Let the game come to you

When I was younger, my dad got me this book called The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams. My dad loved sports, loved competition, and whenever he talked about Ted Williams, he didn't just say his name. He called him by his baseball name — The Splendid Splinter. There was an air of respect in his voice when he said it. A little admiration.

I think Ted Williams represented something deeper to him than just baseball. It was discipline. It was patience. It was mastery. But it was also probably the fact that my dad, being a pilot in the Vietnam War, knew that Ted Williams, in World War II, was also a pilot. He actually left baseball to go to World War II, and he fought in the Korean War as well.

I flipped through that book many times. Some lessons don't land right away. They sit quietly in the background, kind of dormant, until life experience helps you understand what you might have been shown years ago.

science of hitting

But there was an image from that book that never left me. It was the front cover. Ted Williams at the plate, and the strike zone was divided into 77 baseball-sized circles. Each circle had a projected batting average, and it explained something profound. If you only swung at pitches in your sweet spot, you could hit over .400 — and he did. But if you swing at low, outside pitches, your average drops to .230.

The message was simple: the most important thing in hitting is to wait for the right pitch.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In investing, there are no called strikes — nobody forces you to react
Headlines and market noise create pressure to act, but action isn't always the answer
Companies fail not by doing too little, but by doing too much
Pressure creates poor decisions; confidence creates discipline
The fewer pitches you swing at, the better your results often become

No Called Strikes

But Ted Williams had a constraint, like all hitters. If the count was 0-2 or 1-2, he didn't always have the luxury of waiting. Sometimes he had to swing at a pitch he didn't like.

Baseball forces action.

Investing does not.

In investing, there are no called strikes. Nobody forces us to swing at anything. Every day, thousands of pitches come flying across the plate. Turn on CNBC — once the market opens, all you see is red and green flashing in your face. Turn on Bloomberg at any time of night and you get the international markets, the next hot stock, the next headline, the next "must own."

I got a text during the Super Bowl from a friend who sent me the price chart of a particular company, asking what I thought about it.

And the truth is, we don't have to swing. Nobody is going to ring us up for a called strike. The only time we get a strike is when we swing at a bad pitch.

That's an enormous advantage if we play it right.

Don't Rush. Don't Force It. Don't Press.

My dad used to say something to me all the way through sports: Let the game come to you.

In sports, that phrase carries a lot of weight. Don't rush. Don't force it. Don't press. When you try to make things happen, when you swing at everything, when you speed things up instead of slowing them down — things usually fall apart.

But when you relax, when you stay disciplined, when you let the right opportunity come to you — you can attack with confidence.

The same is true with your financial life.

There is no rule that says you have to swing at every pitch. There is no rule that says you must own hundreds or thousands of companies in your portfolio. And there is no rule that says you have to have an opinion on everything.

Realistically, in the game of investing, you need only a few — a very small few — great swings. And as long as you're not swinging at everything, you can swing and miss at a lot of things along the way.

When The Zone Expands

It's always interesting to me how companies fail — not because they do too little, but because they try to do too much. They drift away from their sweet spot. They chase noise. They expand beyond their discipline. They swing at pitches outside their zone.

For a long time, General Electric was one of the finest companies in the world. Disciplined. Focused. Exceptional at what they did.

And over time, something changed. They began swinging at everything: media, insurance, mortgages, television, finance — expansion far beyond their original zone of excellence.

At first, it looked like strength. Like growth and momentum.

But underneath, something dangerous was happening. The strike zone was expanding. Discipline was fading. The company was no longer waiting for its pitch. It was swinging at every pitch.

And when you swing at everything, your batting average eventually collapses.

Complexity grew. Risk built quietly. The things that once made GE great — clarity, focus, discipline — became diluted. Not because they stopped being talented, but because they stopped being selective.

Pressure vs. Confidence

This is the danger of noise. Opportunity feels like it's everywhere. Pitches are endless. And when we feel like we must act, we often act poorly. When we feel like we must react to everything, we lose focus on what actually matters.

Pressure creates poor decisions. Confidence creates discipline.

When a quarterback is under relentless pressure, he can't relax. He can't let the play develop. He can't wait for his throw. You see forcing. Rushing. Decisions made out of urgency instead of clarity.

But when we slow down, when we stay patient, when we let the game come to us — we gain control. And that control is where confidence lives.