If you have been a member of my online family for any length of time, you know that one of my hobbies/obsessions is umpiring baseball.
I have written about this obsession often…in relation to marketing (i.e. creating order out of chaos on the baseball field and in business) …the importance of “customer service and fulfillment as marketing functions” and staying out of the spotlight while being critical to the “operation”…and the ability to work your passions into your lives whether you get paid for it or not.
There are many ways to get paid instead of money.
But I have a new angle, courtesy of a Titans Xcelerator Mastermind member, who told this story in an email to her online family that I had never heard before…and it is sourced from the umpire (of course it is). 🙂
Willie Stargell, a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest baseball players of all time, played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1962 through 1982.
One day a sportswriter asked him:
“Hey, Willie, what’s the secret to your success?”
Willie replied:
“It’s very simple. I listen to the umpire right before the game starts.”
The writer asked, “What does the umpire tell you?”
He says, right before the first pitch:
“Play ball!”
Willie ended the conversation with a line worth filing away as an all time keeper:
“I play ball. I don’t work ball.”
As I’ve always said, listening to the umpire is the best way to achieve glory. 😊
And listening to my marketing heroes on this topic is instructional too:
- My buddy Ryan Lee’s signoff on every email is “Let’s play.”
- Dan Sullivan, the top coach for entrepreneurs in the world, lists as two of his requirements for a healthy “retirement” (where you never really retire), “Retire from things you don’t like to do and retire from things you don’t do well.”
- Joe Polish says, “Eliminate everything in your life that is not excellent.”
- And then there’s this, a greatest hit from the back of the business card of my ultimate mentor (Marty Edelston), a Zen Buddhist Text, which I hope you pin to the monitor of your computer…or put it on the wall so you can read it every day:
The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love, and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.
When people around you can’t tell whether you are working or playing, life is joyous.
And when you live life this way, it shows commitment of the highest order to your craft.
It’s not an easy button to get there…but it’s definitely a goal worth working towards.
It’s true in sports.
It’s true in business (as I talked about last week in my post about Lester Wunderman and “Being Direct”).
And it’s also true in rock and roll…which I’ve written about in reference to Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones (and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Ed Sheeran, The Beatles and others). Just go to briankurtz.net/blog and put any of those names in the search bar.
It’s true everywhere else too…but I want to focus on Wunderman and Jagger here, strange bedfellows for sure…but with more in common than you think.
Here is a tweet (when tweets were on Twitter) from Lester (written in his 90’s, which tells you a lot about someone who was always playing ball rather than working ball for over 9 decades):
“I remember when the Stones played NYC in 1965. Big ruckus. But that kid Mick wrote some toe tappers.”
This past July, Mick Jagger turned 82 (yikes!).
Lester Wunderman lived until he was 95.
Something tells me that “playing ball” rather than “working ball” has a direct relationship to longevity too. 😊
I saw The Rolling Stones for the first time in 1985…big ruckus then too.
And I saw “that kid Mick” again in June of 2019, six months after Lester passed away.
Lo and behold, Lester was still correct in his assessment of The Stones:
Mick was still toe-tapping at 76 just like Lester was at 95.
Then I saw The Stones again in 2024 (for the fifth time, Mick was now 80) …and Jagger’s brand of toe-tapping had become a word–“Jaggering” –and I have a mug to prove it (with the definition on the back, courtesy of Urban Dictionary):
A synonym for “Jaggering” could be “play.” 🙂
Bringing this theme full circle…short and sweet:
The Rolling Stones open their concerts with the song “Start Me Up” (and Mick is still “Jaggering” to it at 82).
And on a recent Titans Xcelerator call, a guest speaker referred to a commercial for Cadillac…which asks the question:
“When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?”
Here’s the 30-second commercial for your viewing and listening pleasure.
Taking some poetic license, here are three questions to ask when you are wondering if you are living life to the fullest (and I’m trying to practice what I preach by putting them on a post-it note, also stuck to my crowded computer monitor, so they are a daily reminder, much like the Zen Buddhist Text above):
- Are you playing ball or working ball?
- Are you creating joy with your communications in every medium, including every email? (I’m trying) 😊
- When you “turn on,” is life returning the favor?
Warmly,
Brian
P.S. My next adventure “playing ball” will be a two-week communication on Zoom (six, 90-minute calls…pure bliss). 🙂
And I know when I turn it on (and you turn me on and tune in), you will receive a transformational experience in return.
I will absolutely return the favor.
Many of the hundreds of people who have been through the first 8 “Breakthrough Advertising Bootcamps” will tell you all about their results-oriented experience here.
It’s the best (and possibly the only) way to take Gene Schwartz’s masterpiece and turn it into practical application no matter what business you are in, online or offline…and whether you are a marketer or copywriter…or a business owner or an employee.
It begins on October 20th but reserve your seat now.
No payment necessary until the doors officially open…but by clicking here, you will guarantee yourself a seat…and you can also read all about it.
Plus, you can buy a copy of the book at a 20% discount with your registration.
Each Bootcamp is better than the previous one and this 9th will be no exception, because we update the examples, videos, case histories and worksheets…and we have even made it “AI friendly” despite Gene Schwartz not being alive to see AI in action.
Plus, there are hot seats, office hours, and some special guest speakers too.
It is personalized just for you.
I hope you will get on the alert list today…and I’m looking forward to playing ball with you on October 20th.