In discussing being single with a buddy, I came up with one
of the worst metaphors to describe trying to meet a woman: baseball. Please bear with me.
In an average baseball game, approximately 1/3 of pitches
thrown to a batter are balls: pitches outside the strike zone. The remaining 2/3 pitches are strikes:
pitches we can hit but miss, and pitches we foul off out of play, whether it’s
in the strike zone or not. And
sometimes we make good contact on a pitch only to have it snatched out of the
air or to get thrown out. So let’s say in
a baseball game, about 300 pitches are thrown and there are about 10 hits per
game. Those are depressing odds. This is, in my insane opinion, similar to
the meeting someone and making a connection.
Now this leads to a question of different batting
styles. You have free swingers who go
for all pitches inside and outside the strike zone. You have swingers who only swing at pitches in or near the strike
zone. You have guys who are just as
happy with an infield single as he is with a home run as opposed to the guys
who just want the win.
Then you have me, Billy Beane’s worst nightmare. (For those of you who don’t know, Billy
Beane is a General Manager who decided to use On Base Percentage as the basis
for signing young players, meaning they have the patience to watch pitches and
take walks.) What I am is a batter who
sits in the strike zone waiting for that one perfect pitch that may or may not
come along. On the rare occasion I do
take a cut, I miss the ball altogether, but there have been those beautiful
hits that flew just the way they should. But mostly I watch pitches. Which means I watch a whole lotta strikes. I check swing a lot but rarely will I get around on a pitch. And then there are those golden
pitches. A fastball at the perfect
speed comes my way right through my wheelhouse and I swing for the fences. More often than not I will miss because I
rarely get to see that perfect pitch and can’t identify it, and then I’ll spend
the rest of the season wondering why I wasn’t able to make contact. And yet without swinging, I want the
win. How sad is that?
And then there’s this other bad metaphor I thought up regarding the type
of women I like and I suffer for liking: it’s like sculpting marble with a
pencil. With a lot of hard work, I’m
gonna make good headway, but I will never be able to sculpt David with a pencil.
If any of this made sense to you, God bless. If not, I don’t blame you.
