Summer signifies the smell of fresh-cut grass, family picnics with hot dogs, and ice cream left on children’s faces, the sight of sunsets over the lake, and the crack of the ball on the bat.
I’m a huge fan of baseball. I grew up playing it, watching it, and going to games. It has impacted my life in many positive ways.
Baseball, in many ways, is like business: working together as a team, winning, hustling, grinding, opportunities to showcase leadership, turnarounds of teams and individuals, “over-night successes,” and so many other countless examples.
With that said, I came up with three of my favorite baseball movies. There’s a lot of business and life lessons that can be taken from these films. If you haven’t seen them--watch them. If you’ve watched them-- watch them again. They can tell you so much about what you are doing well…and maybe not so well with your business.
1) Field of Dreams (1989): Vision/Turning Dreams into Goals, and Reality/Redemption
“Field of Dreams” is a classic! It’s having a vision for what you want in life. It’s going against the grain. It’s not listening to others when chasing your goals, even though your money is running out, and no one believes in you, except yourself and a handful of people—in this case, your daughter, your wife, and an isolated civil rights author. It’s also succeeding in those goals when few believed in you.
It’s also about redemption. For some of us, it’s getting a second chance on an opportunity. For others, it’s changing a relationship. And still others, it’s finding your path in life and business. There are many forms of redemption throughout this film. See if you can spot them when you watch it. Remember: “When you build it, they will come.”
2) Bull Durham (1988): Teachability/Coachability/Nurturing/Leadership
Bull Durham can teach us a lot about ourselves and our people. How are we training and coaching them? What are we giving them to be successful? How are we helping them grow? Do we have the right people to be successful? What kind of accountability plan do we have in place? How are we executing on it? How nurturing are we delivering our message? What goals are we and our people after in business and life? Finally--what are we doing about it?
I think when you get underneath the fun and lust, you find a baseball film filled with questions, looking for answers. How will you answer these for yourself is the critical question?
3) Moneyball (2011): /Structure/Strategy/Having the Right People/Sandler Rule #1/Redemption/Goals
This is one of my favorite films of all-time. It has Brad Pitt, who plays Billy Beane, a former first-round pick by the New York Mets, who becomes General Manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. His teams do well, despite the restrictive budgets his owner puts on him to win. He realizes to achieve a World Series Championship, he cannot keep doing the same things.
What this movie can tell us about business is long and numerous. Some of the questions it asks are the following: What is the structure of your business? What’s your purpose? What are your goals towards achieving your mission? What’s your strategy to achieve these goals and purposes? How will you let go of people who are working against your goals and who aren’t cutting it? And soooooo many more!
Aaron Sorkin is terrific at writing and writing dialogue for developing characters. He doesn’t disappoint here. There are so many under the surface narratives that you need to pay attention to. One of the biggest is using Sandler Rule #1: You have to Learn to Fail to Win! Billy Beane does nothing but fails in this movie—he has a failed major league baseball career, he has a failed marriage, he fails to get his team a Championship—however, he never gives up and continues to innovate. In the present day, many of Billy Beane’s systems, analytics, and ideas, have been adopted all-over Major League Baseball. He has normalized his radical thought. How are you driving change in your business, your world, and your industry?
I love baseball, and I love movies, as you can begin to see. I love the sport, but I feel it’s essential to understand the similarities with film in the business world. There are a lot of lessons to be learned under the surface.
