11:33am
Saint Paul
“Batting 1000!” I say to my young son Sam.
See, last night was his first-ever baseball game.
The Rookie League.
And from the time he woke at 6am… until we left for the ballfields at 6pm… he very much did NOT want to go.
His team had only held two practices. He was worried that he didn’t know the rules well enough.
“No one does,” I said. “Your whole team is new. Remember when the coach said to go to the backstop… and everyone ran in every direction except to the backstop?”
He nodded.
“Well, the other team is new to the game, too. You’ll do great.”
He wasn’t so sure. But they did.
Now, the Rookie league doesn’t play with strikeouts.
Or counting outs at all, really.
Each player gets a chance to bat, and after the line-up, the batters take the field and the fielders come in to bat.
Sam hit for a single at each at-bat. So that was fun, him batting 1000.
And after four innings… no stike-outs… and three tag-outs… the final score was somewhere north of 200 runs each, I think.
We called it a tie.
Which I really hate—that “eVeRyOnE’s a WiNnEr” mentality.
But in this case, we’ll go with it.
Because the bigger goal?
Is just getting out there. Trying something new. Expecting to fail a bit, succeed a bit, and do it all again.
It’s the same in marketing. Some promotions are a home run. Some are bunts. And some are straight-up strikeouts.
That’s ok.
Because each at-bat is a stepping stone towards a better result next time.
And if you don’t like marketing—maybe you hate writing, or coming up with new angles, or putting aside the time when you could be doing something more valuable with your time, or even the self-promotion involved—let me know, maybe I can help.
Meantime, keep swinging.