I don’t watch professional sports, but I was really glad that I decided to watch NLCS game 4 last night. The Dodgers maintained a lead through the second half of the game, and got the Phillies down to their last out in the bottom of the 9th, with runners on first and second. Jimmy Rollins was the final at bat, and hadn’t been spectacular at the plate. To make matters worse, the umpire’s strike zone seemed to be a moving target, with pitchers and batters having a say on the matter throughout the night. Needless to say, hopes were dim.
It certainly wasn’t the 11-0 routing we saw on Monday, but the ending was far sweeter.
We see this situation in our businesses all the time, don’t we, startups? I’m sure more than a few of you would say you feel like Jimmy on a consistent basis, perhaps even further down in the count.
At some point you’ve got to quit analyzing the route you’ve taken. Some of it was you’re doing (Jimmy didn’t jack any homers that night), some of it wasn’t (there are eight other players). That’s alright, It doesn’t matter what happened to get you into this situation.
Own and live the moment. Accept that you’re here — now — and do everything you can to work the situation to your favor. If you’re still at the plate, you still have a chance.
[Update: Embedded video was removed due to dumbass MLB copyright complaint. Only one is a link on their site, and they won't allow remote embedding. I want to share your product, your story, on my site, and you whine about copyright? Are these companies really this dumb? I feel another post coming on...]
I don’t typically watch many sports myself. Especially baseball. But for some reason I sat down to catch the last two innings of the game, and it really was spectacular. A friend of mine (a big Phan) even said rather sadly “Yeah, and he hasn’t been doing that well tonight.” That was about 7.5 seconds before he made the hit.
Fantastic metaphor.