a ball on the fringe and a ball in the bunker, your ball is
in the bunker. If both balls are in the bunker, yours is in the
footprint
It's easier to get up at 6:00 AM to play golf than at 10:00am to mow the
grass.
A good drive on the 18th hole has stopped many a golfer from giving up
the game.
A good golf partner is one who's always slightly worse than you
are....that's why I get so many calls to play with friends.
If there's a storm rolling in, you'll be having the game of your life.
Golf balls are like eggs. They're white. They're sold by the dozen. And
you need to buy fresh ones each week.
It's amazing how a golfer who never helps out around the house will
replace his divots, repair his ball marks, and rake his sand traps.
If your opponent has trouble remembering whether he shot a six or a
seven, he probably shot an eight (or worse).
It takes longer to learn to be a good golfer than it does to become a
brain surgeon. On the other hand, you don't get to ride around on a
cart, drink
beer, eat hot dogs when you are performing Brain Surgery !!!!
GOLF: AN INEFFECTUAL ENDEAVOR TO PUT AN INSIGNIFICANT PELLET INTO AN
OBSCURE HOLE WITH ENTIRELY INADEQUATE WEAPONS.
Don't buy a putter until you've had a chance to throw it.
Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during
your swing.
When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either use one
more club or two more balls.
If you're afraid a full shot might reach the green while the foursome
ahead of you is still putting out, you have two options: you can
immediately shank a lay-up or you can wait until the green is clear and
top a ball halfway there.
The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas
about the golf swing.
No matter how bad you are playing, it is always possible to play worse.
The inevitable result of any golf lesson is the instant elimination of
the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for
all of your many other errors
Everyone replaces his divot after a perfect approach shot.
A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponents' luck.
It is surprisingly easy to hole a thirty foot putt . For a 10.
Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like
expecting him to make fun of his own haircut.
Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts
It's not a gimme if you're still away.
The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a
straight line that passes directly through the centre of a very large
tree.
You can hit a two acre fairway 10% of the time and a two inch branch 90%
of the time.
If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a
much earlier age.
Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually
the beginning of the next group of three.
When you look up, causing an awful shot, you will always look down again
at exactly the moment when you ought to start watching the ball if you
ever want to see it again.
Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two double
bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.
If you want to hit a 7 iron as far as Tiger Woods does, simply try to
use it to lay up just short of a water hazard.
To calculate the speed of a player's downswing, multiply the speed of
his back-swing by his handicap; i.e., back-swing 20 mph, handicap 15,
downswing = 300 mph.
One of my pe rsonal favorites:
There are two things you can learn by stopping your back-swing at the
top and checking the position of your hands: how many hands you have,
and which one is wearing the glove.
Hazards attract; fairways repel.
A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.
If there is a ball on the fringe and a ball in the bunker, your ball is
in the bunker. If both balls are in the bunker, yours is in the
footprint
It's easier to get up at 6:00 AM to play golf than at 10:00am to mow the
grass.
A good drive on the 18th hole has stopped many a golfer from giving up
the game.
A good golf partner is one who's always slightly worse than you
are....that's why I get so many calls to play with friends.
If there's a storm rolling in, you'll be having the game of your life.
Golf balls are like eggs. They're white. They're sold by the dozen. And
you need to buy fresh ones each week.
It's amazing how a golfer who never helps out around the house will
replace his divots, repair his ball marks, and rake his sand traps.
If your opponent has trouble remembering whether he shot a six or a
seven, he probably shot an eight (or worse).
It takes longer to learn to be a good golfer than it does to become a
brain surgeon. On the other hand, you don't get to ride around on a
cart, drink
beer, eat hot dogs when you are performing Brain Surgery !!!!
GOLF: AN INEFFECTUAL ENDEAVOR TO PUT AN INSIGNIFICANT PELLET INTO AN
OBSCURE HOLE WITH ENTIRELY INADEQUATE WEAPONS.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Something to Sleep On
The measure of a person's real character is what they would do if they would never be found out.
-ThomasMacauley
-ThomasMacauley
Celebrating the Top 200 Mom-Owned Businesses
Out there on the web is a place called StartUpNation.com. Check it out. But if you really want to get a flavor for the American economy at its root, take a look at the competition to find the top mom owned business, the mom-trepeneur of the year. StartUpNation has posted 200 businesses and the web address is attached to each one.
The variety of businesses is almost endless; everything from baking, carpet design, financial planning, social media design, keep you on time support networks, local information from a trusted source, t-shirts, premium design, you name it. I found PumpAPair, device(s) for assisting in breast milk collection that allows you to......pump better.
I only discovered the site, because during my search for the ultimate greeting card I stumbled upon Across The Line Cards, the creation of a California mom named Lynn Felter. I bought so many cards, she discovered me. How many business owners send you an e-mail thanking you for your business? I've had a lot of dry cleaning done and never received a note from the dry cleaner. Not one call from the post office. Gas station? Not a word.
That's what I love about these small businesses and the people who run them. Check them out. Find something to buy. Bring back America not through GE or Exxon or the NFL, but through women like Lynn who toil away creating greetings like the one featuring a mother talking to her son at the dinner table:
well, sure, Jimmy, it's perfectly normal to have those thoughts.
but every time you do, god kills a puppy.
That's an America I can get behind.
The variety of businesses is almost endless; everything from baking, carpet design, financial planning, social media design, keep you on time support networks, local information from a trusted source, t-shirts, premium design, you name it. I found PumpAPair, device(s) for assisting in breast milk collection that allows you to......pump better.
I only discovered the site, because during my search for the ultimate greeting card I stumbled upon Across The Line Cards, the creation of a California mom named Lynn Felter. I bought so many cards, she discovered me. How many business owners send you an e-mail thanking you for your business? I've had a lot of dry cleaning done and never received a note from the dry cleaner. Not one call from the post office. Gas station? Not a word.
That's what I love about these small businesses and the people who run them. Check them out. Find something to buy. Bring back America not through GE or Exxon or the NFL, but through women like Lynn who toil away creating greetings like the one featuring a mother talking to her son at the dinner table:
well, sure, Jimmy, it's perfectly normal to have those thoughts.
but every time you do, god kills a puppy.
That's an America I can get behind.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Quote of the Day
"The most pathetic person in the world is a person who has sight but no vision." - Helen Keller
Monday, April 18, 2011
Quote of the Day - Late in the Day
"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
or to paraphrase former Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, "don't get between a dog and a tree."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
or to paraphrase former Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, "don't get between a dog and a tree."
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Back from a night on the road and the Wisdom of C.E.O.'s
What do you do when United cancels your flight from Philadelphia to Chicago, is unable to find a seat for you on another flight that evening and isn't really certain things will be sorted out in the morning? In my case I was already thinking of renting a car and driving home when I ran into two Abbott associates facing the same challenges. So we drove from Philadelphia to Chicago via the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Ohio Tollway and Chicago Skyway, toiling through the toll booths, stopping at McDonald's and Starbucks, anyplace that had coffee and bathrooms and trading driving duties.
Yet I have perhaps the most daunting task yet to complete, obtaining a refund from United.
This morning, Sunday, in the NY Times Sunday Business section, there is an article excerpted from The Corner Office by Adam Bryant. Bryant writes a weekly column for the paper under the same title. I suspect many of you read it. The italicized comments come from my personal experience.
I'm only going to highlight the traits highlighted by Mr. Adams, traits it appears aren't not necessarily embedded in your genes. In other words, you don't have to be a a descendant of Abraham Lincoln to be a great corporate leader. Whether you are a CEO of a Fortune 1000 company or not and the latter is most likely, you are CEO of something if only your own life. I'd suggest that five traits that follow are valuable of you only lead your dog.
Passionate curiosity: relentless questioning. These CEOs aren't necessarily the smartest people in the room nor do they need to be, but they are the best students and they know hot to ask the right questions.
"You learn from everybody," said Alan R. Mulally, chief executive of Ford Motor. (Remember that the next time you activate your social force field on the airplane.)
Adams points out, "though chief executives are paid to have answers, their greatest contribution to their organizations may be asking the right questions."
"In business the big prizes are found when you can ask a question that challenges the corporate orthodoxy," said Andrew Cosslett, the CEO of the InterContinental Hotels Group.
And Mr. Adams adds, "for the furrow-brow seriousness you encounter in the business world, some of the most important advances come from asking, much like a persistent 5-year-old, the simplest questions."
Whenever I've moved from one job to another I've left a note behind for my successor that said, the worst place you can find yourself at any time of the day is in this office. Working the floor, talking with product managers, eating in the cafeteria, traveling with your sales people, visiting your factory sites, traveling to your customers, showing up unannounced, dropping into meetings, showing an interest in the myriad of activities that insure your company is running each day - all of these make the greatest difference and serve to answer questions that you ask and ones you didn't consider.
When I was leading a foreign affiliate, I used to hold staff meetings in remote parts of the country and invite local managers and sometimes sales people to attend. I also held President Forums in cities far from headquarters. Local employees were able to bring in unfunded business ideas. (We always funded something out of each and every meeting.) And I learned about how my business was really working, from the ground up.
Battle-Hardened Confidence: locus of control or people's outlooks and beliefs about what leads to success and failure in their lives. Do they blame failures on factors they can't control or do they believe they have the ability to shape events and circumstances by making the most of what they can control? Here are five words that are "music to a manager's ears" - "Got it. I'm on it."
Think of this as the interview question that goes like: "Give me an example of some adverse situation you faced, and what did you do about it and what did you learn from it?"
Got it? Now get on it it.
Not to be confused with arrogance or self-deceit or self-absorption or misguided confidence. It really is a blend of experience, street smarts, self awareness, self confidence, thoughtfulness, empathy and insight. As one person once said, it is the person who walks in the room and says, "Ah, there you are, not, here I am."
The worst excesses are the ones that come from people who need you to know that they are important, and they are in charge. Confidence, battle-hardened, or simply gained from years of experience, is best conveyed through actions, not words.
Team Smarts: companies increasingly operate through ad hoc teams. Team smarts refers to the ability to recognize the players the team needs and how to bring them together around a common goal. It's not the cliche' of "team player". Team smarts are the rival and important partner of street smarts.
Teams are always a challenge. Often they are a "team" of one or two doing the bulk of the work and there are always free riders - remember those graduate school study group grades; the ones where you stayed up all night to write the paper and the guy who always arrived late and left early got the same diploma? Committees and teams are often hard to tell apart. I like to define a committee as a cul-de-sac down which a good idea is taken and slowly strangled. It's been surmised that if Columbus had a committee, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria would still be tied to the dock.
Yet a good team - cross-functional and well led- can insure that all important viewpoints are considered, integrated and included in the final solution(s). Executives need to check in on team and make sure they are functioning; not assume they are functioning. Teams are visible to all employees and they are rewarded visibly for good work. Regrettably, again, we appear to live in a world that seems more impressed with individual achievement and wants to reward it as such. I can't think of a single achievement in my business career when I or anyone around me accomplished something on my/their own. My accomplishments were enabled by a talented staff, talented employees and a supportive wife and family. Keep that in mind the next time you want to put one person's name on a trophy.
A Simple Mind Set: most senior executives want the same thing from people who present to them: be concise, get to the point, make it simple.
For those of you who follow this or know me at tall, you'll appreciate what Mr. Adams says about PowerPoint - lose the Power, get to the Point.
"I'd love to teach a course called 'The Idea'" said Dany Levy, founder of DailyCandy.com. "Which is, basically so you want to start a company, how's it going to work? Let's figure it out: just a very practical plan, but not a business plan, because I feel like business plans now feel weighty and outdated."
Amen.
Or as I like to say, add value, not volume. Yet time and time again, I was confronted with decks that could a Samurai sword couldn't penetrate. And each time I wrung my hands over the amount of time spent preparing these massive volumes and how much time wasn't spent with customers or sales people or with families. 1 to 3 pages at the most. What is your idea - one to two sentences. It's a discipline to prepare and present to busy people, what you believe to be true and what the opportunity is to pursue that truth and what resources are needed to exploit that truth.
Fearlessness: are you comfortable being uncomfortable? Do you like situations where there's no road map or compass?.....Is discomfort your comfort zone?
With the business world in seemingly endless turmoil, maintaining the status quo - even when things appear to be working well - is only going to put you behind the competition.
Over the years I referred to moving the bar up. When you're at the top of the market, or the leader whatever performance metrics are important to your category, the competition is measuring what you did to get to the top and what you're doing now. The way to stay ahead of them is to force your organization to constantly challenge what's working, how it could be better - differently - and what needs to change regularly. Then when the competition arrives at where they think you are, they will have discovered where you were.
Teaching an organization to take risk is hard because we live in a world where nearly everyone has been punished for making a mistake instead of having the opportunity to learn from that mistake. Many companies fall into the curse of the routine. Doing it the same way over and over again is rewarded de-facto because it is not punished. And the competition will arrive to discover you unable to meet their assault. You lose.
Yet I have perhaps the most daunting task yet to complete, obtaining a refund from United.
This morning, Sunday, in the NY Times Sunday Business section, there is an article excerpted from The Corner Office by Adam Bryant. Bryant writes a weekly column for the paper under the same title. I suspect many of you read it. The italicized comments come from my personal experience.
I'm only going to highlight the traits highlighted by Mr. Adams, traits it appears aren't not necessarily embedded in your genes. In other words, you don't have to be a a descendant of Abraham Lincoln to be a great corporate leader. Whether you are a CEO of a Fortune 1000 company or not and the latter is most likely, you are CEO of something if only your own life. I'd suggest that five traits that follow are valuable of you only lead your dog.
Passionate curiosity: relentless questioning. These CEOs aren't necessarily the smartest people in the room nor do they need to be, but they are the best students and they know hot to ask the right questions.
"You learn from everybody," said Alan R. Mulally, chief executive of Ford Motor. (Remember that the next time you activate your social force field on the airplane.)
Adams points out, "though chief executives are paid to have answers, their greatest contribution to their organizations may be asking the right questions."
"In business the big prizes are found when you can ask a question that challenges the corporate orthodoxy," said Andrew Cosslett, the CEO of the InterContinental Hotels Group.
And Mr. Adams adds, "for the furrow-brow seriousness you encounter in the business world, some of the most important advances come from asking, much like a persistent 5-year-old, the simplest questions."
Whenever I've moved from one job to another I've left a note behind for my successor that said, the worst place you can find yourself at any time of the day is in this office. Working the floor, talking with product managers, eating in the cafeteria, traveling with your sales people, visiting your factory sites, traveling to your customers, showing up unannounced, dropping into meetings, showing an interest in the myriad of activities that insure your company is running each day - all of these make the greatest difference and serve to answer questions that you ask and ones you didn't consider.
When I was leading a foreign affiliate, I used to hold staff meetings in remote parts of the country and invite local managers and sometimes sales people to attend. I also held President Forums in cities far from headquarters. Local employees were able to bring in unfunded business ideas. (We always funded something out of each and every meeting.) And I learned about how my business was really working, from the ground up.
Battle-Hardened Confidence: locus of control or people's outlooks and beliefs about what leads to success and failure in their lives. Do they blame failures on factors they can't control or do they believe they have the ability to shape events and circumstances by making the most of what they can control? Here are five words that are "music to a manager's ears" - "Got it. I'm on it."
Think of this as the interview question that goes like: "Give me an example of some adverse situation you faced, and what did you do about it and what did you learn from it?"
Got it? Now get on it it.
Not to be confused with arrogance or self-deceit or self-absorption or misguided confidence. It really is a blend of experience, street smarts, self awareness, self confidence, thoughtfulness, empathy and insight. As one person once said, it is the person who walks in the room and says, "Ah, there you are, not, here I am."
The worst excesses are the ones that come from people who need you to know that they are important, and they are in charge. Confidence, battle-hardened, or simply gained from years of experience, is best conveyed through actions, not words.
Team Smarts: companies increasingly operate through ad hoc teams. Team smarts refers to the ability to recognize the players the team needs and how to bring them together around a common goal. It's not the cliche' of "team player". Team smarts are the rival and important partner of street smarts.
Teams are always a challenge. Often they are a "team" of one or two doing the bulk of the work and there are always free riders - remember those graduate school study group grades; the ones where you stayed up all night to write the paper and the guy who always arrived late and left early got the same diploma? Committees and teams are often hard to tell apart. I like to define a committee as a cul-de-sac down which a good idea is taken and slowly strangled. It's been surmised that if Columbus had a committee, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria would still be tied to the dock.
Yet a good team - cross-functional and well led- can insure that all important viewpoints are considered, integrated and included in the final solution(s). Executives need to check in on team and make sure they are functioning; not assume they are functioning. Teams are visible to all employees and they are rewarded visibly for good work. Regrettably, again, we appear to live in a world that seems more impressed with individual achievement and wants to reward it as such. I can't think of a single achievement in my business career when I or anyone around me accomplished something on my/their own. My accomplishments were enabled by a talented staff, talented employees and a supportive wife and family. Keep that in mind the next time you want to put one person's name on a trophy.
A Simple Mind Set: most senior executives want the same thing from people who present to them: be concise, get to the point, make it simple.
For those of you who follow this or know me at tall, you'll appreciate what Mr. Adams says about PowerPoint - lose the Power, get to the Point.
"I'd love to teach a course called 'The Idea'" said Dany Levy, founder of DailyCandy.com. "Which is, basically so you want to start a company, how's it going to work? Let's figure it out: just a very practical plan, but not a business plan, because I feel like business plans now feel weighty and outdated."
Amen.
Or as I like to say, add value, not volume. Yet time and time again, I was confronted with decks that could a Samurai sword couldn't penetrate. And each time I wrung my hands over the amount of time spent preparing these massive volumes and how much time wasn't spent with customers or sales people or with families. 1 to 3 pages at the most. What is your idea - one to two sentences. It's a discipline to prepare and present to busy people, what you believe to be true and what the opportunity is to pursue that truth and what resources are needed to exploit that truth.
Fearlessness: are you comfortable being uncomfortable? Do you like situations where there's no road map or compass?.....Is discomfort your comfort zone?
With the business world in seemingly endless turmoil, maintaining the status quo - even when things appear to be working well - is only going to put you behind the competition.
Over the years I referred to moving the bar up. When you're at the top of the market, or the leader whatever performance metrics are important to your category, the competition is measuring what you did to get to the top and what you're doing now. The way to stay ahead of them is to force your organization to constantly challenge what's working, how it could be better - differently - and what needs to change regularly. Then when the competition arrives at where they think you are, they will have discovered where you were.
Teaching an organization to take risk is hard because we live in a world where nearly everyone has been punished for making a mistake instead of having the opportunity to learn from that mistake. Many companies fall into the curse of the routine. Doing it the same way over and over again is rewarded de-facto because it is not punished. And the competition will arrive to discover you unable to meet their assault. You lose.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
There is No Such Thing as a Cirque du Soleil Catch
Before baseball left Montreal, it ended up in the worst place the sport could imagine, Olympic Stadium. To really help you understand and appreciate just how bad this place was, never mind that baseball wasn't meant to be played in French, I Googled up Le Stade Olympique and found two perfect descriptions.
"You can't overstate the acute, soul-sucking effect of Le Stade Olympique. It's built into, rather than on top of, a sprawling, incoherent paved campus in the middle of a beat-down residential area. It (Olympic Stadium) is a Communist-bloc public housing development wrapped in a waste-treatment center inside a prison....with artificial turf."
".......Olympic Stadium, the world's only 46,620-seat commode where the artificial turf is 14 years old, the visitors' clubhouse has a painted concrete floor and the roof doesn't open anymore."
It was in this mess of a baseball park that we had four season tickets for the 2000 Montreal Expos baseball season. And it was on this stage that I undertook a task at which I'm not ashamed to admit I failed miserably.
We invited two friends who never before, ever, ever, ever, in their entire lives had seen a baseball game. One of them was Norwegian, the other was Moroccan. In their defense they spoke multiple languages and were far more worldly than we, but this is not a story about worldliness, it is a story about trying to explain baseball to two people who'd never before, ever, ever, ever in their entire lives seen a baseball game. In a stadium that ESPN writer Rick Reilly called a commode - see above. It was not a tour through the Norwegian fjords.
Most of you reading this have more embedded baseball knowledge than you appreciate. You can read a box score, listen to ESPN and know that a dinger is a home run, a whiff is a strike out, a diamond is the field on which the game is played, that chin music is a high and tight fast ball. Our friends spoke French, Norwegian, Arabic, some Berber and Spanish, but a balk to them was the language of a chicken. I can't begin to explain the amount of work it takes to explain every single facet of a game that is embedded in my DNA to two people who thought a putout is what the Service d'Incendie de Montreal did at a fire.
They did understand the Canadian national anthem. It was a good start that quickly turned sour.
Batter up! (Let the explaining begin.)
One of the key pieces of equipment used in this game is a ball. The ball can be passed, curved, spit upon, knuckled, fouled, forked, slid; it can be a fly, fast, an umpire's call, breaking, ground. The ball can be wild. It can stay inside the foul line or roll outside the foul line. It can be caught on a warning track or up against the wall. It's thrown from a mound of dirt by a pitcher who can be starter, middle reliever, closer, wild, lefty, righty but always part of a rotation. He can brush back the batters. A pitcher can start or come out of a bullpen. He stands on a rubber. And he can be perfect, but not very often.
There are three bases and a home plate that is not shaped like any plate anyone has eaten off of. Bases can be loaded or empty or partially occupied and runners (see below) can be left on them. They can be stolen. They can be rounded. They can be slid into. They have a hot corner.
Batters use a bat that can be choked, checked and waved and even have a donut attached to it. They stand in the batters box facing the opposing team's battery - pitcher and catcher - who exchange signs with each other all the while hiding them from the batter who is in the box - but not from the guy stealing signs in center field. Batters are part of a batting order and can be driven in by another batter. Before going to the plate, they stand in a circle, on a deck. They go from their circle to their box which is adjacent to the catcher's box. They swing at a ball thrown to a zone. They can be a starter or utility. Batters can be struck out. They can be walked, accidentally or intentionally. They can hit singles, doubles, triples or dingers over the fence or the wall or up against either or into the alley or a gap. They can crowd the plate that doesn't look like one. They can switch - if they're able. It's okay. They can check their swing. And they can be designated, at least in the American League.
Runners score runs. Runners can be run down. Runners can be batted in. They can break up a double play or run out of the base path or be run down. They can be left on. They can be picked off. They can be pinched for. They can be be squeezed during an act of suicide.
Batters can hit a Baltimore chop or a can of corn or a lazy fly ball or a foul ball or execute a hit and run or get the green light or be part of the suicide that involves the runner or hit into a double play, triple play, a force out or regular out. They can hit for the cycle. They can be hit by a pitch or take a pitch. They can whiff. They can bat clean-up or lead off or bat down in the order. A batter can charge the mound, argue with the umpire, throw his bat, toss his helmet. He can be caught looking. So can a runner for that matter. Once on the base, they can steal. They can threaten to go. They can slide. They can run with their head down and they can go part way. They can run through a signal.
Batters become runners who then become scorers who then go back to a bench and wait for their turn to become a batter again. They play with a glove to catch the ball and with different gloves to hold the bat.
If you've not already found 867 ways that this confused our friends, then you're still on the third paragraph. By the fifth inning, I was exhausted and had a splitting headache. They were bored, the Expos were losing, the stadium was still a lifeless mound of concrete, so we went home.
Molson can only help so much.
"You can't overstate the acute, soul-sucking effect of Le Stade Olympique. It's built into, rather than on top of, a sprawling, incoherent paved campus in the middle of a beat-down residential area. It (Olympic Stadium) is a Communist-bloc public housing development wrapped in a waste-treatment center inside a prison....with artificial turf."
".......Olympic Stadium, the world's only 46,620-seat commode where the artificial turf is 14 years old, the visitors' clubhouse has a painted concrete floor and the roof doesn't open anymore."
It was in this mess of a baseball park that we had four season tickets for the 2000 Montreal Expos baseball season. And it was on this stage that I undertook a task at which I'm not ashamed to admit I failed miserably.
We invited two friends who never before, ever, ever, ever, in their entire lives had seen a baseball game. One of them was Norwegian, the other was Moroccan. In their defense they spoke multiple languages and were far more worldly than we, but this is not a story about worldliness, it is a story about trying to explain baseball to two people who'd never before, ever, ever, ever in their entire lives seen a baseball game. In a stadium that ESPN writer Rick Reilly called a commode - see above. It was not a tour through the Norwegian fjords.
Most of you reading this have more embedded baseball knowledge than you appreciate. You can read a box score, listen to ESPN and know that a dinger is a home run, a whiff is a strike out, a diamond is the field on which the game is played, that chin music is a high and tight fast ball. Our friends spoke French, Norwegian, Arabic, some Berber and Spanish, but a balk to them was the language of a chicken. I can't begin to explain the amount of work it takes to explain every single facet of a game that is embedded in my DNA to two people who thought a putout is what the Service d'Incendie de Montreal did at a fire.
They did understand the Canadian national anthem. It was a good start that quickly turned sour.
Batter up! (Let the explaining begin.)
One of the key pieces of equipment used in this game is a ball. The ball can be passed, curved, spit upon, knuckled, fouled, forked, slid; it can be a fly, fast, an umpire's call, breaking, ground. The ball can be wild. It can stay inside the foul line or roll outside the foul line. It can be caught on a warning track or up against the wall. It's thrown from a mound of dirt by a pitcher who can be starter, middle reliever, closer, wild, lefty, righty but always part of a rotation. He can brush back the batters. A pitcher can start or come out of a bullpen. He stands on a rubber. And he can be perfect, but not very often.
There are three bases and a home plate that is not shaped like any plate anyone has eaten off of. Bases can be loaded or empty or partially occupied and runners (see below) can be left on them. They can be stolen. They can be rounded. They can be slid into. They have a hot corner.
Batters use a bat that can be choked, checked and waved and even have a donut attached to it. They stand in the batters box facing the opposing team's battery - pitcher and catcher - who exchange signs with each other all the while hiding them from the batter who is in the box - but not from the guy stealing signs in center field. Batters are part of a batting order and can be driven in by another batter. Before going to the plate, they stand in a circle, on a deck. They go from their circle to their box which is adjacent to the catcher's box. They swing at a ball thrown to a zone. They can be a starter or utility. Batters can be struck out. They can be walked, accidentally or intentionally. They can hit singles, doubles, triples or dingers over the fence or the wall or up against either or into the alley or a gap. They can crowd the plate that doesn't look like one. They can switch - if they're able. It's okay. They can check their swing. And they can be designated, at least in the American League.
Runners score runs. Runners can be run down. Runners can be batted in. They can break up a double play or run out of the base path or be run down. They can be left on. They can be picked off. They can be pinched for. They can be be squeezed during an act of suicide.
Batters can hit a Baltimore chop or a can of corn or a lazy fly ball or a foul ball or execute a hit and run or get the green light or be part of the suicide that involves the runner or hit into a double play, triple play, a force out or regular out. They can hit for the cycle. They can be hit by a pitch or take a pitch. They can whiff. They can bat clean-up or lead off or bat down in the order. A batter can charge the mound, argue with the umpire, throw his bat, toss his helmet. He can be caught looking. So can a runner for that matter. Once on the base, they can steal. They can threaten to go. They can slide. They can run with their head down and they can go part way. They can run through a signal.
Batters become runners who then become scorers who then go back to a bench and wait for their turn to become a batter again. They play with a glove to catch the ball and with different gloves to hold the bat.
If you've not already found 867 ways that this confused our friends, then you're still on the third paragraph. By the fifth inning, I was exhausted and had a splitting headache. They were bored, the Expos were losing, the stadium was still a lifeless mound of concrete, so we went home.
Molson can only help so much.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Great baseball literature
Baseball.....is essentially a lonely game.
He had met the little death that awaits athletes. He had quit.
The air was soggy, and the season was exhausted.
The shortstop did a breathtaking impersonation of an open window.
When the density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
The Red Sox were finishing in seventh place only because the Athletics had locked them out of the cellar.
The Baltimore Orioles, a much nimbler blend of May and December.
For me Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out.
-Unattributed.
He had met the little death that awaits athletes. He had quit.
The air was soggy, and the season was exhausted.
The shortstop did a breathtaking impersonation of an open window.
When the density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
The Red Sox were finishing in seventh place only because the Athletics had locked them out of the cellar.
The Baltimore Orioles, a much nimbler blend of May and December.
For me Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out.
-Unattributed.
Quote of the Day
There's nothing more fascinating than a man whose life is circling the drain mistaking it for a Six Flags ride. That's why, for me, the more Charlie Sheen the better. - Rick Reilly, ESPN
Monday, April 11, 2011
Some Steven Wright for a Monday Morning
All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
How do you tell when you've run out of invisible ink?
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.
I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
What happens if you get scared half to death, twice.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
The problem with the gene pool is there is no lifeguard.
I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
How do you tell when you've run out of invisible ink?
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.
I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
What happens if you get scared half to death, twice.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
The problem with the gene pool is there is no lifeguard.
I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Vision requires faith
A kindergarten teacher asked a student what she was drawing.
"A picture of God," the child replied.
"But sweetheart, no one knows what God looks like," said the teacher.
"They will in a minute!" the child replied.
Vision often requires a childlike faith. Visionaries truly believe they can create change. Getting others to take action requires that you have a strong belief in the action you want them to take.
"A picture of God," the child replied.
"But sweetheart, no one knows what God looks like," said the teacher.
"They will in a minute!" the child replied.
Vision often requires a childlike faith. Visionaries truly believe they can create change. Getting others to take action requires that you have a strong belief in the action you want them to take.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wisdom from Military Manuals-that apply equally to the work environment
- If the enemy is in range, so are you. - Infantry Journal. The whale that surfaces gets harpooned. Sit at the end of the table during a plan review.
- It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed. - U.S. Air Force Manual. This applies just as well to those who are thinking of eating in the cafeteria after the announcement of a RIF.
- You, you and you ......Panic. The rest of you come with me. -Marine Corp Gunnery Sgt. One of my favorites and one of Mel Schatz's favorites too.
- Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once. -Maritime Ops Manual. A reminder to the employee who's going to be the one person brave enough to speak up.
- If you hear me yell "Eject! Eject! Eject!" the last two ejects will be echoes. If you stop to ask "Why?" you'll be talking to yourself, because you're the pilot. - Pre-flight briefing. Or you've just left a meeting with your medical/regulatory team.
- Tracers work both ways - U.S. Army Ordinance Manual. For the letter writer; that person whose going to write Company B and insist their rep's promotion is inappropriate only to discover their reps are doing the same thing.
- If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him. - USAF Ammunition Brief. AKA your controller emerges pale from a pre-plan review.
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