The Inescapable Metaphor of Baseball
Of the many metaphors that have found their way into the lexicon of organizational life, perhaps none is more pervasive than baseball.
The idioms of baseball have traveled the globe and seeped into conversations between people who know little or nothing of the game. Fully integrated into our thinking and speaking, baseball metaphors help to galvanize many of the meanings central to our everyday experience.
Amazingly so.
We refer to a great project success as hitting out of the park, performers with a reputation for results as big hitters, less benevolent strategies as playing hardball, an unexpected response or reaction as a curveball, and confidential knowledge as inside baseball.
When someone offers a viewpoint unconnected to the conversation, we say it comes out of left field, when they wildly succeed at a task they knock the cover off the ball, when a team member is reluctant to engage, we ask them to step up to the plate, when they perform on a bigger stage, we welcome them to the major leagues.
Cover Your Bases, Down to the Last Out, Swing for the Fences, Extra Innings, Hit or Miss, Bottom of the Ninth Inning, A Little Off Base, Right Off the Bat, Playing Smart Ball, Go Down Swinging, Swing and a Miss, Touch All the Bases, In My Wheelhouse, A Whole New Ballgame.
The idioms of baseball are everywhere.
Baseball metaphors are stitched into the seams of everyday life. They shape our meanings in ways that are not always easy to see. Like all metaphors, they exert a powerful influence on how we make sense of our experience.
Say it ain’t so, Joe.
Let me add another metaphor.
One university president I worked with used pitching as a metaphor on when to become engaged with future donors.
* The billionaires are used to sitting with the CEOs of nonprofits and of course, the president had to be willing to be the "starting pitcher," opening the relationship, being the first to see the prospect. She was.
She illustrated the other options as the:
* "long-term reliever" coming in after a prospect had been personally qualified as having major gift capacity and worthy of the president' attention.
* "set-up" pitcher, coming in later in the relationship as needed, probably to assure the prospect of the direction of the university, the importance of the donor's support.
* "closer," coming in just to ask for and close the gift, usually when the prospect has already indicated a strong likelihood of making the gift. The president is there to "seal the deal."
While this president was willing to fill any role (as world-class pitchers normally are) her preference was to be a "long-term reliever" as she liked to build a relationship with the major gift prospect and work with the prospect to structure a gift of maximum impact to the university and maximum satisfaction to the prospect.
I believe this metaphor works for leaders in the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds.
By the way, this president is among the best I have ever worked with,
And then when it comes to the greats who played the game of baseball…Yogisms “when you come to a fork in the road, take it” “It ain’t over till its over” and so on