If I’ve learned one thing—whether it’s about batting, fielding, ERAs, net sales, profit margins, ROIs, or happy families—it’s this: Consistency wins.
There’s no such thing as perfect, but you can aim for a high percentage of success over time. I had five seasons batting over .300. Good NBA three-point shooters hit a little over 40 percent. Pro golfers sink 31 percent of their ten-to-fifteen-foot putts. Today I tally “box scores” in other parts of life to raise my “batting average” of consistency.
In the old days of baseball, minor-league scouts used a lot of gut instinct backed by baseball lingo. “That guy is built like a fastball pitcher,” they’d say, or “That kid has a hungry look at the plate,” or “He’s a five-tool player” (hitting for average, hitting for power, running, fielding, throwing), all based on watching a kid in several games but not necessarily enough to see a real pattern. Even though they’d often arrive at the right conclusion, the process was pretty subjective.
Today, due to the spread of the sophisticated math of “sabermetrics,” pioneered by baseball geeks Bill James and later Nate Silver, and initially and most notably practiced by Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane (made famous in the book and movie Moneyball), scouting has gotten much more analytical. Scouts now combine their experience with the most relevant statistics. They tend to favor on-base percentage (how often a player gets on base, no matter how he gets there—singles, doubles, triples, line drives, bloopers, hit-by-pitches, or any kind of walk) over pure batting average. To estimate a batter’s power, they use slugging percentage (which is calculated by dividing the total number of bases a hitter reaches by how many at bats he has). They factor in a host of other often arcane details. They’re using calculus and spreadsheets instead of just their tobacco-chewing gut feel, and thus they’ve fundamentally changed the way players and their performances are assessed.
When I first made the move from baseball to business, I wasn’t relying only on gut feel, but sometimes I may have been guilty of waiting too long, being too understanding of “slumps,” before dealing with staff shortcomings. Was that sales guy hitting a patch of bad luck in making partnership deals, or was he going about it wrong? Were our facilities crews keeping the fields in top shape, or were they actually neglecting them? Was that coach teaching the “four pillars” of our organization with passion, or was he kind of sleepwalking through drills with the kids? Were our hospitality people being proactive in making sure families were happy and likely to recommend us, or were they dialing it in?
We changed our tack and established our own box-score metrics. We’d do things like add up the number of initial sales calls made and compare it to the number of follow-up meetings and the number of families who eventually signed up for real, so we could arrive at a true success percentage to measure. We also began spot checks of the fields, stands, scoreboards, dugouts, and equipment to make sure everything was up to our standards every day. We had veteran coaches monitor new coaches, and we did a post-visit survey of every family. Pretty soon it became obvious where our work needed improvement, which personnel still had room to improve, and which ones just needed to be replaced. We didn’t act hastily. Instead, we learned to methodically measure outcomes so we knew what to address and how to address it.
From the time I was a little kid of seven or eight, I would go to the ballpark with my father. Back then he was a minor-league manager, but without realizing it at the time, I wasn’t just watching him coach, but was also getting parenting lessons.
My dad was a natural parent as a coach. When a young player made a mistake—say, trying to stretch a single into a double and getting tagged out at second—my dad never confronted or criticized the kid at the time. Instead, he kept game charts and put a little red dot next to this kid or that kid’s name. After the game, he reviewed his charts, all nine innings—the batting order, hits, strikeouts, fielding stats, runs, errors, pitcher performance—then he made up an index card for each player. The next day, he’d come in and look over his index cards again. Then he’d talk to the player who’d made the mistake privately. He didn’t just recite faults. Dad would try to find a positive in the mistake. He might say he appreciated the kid’s aggressiveness in going for the extra base and maybe he needed more experience to sense whether or not he could make it. I watched him give these gentle lessons and I internalized them. He was fair and honest, and his teaching style made a big impact on me.
When my son Ryan played high-school baseball, my old Orioles teammate Larry Sheets was a team coach, and I volunteered to help him. During a couple of games, we noticed something negative that some of our other coaches and even a few of the kids on the team were doing, probably with good intentions: they’d get down on their own players when things went badly. For example, if one of our players swung at a bad pitch, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a coach yell, “That pitch was over your head!” or “Don’t swing at junk!” Sometimes the kids being criticized picked up the negativity and that made their performance next time worse. Sure, the coaches wanted our batters to be better at the plate and not swing at bad pitches, but the way they were handling the correction was all wrong.
The same kind of thing happened when one of our pitchers was having an off day. First the coaches, then the kids on our team, would scowl or shake their heads, or even mutter and groan out loud. All that does is rattle the pitcher more. It can rattle the whole team’s confidence, and ultimately it affects how everybody plays. It’s infectious. Bad pitches lead to bad fielding, errors lead to more errors, strikeouts lead to more strikeouts, and so on. Losing leads to losing, and we were losing. This wasn’t the way to turn it around.
So we changed the way we coached.
Our method was a version of what I’d seen my dad do in the minor leagues. We gave each of the coaches a little book and told them all that whenever they saw a player doing something that needed to be addressed or changed, they should write it down and share it with us later. Larry could then decide how and when to deal with it.
The point was to not bad-mouth the players and not let them absorb negativity. The other team wanted to beat us bad enough; we didn’t need to help them. Instead, we needed to not overreact—to calm down and play smart.
The positivity and the dialing down of the temperature worked so well that we turned the season around. In fact, the team won the championship.
I wish I could say it lasted. Players graduate; coaches move on. Two years later, I came back to watch some games, and sure enough, some of that bad behavior was creeping back in.
Bad behavior backfires. Good behavior needs to be reinforced. Whichever one gets more attention is the one that sticks.
My mom was a master of underreacting. She never disciplined us kids at the time we did something wrong, even though so she had lots of chances. Instead, she waited until things settled down—often quite a while—but the waiting was worth it for her, and for us. The wait times varied depending on the emotions, but when she deemed it was safe to address the problem, she would calmly ask, “Cal, why did you lose your temper and take it out on your brother?” When I was playing in a game and was acting out, later on she’d ask, “Why’d you throw your bat and holler at the umpire?” She’d ask me to think about why I’d done what I’d done.
It is always hard to find a good reason for doing something bad. My mom knew that already but wanted me to realize it, too. Then she’d suggest I find a way for me to tap into the energy source that might have been causing the bad behavior and channel the strong emotions into something positive, like pushups, running around the block, shooting a hundred baskets, or fielding a hundred ground balls. It’s amazing how getting busy doing something good can make you too tired to cause any more trouble.
My mom saved her heat for the times we were disrespectful. She was logical and cool unless we failed to respect her; then she was tough. She may have been calm, but she wasn’t a pushover.
My mom would have been a good coach.
My dad and mom both had a good way with kids—their own kids, young players, any kids. I’m not saying they were perfect; nobody is, but they were naturals at being parents.
I’ve tried to be a good parent, but there are still those moments when a misstep can potentially erase the good. In fact, it’s like that in all areas of life. You can discourage a player, a child, or an employee with one negative reinforcement.
There was one day in particular that I’ll never forget. My son Ryan was young, and that morning he wouldn’t get out of bed for school. I first tried to prod him gently, but he kind of kicked back at me, and frankly, I lost it. I grabbed his leg and held it for a second. No big deal—I don’t even know if he remembers it—but it bothered me all day. When my dad was a kid, he was punished in the woodshed school of discipline, but he and my mom didn’t raise us that way. They were firm but fair, and that’s how we tried to raise our kids. When Ryan and I both got home—I from the ballpark and he from school—I sat him down and apologized, promising him I’d never do it again.
And I didn’t.
I know a lot of parents say they’d never apologize to their children, because they should be in charge, not the kids. I think the people who have real power are those who know they’ve done something wrong and try to correct it. Kids learn that lesson over time, and it’s more important than who’s the parent or who’s in charge. Mistakes don’t get better or go away by denying them or pretending they didn’t happen. Facing up to an error quickly and honestly prevents compounding it.
I think I admit when I’m wrong; I certainly try to. (Of course, my kids tease me that when I do apologize, I sometimes make it seem like it’s the other person’s fault: “Sorry you took what I said that way.” Sorry you take it that way, kids!) There’s only one thing worse than doing something dumb in your business, on your team, or with your kids, and that’s getting in the habit of doing it—getting good at being bad. If you yell at your kids and never really listen, you’ll be the dad who yells. If you lean on the horn when you’re driving, you’re the aggressive driver. If you fire people without looking into the reasons why your business is flat or down, then you’re the guy who just fires people. It’s self-defeating to be the dad who yells, or the aggressive driver, or the terrible boss.
I didn’t lose my temper during games often, at least not by the time I got to the big leagues. In my early days, though, umpires’ calls could get me mad, no question.
Umpires are human, and even when they’re trying their best, they can make mistakes. But one or two bad calls can make for a bad count that changes the whole complexion of an at bat. Say you have a 1–0 count, one ball and no strikes; the advantage goes to the batter. If the next pitch is another ball and the count is to 2–0, you definitely have the edge on the pitcher. But if the second pitch is a called strike and the count is 1–1, then your edge is gone. The odds that were in your favor are now against you just because the umpire made bad calls. That can put you on the defensive at the plate; you could become tentative, overanxious, or hesitant to take a pitch. More times than not, you get yourself out that way. So, yeah, from time to time, I let umpires know when I thought their calls were wrong. I let them know loud and clear. Several times I came close to getting thrown out. I took the risk of being thrown out because I was hoping it would make the umps watch more closely, even though it’s a basic rule that you can’t argue balls and strikes. Their bad calls hurt my chances of getting a hit and hurt my team’s chances to score runs and win games. The umps were keeping me from doing my job as well as I could. To me, you just don’t take that kind of thing easily, or you shouldn’t. Did I handle it perfectly? Probably not. OK, definitely not.
Later, as I matured, I found ways to focus my anger instead of just venting. I was still mad about the bad call, but I learned to settle down, shake it off, block out everything else, and rivet my attention to the pitcher, to his motion and release, and see nothing but the next pitch. I’d still be angry, but I’d try to channel my anger . . . a lesson from mom when she got me to channel my counterproductive energy.
During one of our long, painful losing streaks, the Orioles’ owner came to our locker room and delivered a speech he called “Contest Living.” During the speech, he paced around the room dramatically, looking at each of us as if we were members of a jury, as he made his “case.” Edward Bennett Williams said certain professionals—trial lawyers like himself, and ballplayers—have to perform their jobs in front of other people, often lots of people, in very public contests. This means the whole world knows when things go badly—in our case, when a team is going through a losing streak. The difference between EBW’s world and ours, of course, was that a baseball team can lose sixty times and still win a championship, but for a trial lawyer it’s win or lose on each and every case, with no chance to replay it or make up for it the next day or over the course of a season. There’s no law season like a baseball season. Eventually, EBW got to his “summation,” telling us that what’s done is done and we must not dwell on the slump, no matter how many people witness it. He told us to put the losses behind us and move on to the next game and the next, and he charged us up with winning every single game from then on, knowing the whole world was watching. That was just the profession we’d chosen, a very public one. Spectators or not, our job was to win.
That speech on contest living stuck with me over the years. It made me more reluctant to criticize kids, teammates, colleagues, or business partners at the time of a mistake or setback. Even people whose work performance doesn’t play out in front of the world—schoolteachers, dentists, waitresses, taxi drivers—know when they’re having successes or failures, and it feels as if the whole world is watching. Pointing it out, dwelling on it, doesn’t make it better. Move past it, tune out the world, focus on your goal.
Besides the streak, most of my baseball stats that people remember are on offense: five seasons batting over .300 and a career total of 431 home runs, 3,184 hits, 1,695 RBIs, and nineteen All-Star Games. Offense is what you do. When your team is at bat, you want to get a hit, get on base, advance a runner, get another hit, drive in a run, maybe two, take the lead and build on it. It’s true in all sports—run, pass, first down, TD; drive, layup, three-pointer, free throw; ace, slam, lob, game, set, match; drive, putt, par, birdie; pass, slap shot, goal; attack, check, checkmate! Do enough things right and you’re in position to win—but only if your defense is good.
My stats in the field, on defense, were as important as the ones at bat, maybe more so: turning 1,565 double plays in my career; fewest errors by a shortstop (three), highest fielding percentage (.996), and 95 games and 431 chances without an error in the 1990 season. Defense is all about being ready, anticipating the play, and knowing what you’ll do if the ball comes your way—where you’ll move what you’ll do if things go differently from what you expect, and all this on every play. If offense is making something good happen, then defense is preventing something bad from happening.
That’s called balance, and that’s what leads to victory.
My dad knew he couldn’t teach minor-league ballplayers to never make an error, so instead he taught them to mentally slow down after they’d screwed up and to do every step from then on carefully and deliberately, to avoid turning one error into two. Don’t compound the first mistake by hurrying to try to make up for it.
In Ripken Baseball programs, my brother Billy teaches kids every step: a double play is a catch, a throw, a catch and a throw, and one more catch. This means there are lots of opportunities to make a mistake, but done right, you can also get two outs with one play.
All this brings to mind a player by the name of Jim Gantner, former second baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers, who used to say there are three rules in playing the infield: one, don’t panic; two, don’t panic; and three, don’t panic. In my head, I can still hear my dad’s error mantra: “When you drop the ball, don’t panic; pick the ball up the first time; don’t try to pick it up too fast to make up for the drop and then boot it; just pick it up carefully and surely and then the mistakes are over.”
The error mantra applies just about everywhere. If we’re building a new ball field at one of our facilities and it seems the infield is uneven, do we regrade it, or do we just keep going, lay down sod, stake out the basepaths, and turn one error into two or three? If you buy a bad stock, do you double down or sell it, take your loss, and move on? If you’re late for a meeting, do you drive dangerously to try to make it or leave earlier next time?
Earl Weaver, the longtime Orioles manager, had a pragmatic and highly effective strategy for winning: don’t get too far behind. It sounds obvious, but so often it’s ignored. At the time, our team had very strong hitting, so we were able to score runs. Let’s say we’re up by one or two. The other team is batting. They have a man on second base with one out, and the batter hits the ball to left field. The outfielder wants to throw the runner out at the plate, but the smart play many times is to throw to second to keep the hitter at first. This is how you manage the risk. If the runner on second is fast and your left fielder doesn’t have a strong arm, the chances of throwing him out are small. If he throws the ball home and the runner is safe, the hitter advances to second base (scoring position), and suddenly your two-run lead is in jeopardy. Because we had strong bats and often the lead, Earl’s plan was to force the other team to have to get multiple hits to score a run. If we kept the hits to singles and stopped the base runners from taking extra bases, it was that much harder for a team to catch us.
We use that theory at Ripken Baseball when we’re booking our baseball camp spots. We look at the season, week by week, to see how we’re doing. Ideally, we’d like to fill up every session, but sometimes we can see by our signups that short of a late surprise, we’re going to have a poor performing week or two. We could hope for the late surprise—the perfect throw to the plate—but we’d run the risk of eating a lot of overhead costs, running sessions with too few players, and providing a less than ideal experience for the kids. Instead we could consolidate one or two of those down weeks with a couple of other medium-performing weeks to come out with good, strong weeks. That way we provide the kids a better experience by being with a full group of players, and we do better on our bottom line for the year. We can minimize the bad inning and win the game. What works on the field works off the field.
When we started Ripken Baseball, like most people, even veteran business types, I tended to look at our “offense.” How many deals did we make with sponsors for soft drinks, pizza, hot dogs, pretzels, beer, apparel? How much did we make over costs on those deals? What was our average fan attendance per game? How many kids or families signed up for our programs? These are all valid metrics.
Later, as we got more sophisticated, we also started to study our “defense.” Did we resist the temptation to align with sponsors that didn’t fit our brand, just for the short-term financial gain? If not, we changed those deals. Did we deliver a great fan experience for the price of a ticket? If not, we set out to improve the experience. Did we make good on the kids’ program promises—teaching skills and attitudes? We have to.
We took a hard look at every aspect of our business and made sure we were defending our company, our concept, our brand. If we committed an error—lost a prospective family—we set out to find out why and tried not to make those mistakes again. Strong offense, even stronger defense.
Like baseball—and just about everything—our business is a game of averages, and our goal is to keep our average as high as we can. When something isn’t right, we try to find out why, and then try to fix it.