Singles vs. Home Runs

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Anyone who knows me well will be shocked at the content of this episode. Why? Because I’m not a big sports fan. However, I do live in St. Louis, and people here LOVE the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. So it’s impossible not to get at least a little sucked into baseball mania at times … even though no teams are playing baseball right now.

Today, I want to use a couple of analogies from the world of baseball to help us understand the value of putting in the work every day.

One of the greatest reputations you can acquire as a baseball player is that of a home run hitter. Everybody loves the player who can reliably step up to the plate, crack the bat, and send the baseball flying into the stands. 

As writers and artists, we all want “home runs.” 

We all want that NYT bestselling book, that #1 hit, that huge consulting gig, that major show in an art gallery, or some other type of big win. 

That’s why we often feel paralyzed when we create. We put all this pressure on ourselves to be perfect and create the greatest work of art the world has ever seen. 

Here’s the problem: great writing, and great creative work in general, is never created in a single moment of glory. It’s always preceded by a long series of small victories. 

Do you know how long it took Michelangelo to sculpt his famous David statue from gleaming white marble? 

Over two years. 

Every day, the 26-year old artist showed up and went chip-chip-chipping away at his masterpiece. 

It didn’t happen in a DAY. It happened over HUNDREDS OF DAYS. 

Back to baseball. 

I was curious about how many major league baseball hits were singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. I came across a nifty graphic from a baseball stats website. It shows the distribution, by decade, of the four types of hits over the history of baseball. (Click the link above to see the graphic)

The jagged red line at the top represents singles. These are the vast majority of hits. (A “single” is when a batter gets onto first base, or “1B.”) Near the bottom are doubles, triples, and home runs. 

The distribution of these hits has changed over the decades, but one fact is absolutely clear: Most hits are singles. 

Games are won mostly by singles. 

Division titles are won mostly by singles. 

A World Series is won mostly by singles. 

Legacies are created mostly by singles. 

In general terms, a “single” just means a small victory. I don’t know what it means for you personally, but here are some of my “singles”:

• Writing, recording, editing, and uploading this podcast episode is a single.
• Writing and posting a blog post is a single.
• Answering a client’s email is a single.
• Working on my next book for an hour is a single.
• Getting on social media each day and adding value by sharing and commenting on other people’s posts is a single.

A single is one little slice of work that isn’t going to move a mountain by itself. But the cumulative effect of a bunch of singles, over a long stretch of time, is MASSIVE.

Let’s look at this from another perspective.

The other day I was doing a little 90’s musical reminiscing and listening to the Backstreet Boys. (Don’t judge me.) It dawned on me that I only knew a couple of their songs. 

That got me thinking … they’ve only had a few big hits over the years, even they’ve been making music since the mid-90’s. With nine studio albums, that’s not a great batting average. 

But it’s the same story for almost every musical artist. On average, a full-length album might only have 1-2 “hits.” It’s a little discouraging if you think about it. 

But the same holds true in other industries. If we go back to our baseball analogy, my research shows that the Major League Baseball batting average for 2019 was .252. 

That means baseball players, on average, are “successful” less than 30% of the time! In fact, if a pro baseball player has a .300 average, they are considered excellent! 

Here’s my point: We can’t expect to hit a home run every time we write or create.

Have you ever written something and expected people to immediately love it? Maybe you wrote an article, book, or social media post and felt disappointed that it wasn’t a home run. Maybe you were frustrated that it didn’t get the likes, reviews, or traction that you expected.

But if we look to both the music industry and professional baseball as a standard, we will have “hits” less than three out of ten times. 

Does this mean the other seven attempts are failures? Not at all. It means a few different things: 

1. We don’t get to choose what is successful, and what is not. Our job is to write consistently with excellence and let others decide what is a “hit.” 
2. Every time we are “at-bat,” it’s practice. We’re putting in the work. We’re developing our craft. We’re getting better all the time. 
3. Games are normally won or lost by singles. This means we shouldn’t denigrate the value of a small chunk of work. Those small chunks of work add up over time.

You can’t control whether someone will love your work. There are so many factors at play that it’s nearly impossible to engineer a hit. 

But the more times we go to the plate and swing the bat, the more likely it is that we’ll get that occasional hit. 

This week, don’t worry about hitting a home run. Just focus on hitting singles every day. Just like Michelangelo, we must keep chip-chip-chipping away until that masterpiece is done.

Remember: those little victories add up quickly.