No matter how much talent is involved, making the Hall of Fame can also depend on pure chance.
Baseball history shows that the trade you make today can affect your organization — for better or worse — for years.
Chase Utley, a player for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, has announced he will retire after the 2018 season. His announcement quickly set off a debate over whether he will one day be voted into the baseball Hall of Fame. We will leave that discussion to others. What interests me more is how well […]
Everyone strikes out now and then. It doesn’t matter if you play baseball or not. You can fail a test, get cut from the team, or lose money in a business. Striking out isn’t the issue. Your attitude about striking out is the issue. Hall of Fame slugger Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times in […]
Do you want to be a great coach? Athlete? Entrepreneur? No matter what you’d love to do, you must rely either on nature (innate talent) or nurture (skill acquired through practice and feedback). The question is, which one? For baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb, there was no doubt. His opinion — and Cobb had […]
Chances are we’ve never met. I don’t know what you do, or where you live, or how old you are. But I do know two things about you. First, you want more out of your life. You want to do more, get more, be more, win more. You know it, too. Otherwise, why would you […]
Someone once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his great ideas. “Ideas?” he said. “I’ve only ever had one.” That one idea — the Theory of Relativity — marked Einstein as one of the greatest minds in history. Not everyone will match him in terms of impact, but everyone can copy […]
One day Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams watched a teammate return to the dugout after striking out. “Tell me,” Williams said. “When you swung and missed that ball, did your bat go over the ball or under it?” “What difference does it make,” the teammate wanted to know. “Either way, I struck out.” […]
Years after his retirement, Hall of Fame baseball player Ty Cobb attended an Old Timers’ Day celebration at Yankee Stadium. A reporter approached Cobb and asked him, “If you were playing in the modern era, what do you suppose your batting average would be?” Cobb replied, “About .300.” “Only .300?” said the startled reporter. “You […]
This year’s baseball Hall of Fame ballot is on its way to the voters. No matter who gets voted in — if anyone — you can be sure he passed the test of consistency. No one gets in on a fluke. One or two great seasons aren’t enough. To even be eligible, a player must […]