The Difference Between Mediocrity and Greatness

In Major League Baseball, hitting .250 over the course of a season would be below average most years, and certainly no more than middle-of-the-pack. It wouldn't make you stand out. It wouldn't get you on SportsCenter, and the only people who knew who you were would be the diehard fanatics who can also name all your teammates, their birthdays, college teams, and the exact number of fastballs they swung at out of the zone on cloudy Tuesdays in April, even the kids who got 2 at-bats and exclusively hit incontinent pops to first. You'd earn your paycheck, but you'd do so well short of any accolades, notoriety, or attention beyond a middling spot on a few hundred box scores in relative anonymity. In a few years, you and all your accomplishments would fade into the miasma of sporting lore, a distant and buried footnote of an unremarkable lineup on a whatever-the-weather-was-that-day day in whatever stadium against whatever pitcher on whatever team on whatever month of whatever year.

Worse yet, those hardcore guys who actually know your name also know your stats. And all of them and all the talking heads in all the suits with all the microphones might see your position as one to be upgraded in free agency by the million-dollar-man. Maybe it's all internal, and they all can't wait to see your spot taken by some moonshot-smashing prospect with a slayer's swing and a stunner's smile. Even if you avoided that white-knuckle fight for your baseball life, you still probably wouldn't be celebrated. You'd be, at best, okay.

It doesn't make your accomplishments meaningless; it just means you didn't stack the deck.

Hitting .300? Now that's the sweet spot. That's getting you All-Star nods, fans cheering to every syllable of your name, and all the attention that comes from being the pinnacle of consistency and success in the sport that's become the singular focus of your everyday life. You're among the best. You're a rock in your lineup. Do it over the course of your career and you're staring at your face in Cooperstown, Ohio, and immortality in the Hall of Fame. For however long you keep it up, you're a public emblem of everything a young fan or burgeoning player should strive to become.

The difference between hitting .250 and .300 in a 25-week MLB season is one hit a week.

That means every week, the difference between mediocrity and greatness is...

...one swing.

...one adjustment.

...one read of one tell from the pitcher.

...one centimeter between striking out and a sweet line drive.

...one fly ball just out of the fielder's reach.

...one screamer that just barely whizzes by the shortstop's glove.

...one ground ball dribbler that you hustled through to beat the throw.

...one shot with just enough extra push to get over the fence.

Or like Crash said in Bull Durham...

"You know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points. Okay? There's six months in a season. That's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week. Just one. A gork. You get a ground ball. You get a ground ball with eyes. You get a dying quail. Just one more dying quail a week, and you're in Yankee Stadium."

-

Now, I don't think my audience has significant overlap with Major League Baseball players, or even those aspiring to be one. Not all of us are staring down Roy Halladay (rest in peace) for a shot at baseball legendarium. Not all of us can even swing a bat without causing a few weeks of unremitting back pain. But all of us take batting practice every day. For some people, it's honing that last line of the sales pitch (no pun intended) that makes your concept last forever. For others, it's a few more seconds to build a quality relationship with a potential client, partner, employer, or friend. Maybe it's remembering a birthday. Still others have more tangible measurements, like an extra second to ensure you spelled that word right or added all those numbers up to the right total. Every minute of conscious, meaningful work is another crack in the batting cage, and it might be the difference that finds you that extra second you needed to wait out and beat out that brutally twisting curveball.

The point is, I don't know your job and I don't know what grades go on your report card. I don't even know how good you are at it, why you do it, or how long you've been working at it. I don't know what you do to celebrate your successes, and I don't know the ramifications of a few moments of failure. You might be the best in the world, and there's an extraordinarily good chance you're more qualified to write all of these words in a public forum than I am. I don't know what you do every day to be great, because I don't know what you do and I don't know the mechanical details of what radical, transformative greatness looks like in your specific job in your specific niche of your specific industry. (You might even be a bigger baseball fan than me, but, like, probably not.)

But what I do know is that you want it. You want to win. You know what that feeling is like from something you've had, and you want it back again and again. And I do know that if you're already winning right now there's strikingly little you crave more than raw consistency. Imagine doing it more. That's another triumph, and another. You want to add all of them to the mantle. (Yes, "mantle" is another baseball pun; thank you for noticing.)

If you don't, find a different sport.

Because that win might be one hit away.

That hit might be one swing away.

Next time you're in the cage, think about that. Realize that in everything you do the difference between mediocrity and greatness is one hit a week, and that hit is the result of a constantly spinning and consistently repeating whirlwind of talent, luck, and hours upon hours upon moments upon actions of preparation. And you still might not get it. Not this time, anyway. Maybe it'll come next time, and you'll never forget the rush. Maybe it'll take two or three or seven tries, and you'll learn from each or some of those misses.

But nobody ever paid you just to try. One more swing might just teach you everything you need to get that one more hit a week that sets you apart from everyone else forever. One more moment of concentrated effort might create a moment that changes your career.

See you in the cage, slugger.