043: Character

Bill James was working as a security guard in 1977 when he began self-publishing his annual book The Bill James Baseball Abstract. James looked at baseball in a new way. With a degree in economics he brought a much more detailed and in depth approach to the stats of the game. His work existed on the fringes of the baseball world.

In the early 2000s, BIlly Beane was the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. As a small market team they needed to look for ways to compete with the bigger budget teams. He adopted the principles of Sabermetrics (the work of Bill James). The team made 4 straight playoff appearances, and went on a 20 game win-streak during the 2002 season - something that hadn't been done in over 100 years. After the 2002 season, and based on the success Beane was having, the Boston Red Sox made Beane an offer to be their GM. If he accepted he would become the highest paid GM in Major League Baseball. He turned it down.

That's the condensed version. If you've read the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, or have watched the movie by the same name starring Brad Pitt, then you'll know this story.

But where one story ends, another one begins.

At the time Boston was in a 84 year drought without a World Series win, one of the longest in baseball. The longest at the time belonged to the Chicago Cubs (we'll get back to them later). When Beane declined the Red Sox offer, Boston then looked internally and hired Theo Epstein. At 28 years old Epstein became the youngest General Manager in MLB history. Epstein was also well versed in the work of Bill James and brought these ideas to the Red Sox. In 2004, his second season as GM - the Red Sox won the World Series, breaking a drought that had lasted since 1918. This new innovative approach resulted in a string of success for the Red Sox, including another World Series win in 2007. But by 2010 the success was waining. Most big league clubs had adopted this approach and the front offices of MLB teams were full of Ivy League grads. Everyone had an analytical department.

Everyone except the Chicago Cubs, and here's where things get really interesting.

At the end of the 2011 season Epstein left the Red Sox and became President of the Chicago Cubs. Owners of the longest drought in professional sports without a championship - 103 years at the time.

A decade earlier Epstein had changed the game when he brought the Sabermetrics approach to the Red Sox. But now, everyone was doing it. If he continued to do what was now common practice, it would be many many more years before a World Series win for the Cubs.

Epsein knew he needed a fresh approach. He decided to focus on finding a few key players who would be the pillars of the organization. They would uphold the values he thought were important, including a commitment to the team, and teammates. It was all about character. With Sabermetrics he had taken character out of the equation. Now he needed to put it back in. The numbers were still important, they helped them find outliers - but that was no longer enough. They needed those outliers to also have outstanding character to be able to commit to rebuilding this team and dealing with the stress of over 100 years without a championship - that's a lot of pressure.

In 2016 the Cubs would win the World Series. On the backs of 4 pillars Epstein brought into the organization very early. Epstein had led the way in ending 2 of the longest streaks in sports history - and completely reinvented his approach in the process.

So where am I going with all this?

Remember that Ascender I wrote a while ago that touched on 'early adopters'. Epstien was an early adopter of the Sabermetrics system. He was able to use this to his advantage to gain success. But it wasn't simply that he was an earlier adopter, it was how he saw the value of the tools and was able to use them to his advantage. Integrating them into the existing team to build a successful championship run. You can't copy that though, what works for the early adopters won't work for those who follow.

Remember when Ashton Kutcher was on Twitter? In 2009 he became the first to reach 1 million followers, he beat out CNN to achieve this. At the time it was a huge story. Kutcher was able to latch onto the new platform, and create a compelling story around it. The race to 1 million was exciting. Now over a decade later, people are still following this pattern. But that's old news. Even at that time it wasn't really about the number, it was about the energy, the newness around this that Kutcher was able to captivate people with. Yet people still gravitate to this approach and wonder why it doesn't work - even when it does.

This would be like Epstein bringing the same approach to the Cubs as he did with the Red Sox. That worked a decade ago, it's not going to work again now.

I think it's time for us all to start looking for our pillars, the key things we value and want to uphold with what we do. We can all keep chasing numbers and metrics and ways to optimize our interactions, or we can look for a new way. The more I look around, the more I see people finding success by doing what is exciting to them - embracing what makes them original and sharing that with the world. Character matters, not only for musicians, but for all of us. For too long we let character slide because we were so concerned with the numbers, and where has that left us? We made bad choices because people made big promises. We can make better choices going forward. As artists you can do this with how you engage with your community and who you choose to work with. The more we chose to put character ahead of metrics, the better off we'll all be. The industry will be more resilient and more accepting of differing views and opinions. And that's something we could really use right now.


~ Steve