Not Everything Needs To Be A Homerun
Let me tell you a little about one of my favorite sports: baseball!
((The beautiful Fenway Park: Major League Baseball’s oldest stadium.))
For those who may not know the rules of this game, it’s quite simple!
Two teams play on a diamond-shaped field made up of three ‘bases’ at the corners of the diamond, and an outfield. They take turns batting (hitting the ball) and fielding (throwing/catching the ball).
If a batter hits the ball, they must run to each of the bases in a full circle before the ball is either caught mid-air, or picked up off the ground and thrown to an opposing player before the batter reaches a base.
If the ball is caught mid-air, or they don’t make it to a base in-time, they’re ‘out.’ Once three players are ‘out’ the teams switch sides. Teams score points by getting their players around all three bases, then back to home plate!
There’s a little more to it than that, but those are the basics!
While the game is much slower than some other sports, the exhilarating home-runs (a guaranteed point when a batter hits the ball into the stands), and grand-slams (a home-run when there are three other players already on first, second, and third base), keep the audience on their toes!
For many, many years, coaches and managers believed you needed those two flashy plays, and the players that can achieve them, to succeed.
But when you think about it: what do you actually ‘need’ to do to win the game of baseball? All you have to do is: get a player to first base, then second, then third, then back to home-plate to score a point. Rinse and repeat, and don’t allow the other team to do the same.
Exciting moments like home-runs and grand-slams certainly help, but all it takes to win is getting players on-base; over, and over, and over again.
It’s not a flashy strategy at all, but this approach works wonders.
It’s what Billy Beane, former general manager of the Oakland Athletics, used to take his team to the playoffs in 2002, after achieving one of the greatest win-streaks in the history of Major League Baseball.
He stocked his team with players who were great at getting on-base! Two years later, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series championship using the exact same strategy. These days: almost every team uses some form of this tactic, known as ‘sabermetrics.’
We often think that we need to make big, flashy moves every single day to advance our careers as composers. When in reality, all it takes is a few small steps each and every day. Those small steps will amount to huge victories over time!
For example, if you: write eight-measures of music every day, practice using FMOD for fifteen-minutes a day, and read for another fifteen-minutes each day, you’ll likely have a new track to release, a highly-refined knowledge of middleware, and have finished learning a new skill in just one month! Three big wins, in my book!
Despite what many will tell you, slow and steady progress is always better (and more reliable) than bigger, but spontaneous, moves that run the risk of burning us out.
