By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to spark teamwork. Reading time: 3:23
You’re the leader of a baseball team packed with enormous hitting talent: three to four times the hitting talent on most teams.
But wait. All’s not well in this hitting paradise. Your hot-hitting team, fortified with eight players hitting over .313, finishes the season in last place –40 games BEHIND the winning team in your division.
No way!! That’s so far-fetched that could never happen. No way, you say. Just check the baseball history books.
You’ll find the ragged-pitching, hot-hitting Philadelphia Phillies in 1930 suffered through 102 lost games and finished 40 games behind the pennant- winning St. Louis Cardinals. What happened?
These Philadelphia Phillies were bat rich and pitch poor. Their hitters were blazing hot. But their pitchers were freezing cold. The Phillies pitching staff gave up a whopping 6.7 earned runs per game and allowed more than 500 hits more than the Cardinals.
Teams teem with balance. That’s why the most effective leaders realize you need the balance of both the offense and defense to win in sports, in business, in life.
