Time to start swinging

The Red Sox were tops in baseball this year with 97 wins against 67 losses.  In other words, the absolute best team lost 41percent of their games. You might do better calling ‘heads’ 162 times.

Their best hitter was ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz who failed to hit 70 percent of the time. His only job is to go 90 feet and he succeeds less than once in three.

The best hitter baseball ever had was 1941’s Ted Williams and, during that infamous year, he blew it 60 percent of the time.

In fact, he’s quoted as saying that “Baseball is the only field of human endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”

Most of us do way better than that in life and business.

Even when our world goes pear-shaped like it did for a lot of us in 2008, there was a 2009 season. And a 2010.

It happens. We all have a bad year or two. But the beauty is that even when it all goes wrong we’re probably still winning more than the BoSox are.

You know what they say the trick is to hitting a baseball? Have a short memory. They say that about pitching too. Baseball is all about now.

You have to forget about the last time; when your knees were buckled by a table-drop curve or someone took your money pitch deep.

Like it never happened.

This time, when you call on purchasing to sell your widgets, you stand a good chance of getting a hit if you concentrate on now. Go in remembering the knuckleball you missed yesterday and see where it gets you.

Nowhere.

Think about today. Not the future. Not the past. But the now.

Go ask that cutie out: she doesn’t know someone turned you down last week. And then go start your new business. Last year wasn’t the right time for eggplant ice cream, but your salmon cupcakes might just make it. Forget the failures and take another set of hacks.

Whatever age you are, there isn’t a whole lot of time left to look at pitches, so you might as well start swinging. Life isn’t going to walk you.