Joe Girardi Illustrated 5 Ways Business Leaders Fail -- And 1 Way to Win

Back page of the NY Post the morning after

I grew up a Yankees fan, although these past few years I've really only followed the Mets. My wife is a lifelong Mets fan, and I have come to appreciate and believe Roger Angell's quote from "The Summer Game" that "there is more Met than Yankee" in every one of us.

Still, I like the Yankees -- and they are responsible for some of my life's most vivid memories... watching countless games on TV at home with Dad in Totowa, NJ, and a memorable Aaron Boone home run live in the Bronx with my friend John Bonomo. What's not to like about Aaron Judge or Didi Gregorius or even Joe Girardi?

Well, I found plenty not to like about Joe's managing of Friday night's Game 2 of the ALDS -- and wrote the following and posted it on LinkedIn without even getting out of bed Saturday morning. Since then, on Day 2, Joe has admitted to making errors in judgment during the game, so I'll add a 6th lesson here: Learning from mistakes is a winning strategy. Here's hoping the Yankees recover and win today and tomorrow and again next Wednesday. In the meantime, here's what I posted yesterday:

If and when New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi leaves his career in baseball, he might consider a teaching job at the Harvard Business School. He’d have valuable first-hand lessons to teach on how business leaders can fail:

1. Rely too much on process. Girardi’s post-game “they only us 30 seconds to decide” excuse for not seeking a replay challenge of the ball that allegedly hit Lonnie Chisenhall (and ultimately changed the outcome of last night’s Game 2 of the AL Divisional Playoff between the Yankees and Cleveland Indians) is a classically lame corporate copout. It’s akin to saying “we’ve always done it this way.”
2. Rely on poor metrics. Last night, baseball viewers were informed by cable TV announcers that the Yankees led the league in successful replay challenges (75%). And likely there are Yankees replay staff, responsible for recommending whether the manager should ask for a challenge, who stake their job security and expect a raise this year for producing such an impressive number. The thing is, it’s the wrong number. In fact, if you successfully challenge only 5% of replays – and one of those 5% happens to turn the tide of a playoff game – that’s the only right metric to be concerned about.
3. Don’t seize the moment. OK, Joe, so you do have only a limited amount of time and your replay staff has let you down. What do you do? Nothing, is not the correct answer. (And, here, history repeats itself, because 10 years ago in the playoffs Yankees manager Joe Torre similarly did nothing as his team was literally attacked by a plague of locusts on the same field). Instead, seize the moment. Channel former Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver. I believe Earl would have shot out of the dugout, gotten in the face of the erring umpire, thrown a few things around the infield – and given his 75%-right staff more than 30 seconds to see that Yankees pitcher Chad Green had actually produced an inning-ending strikeout instead of a hit batsman to load the bases.
4. Lack a creative spark. Oh, but Joe later explained, he didn’t want to interrupt Green’s rhythm in that situation by calling for an extended replay review. That proved very wrong. The non-interrupted Green proceeded to surrender a grand slam to Francisco Lindor, the next batter. Perhaps, given that Joe said he knew from his prior experience as a major league catcher that “interrupted rhythm” was a real concern, he could have, with a little creativity, both delayed the game to ensure a proper replay review AND had another pitcher warmed up to replace Green before he faced Lindor. So few people -- and I'll include myself here -- are able to think three moves ahead in the heat of a pressure-packed moment. The people who do are the people who lead business revolutions.
5. Don’t listen to employees. This is the worst offense. Joe’s own on-field captain, catcher Gary Sanchez, clearly motioned to the dugout that the ball had been foul-tipped and caught, rather than hit the batter. Joe, who has recently publicly criticized Sanchez’ defensive skills (another management error), evidently didn’t believe him. What do you think Sanchez’ psyche is like now? Or Green’s? Or Todd Frazier, who Joe later pulled from the game at second base for pinch runner Roland Torreyes... who was promptly picked off, later meekly struck out, and then, having replaced Frazier in the field, allowed Cleveland’s winning ground ball to pass between him and third base on the final play of the game.

All that said, losing in a team sport – and losing in business situations – is always a team effort.

The Daily News' take

Sanchez looked at a third strike with a runner in scoring position, team superstar Aaron Judge didn’t produce a single RBI when it was needed most, and Green DID give up a grand slam. Even external forces produced “headwinds” (corporate jargon alert) that worked against a Yankee victory. Remember, it was home-plate umpire Dan Iassogna who first made the incorrect call on the strikeout – much to the surprise of the batter and catcher. And a New York Post photographer interfered with a play that gave Cleveland an extra base in a crucial spot. And Karma.

Winning is a team effort too. Let’s not forget that Lindor actually hit a grand slam, that catcher Yan Gomes’ cannon arm produced the Torreyes pickoff, that Jay Bruce hit a home run when his team needed it most, and that Gomes also ultimately (unlike so many hitters before him) hit a game-winning RBI in extra innings.

If and when Girardi takes that professorship at Harvard Business School, sign me up. I'm sure Yankees fans only hope it’s a course that's offered in the coming spring semester.

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Read all 28 articles I've posted on LinkedIn, all touching on PR issues. Also, special thanks to my friend Michael Kasdan. He's an editor at The Good Men Project, a website founded in 2009 as a collection of men’s stories about the defining moments in their lives. GMP reposted this yesterday, just as it has so graciously posted some of my other rants.

Media Advice for Mascots

I love Mr. Met and, knowing that he can’t use his own voice to defend himself, let me offer the following media advice.

Don’t Make Excuses. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. Everyone knows that Mr. Met has only four fingers, so how is it, exactly, that he is accused of using his middle finger?

It doesn’t matter, though. If the entire Twitterverse, and the back page of the Daily News says you’ve flipped fans the bird – and there’s an incriminating photo to back it up – you’re guilty.

Apologize for Yourself. The Mets organization immediately issued an apology, and I realize that Mr. Met can't (or doesn’t) actually speak – but, to all appearances, it looks like Mr. Met is hiding behind someone else’s statement. I advise the mascot to issue a video writing out his own apology, or issue a photo holding up his own statement.

Make Amends. This is where Mr. Met has been served a softball he can hit out of the park. Community service is his strength. There are countless photos of Mr. Met helping out at recycling rallies and other events, brandishing his t-shirt cannon, posing for fans with Mrs. Met… the possibilities here are endless. Mr. Met, with that permanent smile on his face, should get back to doing just those things that made him loveable in the first place.

I stand by my friend.

Yes, there should be a cooling off period where Mr. Met stays out of the public eye. Three news cycles – which equates to about 24 hours, in today’s world – should do it.

The public always wants to forgive you. There’s no better story than a fallen hero who redeems himself. I look forward to the day (later tonight or tomorrow) when Mr. Met can quietly resume doing what he does best: putting smiles on the faces of children or, I admit it, grown-ups who work in PR.

Originally posted on my LinkedIn page.

A Visit to Citi Field

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How Fantasy Baseball Forms Real Friendship

That's Pete Sgro in the middle, 2014

Whenever baseball season begins, I think of Roger Angell’s famous observation about the game:

With time measured in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly, keep the rally alive, and the game never ends. You remain forever young.

I’ve also lately had a related thought:

If the most magical part of baseball is the way it suspends time, isn’t that also, precisely, the most magical part of friendship?

The two are connected in my own life – the timelessness of baseball and of friendship – in a very real way this week, as I prepare for the 32nd season of the Eastern Shuttle League, the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Fantasy Baseball League in the East.

The ESL was founded in 1985 by five recent college graduates from the New York area and five from New England (hence the league name, which refers to the now-defunct Eastern Shuttle airline route between New York and Boston). It was based on rules established in a 1984 book called “Rotisserie League Baseball” by Glen Waggoner, a founding editor of ESPN The Magazine.

We were all baseball fans, of course – but other than that, we really had little in common. My work friend and soon-to-be best man, Joe, new at the NY Archdiocese’s communications office, knew two guys from Syracuse University. We strong-armed another baseball fan who worked with us, he had a friend, that guy knew another guy…

At Larry's house, 2018

The next thing you know, 10 of us were sitting around the back room of a now-closed dive bar called “La Hacienda” in Cambridge. We were surrounded – in the pre-web, pre-wifi era -- by plenty of cold beer, pizza and pages of handwritten notes, pre-season articles ripped from local sports pages and copies of Glen’s book and The Bible (the “1985 Sporting News Official Baseball Register”).

We spent the next few hours in raucous laughter, hurling insults at each other as we bid up to $260 to fill our 23-player slots of American Leaguers during a makeshift auction process. We argued baseball, made fun of each other’s draft selections, scared the hell out of the few women in the bar and grossly over-tipped the wait-staff.

We’ve never looked back.

• We stopped playing for money before the end of the first season (which I WON, by the way, so somebody owes me big-time, considering the compound interest);
• we’ve clung to team names that seemed oh-so-clever in the late ‘80s but are now just juvenile double-entendres (although I’ve long been the Bob Alous, which STILL seems clever to me);
• we use the original rules and draft only American Leaguers (although I’ve only watched Mets games for the past few years – after all, as Angell also once wrote, "There is more Met than Yankee in every one of us" -- and now know practically none of the AL players, which is why I’ve never won since).

Notice how I dropped myself into every one of those statements? That’s pretty much an indication of how competitive the league has always been. I imagine it’s like growing up with a bunch of brothers, where you always have to be prepared to defend yourself.

I didn’t have any brothers growing up. Because of fantasy baseball, I’ve got some now.

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And, like brothers, we’re often pretty silly together.

One guy has long adopted Eddie Gaedel as his imaginary team’s manager. Eddie, the shortest player in MLB history, was hired by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck to pitch hit during a meaningless doubleheader in 1951. He walked on four pitches. His jersey, bearing the uniform number " 1⁄8," is displayed in the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. You could look it up.

The ESL fantasy team owner, Ken G., is a talented writer with a whimsical flair. Over the years his detailed emails about his team, the KG Bees, written in Eddie’s voice, have come to rival anything Ring Lardner had ever written.

Eddie has become the ESL’s heart and soul: a foul-mouthed, wise-cracking midget with a Brooklyn accent, who provides weekly commentary on the fortunes of the Bees. Here’s a random sample from 2015:

The Bees front office exploded over the weekend with a testy, testosteroney "he said, wee said" battle of wills as the team's diabetic GM and dead midget manager lambasted one another for a dream thwee-peat season dashed to ruins. Giovanelli lambasted his pipsqueakity pilot for abandoning the club during the first six weeks of the season on a "selfish hellbent quest for Everest glory." He added, "And you had to go kick that freaking wolverine! It was all shit karma from that night on, yeti pelt be damned!!" Manager Eddie Gaedel in turn"wambastid" Mr. G over the team's humiliating fall from ESL dominance, blaming their ills on the GM's "wackwusta dwaft and keeping bweeping Jakobity!!" The two nearly came to bwows, until stalwart team members Brandon Moss and Mike Zunino (hitting a combined manly .199 on the season) separated the star-cwossed duo.

I know, it’s all a bit hard to explain. There was something about Eddie going to Napal and winning the Nobel Peace Prize that preceded this particular rant. And “Jakobity” is the expensively-priced (in ESL and IRL), under-performing Yankee, Jacoby Ellsbury. But you get the idea.

Scratching my head at the 2010 draft in Cooperstown

Not to be outdone by Ken, Joe often provides a hilarious preseason analysis of his team – the Joe Mammas -- in the voice of Casey Stengel, circa 1963.

Another team owner, Rich, once penned a song, “Don’t Worry, Be Lindy,” to the tune of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Don’t be fooled by any of this silliness, though. The free-spirited subject of the song, Lindy, has had a long and successful business career… just like one of the league’s other driving forces, the perpetually wise-cracking Roland (who fittingly displays a photo of Dr. Evil for his Facebook profile).

But now I’m naming names and getting too specific. If he ever reads this, Roland will probably kill me – and I’m not entirely sure that would be a first for him. I should stick with mentioning a few more general images:

There we are, all together at the end of the 1988 season at a sports bar in Manhattan, gathered around a big screen to watch Kirk Gibson take Dennis Eckersley deep in Game 1 of the World Series. There’s my baby girl, strapped into her carrier and propped next to me on the table the last time we held a draft at “La Hac.” There I am at my desk on 9/11/01, in an office building overlooking the World Trade Center – and the first email I received from anyone concerned about my safety… was from Roland.

There have been numerous births in the league since my daughter was born. Surprisingly few relationship breakups. Lots of job changes and relocations. Original ESL members have left and been replaced for so long that their replacements seem like original members. Cancer scares. Two deaths – one who overdosed from drugs after leaving the league many years ago; one last year, everyone’s dear friend Pete.

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Pete Sgro (I mention his full name here because no one is truly gone until their name is no longer mentioned) was a lifelong Yankees fan and top executive at A&E Networks. We always had to make sure the April draft didn’t conflict with his travels to the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Vegas, or opening day at Yankee Stadium.

When he died suddenly last summer, we didn’t know whether we’d keep the league active.

But then, within just a few days, it seemed even sillier to close down the league because of Pete. We’ve arranged for someone to take up the management of his team, and the players he had aggressively traded for who he was sure would have breakout seasons in 2017. For Pete’s sake (yes, Dennis already used that Dad-joke-of-a-phrase in a recent email to Larry and Bruce), we still make fun of his team just as much as when he was alive.

Pete would have liked that. Just as he would have liked knowing that Joe smuggled in a miniature plastic figure of Eddie Gaedel to his memorial service.

A group of us attended that service, not sure Pete’s family members would even know who we were. Yet when we introduced ourselves to his wife, daughter and sister, we were received as family. “It’s so good to see his friends from the ESL,” they said. “We’ve heard so much about you over the years.”

Such is the awesome power of shared experience, no matter what the circumstance.

So, do yourself a favor this year. Join a fantasy baseball league.

The baseball season will take on another life for you, in another dimension. No matter how bad your home team is, you’ve got your fantasy team, and all you have to do is succeed utterly, stay competitive, and the games never end.

You remain forever young.

Where Have You Gone, Horace Clarke?

barrycode.com reports not a single HOF vote for Horace Clarke.

The only sin modern society does not forgive is mediocrity.

Yet – as we grow more connected on the internet, learning more about each other collectively and appreciating how much we don’t know individually – it seems there’s a wide range to the norm… accomplishment is often illusory and its context is never fully understood.

Put it this way: Hardly anyone’s more special than anyone else.

I was thinking about this today, while Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey Jr. were being inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. I was thinking of my boyhood New York Yankee heroes after the end of the Mickey Mantle era, when one of my favorite players was Horace Clarke.

Years ago I might have written a nostalgic piece titled, “Where Have You Gone, Horace Clarke?” But, these days, it’s pretty easy to find out that he’s alive and well, having lived a full life, and that he has been popularly vilified as the very definition of baseball mediocrity – even including comments in a recent book (see my review below) by his former teammate Fritz Peterson.

Peterson was a career .500 pitcher known for throwing a variety of legal and illegal pitches. He shouldn’t be one to throw stones at teammates, however, since I remember him as a literal control-freak, giving up more than his share of 0-2 home runs. I also remember Horace one year hitting .285 and coming to bat one night with the bases loaded, two out and the Yankees losing by a run in the ninth.

Horace worked the count to 3-1 that night. The opposing pitcher slipped delivering the next pitch, which arrived at the plate as a mini-Steve-Hamilton-Folly-Floater – perhaps a half-foot higher than the top of the strike zone and perhaps 60 mph.

Rather than take ball four and tie the game, Horace sent a meek pop fly to centerfield to seal another loss.

Afterward, he explained to reporters that the pitch looked “as big as a balloon” and that he “couldn’t resist it.”

I think we all know why he swung at that pitch, though. Horace hit only 27 home runs during his career, and his first two were grand slams. That night, he was taking a mighty swing against mediocrity – not knowing that he was destined to never hit a third grand slam in his career.

Well done, Ken Griffey Jr.

So congratulations, Mike and Ken. As a baseball fan, I say, “Well done.”

As one of the 7.4 billion human beings alive today who, like Horace Clarke, have never received a single Hall of Fame vote, I’ll simply – as if standing beside a conquering general parading into ancient Rome – whisper this reminder:

“All glory is fleeting."

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When the Yankees Were on the Fritz: Revisiting the Horace Clarke Years. by Fritz Peterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is one of the oddest books I've ever read, so I give it an extra star for quirkiness.

Odd editing... riddled with typos, exclamation points, poor grammar, bad exposition (mentioning something as if it had already been explained, then explaining it later), and repeated phrases, anecdotes and even whole sections.

Odd theology... the moral I gleaned is that you can apparently be as big a jerk as you want in life because God forgives everything.

Odd racist overtones... considering that the three teammates called out for lack of hustle were the three black position players during most of Peterson's time with the Yankees; at the same time, almost all the white players are uniformly described as "good guys" with "great wives."

Odd life advice... don't buy life insurance or root for the Mets, but be sure invest in real estate (unless it falls into the hands of your first wife during the divorce settlement, then you can obsess about real estate values for 40 years).

Oh, parenthetically, about that divorce: Odd that this book glossed over the one thing Peterson is most known for... that he swapped wives and children and family dogs with a teammate in 1973. Oh, but that will be the subject of another book, it's explained.

Mr. Peterson, you were a splendid pitcher for the Yankees many years ago. I rooted for you as a boy. Thank you for bringing back those memories. I admire your professional career and if you ever do draft another book, please contact me before self-publishing again.

Odd, but I think I may be able to help you. I'd edit it for free.


View all my Goodreads reviews

All My Friends Are Dead

Randy Johnson, inducted into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame today, is an improbable role model.

To paraphrase Crash Davis (my fictional post-Atticus Finch role model), when Randy was a baby he got a gift: the gods reached down and turned his left arm into a thunderbolt.

But that’s not why he’s a role model. This photo is why...

Because Randy Johnson has (excuse the expression) developed into a talented photographer.

He didn't rest on his laurels. He never stopped learning. He followed his passion.

He inspires me to try to surprise people, in a good way.

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People misjudge people. I’d be willing to bet that Randy’s perceived cold and aloof personality had something to do with his awkward attempts to fit in to the Yankee clubhouse and answer trite, repetitive questions from reporters.

No one, outside of your closest loved ones, knows who you really are. Everyone else puts you in a little box and tries to keep you there.

Recently a doctor read my chart before a routine checkup and commented, with a note of surprise, “So, you’re still working?” — apparently a strange phenomenon for a middle-aged man in Bergen County, NJ, in the year 2015. You can imagine the rest. He assumed I golfed (I don’t); assumed my wife and I would be traveling this summer (sorry, other plans); assumed he knew my taste in music and politics and that my irritability was a function of my age.

“No," I said, "it’s because all my friends are dead."

I don’t think he got the joke.

Five years ago, I visited the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and was seemingly touched on the arm by a baseball god...

Photo credit: Joe Zwilling

I have been (we all have been) given great gifts, and I have since vowed to never to let anyone pigeonhole me.

Yes, that’s me, kneeling down in front of a photo of Tom Seaver, the famous vintner.

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Baseball on the Small Stage: For Love of the Game

I edited a version of my post about baseball two days ago, and The Good Man Project reposted it here.

Sorry, Derek.

Let's Honor Derek Jeter by Not Deifying Him

There was no one but a German shepherd in the dugout of the best baseball game I saw this summer.

All nine of the team’s players – dressed in full uniforms with Seadogs blazoned across their chests – were out on the field, and the dog belonged to the second baseman.

Their pitcher was tired. He had just walked the leadoff batter – and a player came charging out of the Sharks’ dugout to serve as third-base coach with a runner on first.

The pitcher turned to the shortstop, said something vaguely obscene, and all the infielders trotted to the mound and conferred for a few seconds. When they dispersed, the shortstop was the pitcher and pitcher was the shortstop. One of two black-suited umpires said, “Play ball,” in a disarmingly young voice, and on the first pitch the batter launched a pop foul that landed at my feet.

I picked up the scuffed ball. “Hey, a little help here!” the catcher called out from the other side of the chain-link backstop. So I threw the ball back onto the field.

Baseballs, after all, cost $14.99 each at Dick’s Sporting Goods – and the players here pay all the equipment costs. They aren’t millionaires, and the only people watching them besides me were a few family members and girlfriends. This was, after all, just a bar league game in Chatham, a few weeks after the Cape Cod Baseball League had ended play.

I had seen the ballpark’s shining lights in the distance on an ordinary Thursday night and had wandered over to watch 20 grown men dress up and play nine innings… just for the love of the game.

As this year’s MLB playoffs begin without Derek Jeter, I’m conflicted – perhaps as conflicted as the former Yankee shortstop himself – by his deification.

I’m a lifelong Yankee fan, and I’ve admired his play and demeanor for years. I don’t pretend to know Derek Jeter, the man. But I can promise you this: he is not, as seemingly every sports reporter or announcer has claimed, “larger than life.”

Life and baseball are larger than Derek Jeter.

If we really want to honor his legacy, maybe we can all try this week to give someone else just a little help here.

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The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in the East

No, this isn't a photo of an 80s rock band after accepting their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame award (although that would have been a dream come true for me). It's the ESL in 2014.

The Eastern Shuttle League is a fantasy/rotisserie baseball league started in 1985, before we were married and started families. Today, we all arrived, like magic from several different states, precisely at 11 in the morning in Darien, Connecticut, to conduct our draft.

I'm not going to tag anyone here because, for all I know, there are people in this photo in the witness protection program.

My wife Nancy (who's also "off the grid" and who graciously drafted a team for someone who couldn't show up) and I were almost the last ones to arrive. Even though I'm always early to things. I was waiting for her in the car outside our house as she was drying her hair before we left. I told Joe (far right) that this never happened when he and I drove to an ESL draft.