Fear. And Loafing.

One of the essential moments of my life happened when I was just 14 years old and the starting third-baseman on my high school's varsity baseball team.

I hadn't had my growth yet, and stood in stocking feet, just about 5'7". I was towered over by most of the boys I was playing alongside and playing against. I had always been tall, but now I seemed to have leveled off at a relatively diminutive height.

Playing ball with and against kids who had been shaving since they were nine, was intimidating. But I fought, and tried, and fought some more and despite my size, more than held my own against competition that had six inches on me and thirty pounds. That's a lot of mass to give away.

That season as a ninth-grader was also the first time in my life I started seeing curveballs on a regular basis. I had seen curves before, but they were like comets--irregular events. When I hit high school, curves became a regular occurence. 

The curve was invented, like so much else in life, to scare the fortitude out of the batter--the guy holding the lumber. A good curve comes right at you, bearing down like a punch or a bad report card. It's going to hit you.

You're scared. (That's the point.)

You back away.

Or, worse, freeze.

Then, defying physics, the ball dips and bends. Its route switches abruptly and its destination changes from your head to just over the plate, prompting the umpire to raise his right arm and bellow, "yer out!"

The curve, like so much else in life, is a battle against fear. Do you wait and see? Or duck and crumble? Or get smacked in the bean and lose one-million brain cells to an undiagnosed concussion?

When you're 14 playing against 18 year-olds who have acquired some mastery over an assortment of benders, the curves can leave you as paralyzed as an old Greek statue. You stand there, bat in hand, frozen and the ball thuds into the catcher's mitt, leaving you looking stupid as a Times' Square caricature. 

Or, as the cliché goes, the ball leaves you flat-footed, so you swing like a rusty gate.

Mike Siganos was the best pitcher in the league. He played for St. Luke's and wound up playing two sports, football and baseball, at the University of Kentucky. I think he might have had a look-see from a couple of NFL clubs, but they looked and didn't see. It turns out Siganos played for a time for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Canadian Football League.

No matter. He had a curveball like a Koufax, at least to my shaky 14-year-old knees.

When facing Siganos, everyone else on my team sidled to the back of the batter's box. They reckoned they'd have more time to react to his bender. They did not have a great deal of success. 

I did the opposite.

Without saying anything to anyone (my default setting) especially not Babich, our fireplug of a coach, I moved to the front of the batter's box. So far forward, my left foot seemed to be fairly on the outfield fringe. Though Mr. Paskin had given me a C- in "Introduction to Physics," I reasoned that moving up in the box might allow me to take a swat at the curve before the ball actually broke. 

This was as counter-intuitive a move as any I've ever made in my entire life. The ball would get to me faster, I knew, but maybe I'd have a better whack at it before it got tricky.

Maybe my victory by moving forward began with semiotics. Moving up the the box said something. It said "I want you." "I'm not afraid of you." "I'm coming at you before you come at me."

The semiotics of not showing fear. Of saying, instead, you should be afraid of me.

I remember--though it's been 53 years--a pitch from Siganos coming at me shoulder high, like Housman's athlete dying young. I smacked it hard, I smacked it nasty. It soared out between left and center, an easy double. I stretched that double into a triple just by being stupid and saying, "I'm not stopping where they think I should." Another default setting.

A lot of people call me for advice. Including my brilliant and accomplished daughters.

Most often what I hear from people is a sense of frustration made more frustrating because it's glazed with a thick sauce of compliant behavior. 

"Everyone else is getting X," I'm told. "They're better than I am, how can I get X as well?"

The job of living isn't about doing what everybody else is doing so you can get what everybody else is getting, it's about saying no to the status quo. When I got canned from Ogilvy and needed to set a day rate, I gauged myself not against other ECDs but against the day-rate of the head of the consulting group. That's moving up in the box.

Most people enter a negotiation without realizing they're in a negotiation. And they're starting with their foot already in the bucket. They're starting from a place of timidity and fear. They're moving back in the batters' box.

I suggest they move forward.

"Why don't you ask for double?" I ask. "You're the best in the world at what you do," I assert, "Don't allow yourself to be confined."

I suppose I could ask them to read the story above. Or even think about Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four-minute mark in the mile-run. 

For almost half-a-century people said the four-minute mile would never be achieved. The mark intimidated runners. Some scientists believed it was humanly impossible to break. And while runners got close, they leaned back when they might have leaned forward. Missing the mark.

Everyone said it couldn't be done. 

Then Bannister went and did it.

As of June, 2022, 1,755 different runners have done what couldn't be done.

That's what I learned that spring afternoon facing a pitcher who was better than me.

That's what I learn every day I negotiate a fee or win an assignment from a client.

Step forward in the box.

The trick isn't not to be afraid, that's impossible. Everyone is afraid all the time, every day.

The trick is not showing your fear.