Willie Mays, The Say Hey Metaphor.

This is not about Willie Mays, really, though it involves Willie Mays.

It's about people who have special gifts based on experience, skill and vision. There's a French term that's often used in military science called Coup d' œil. Don't ask me to pronounce it, I can't.

It means the ability to understand a situation in the blink of an eye. Realtors have it--good ones, anyway. They can come into your apartment, tell you to move a vase or a lamp or an arm chair, and suddenly your $1.2 million place becomes a $1.3 million place that sells in four days.

Once I shot a commercial with Joe Pytka. It was an interview with Ridley Scott. Scott began by saying he's shot 2000 commercials. (That's 50 a year for 40 years.) He said he comes onto location and he immediately knows where the lighting goes. He sizes things up. Malcolm Gladwell talked about it in his book, "Blink." 

Experts from museums around the world verified the authenticity of a 3,000-year-old Kouros. The Getty Museum wanted one more bit of testimony before making the purchase. They flew in an expert who in a second said the Kouros was fake. He knew in a blink. 

That's coup d' œil.

In the agency non-business, or the non-serious agency business, 99% of the people who have coup d' œil have been shit-canned, largely because they also have white d' hair. I know a lot of such people--their coup d' œil is uncanny. My friend Rob Schwartz, former CCO and CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York told me Lee Clow said to him once, "Oh, you have that Steve Hayden thing.  You can see how all of this plays out." Something like that. (Rob, you can edit me.)

Here's how former Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent described Willie Mays' coup d' œil.

"Late in the game an A’s hitter sent an arcing foul ball in our direction. I sat still, watching the ball in flight. I never even glanced at the field, failing to consider that a fielder might try to make a play.

"Fans do what I did. But players are different and Willie was a Hall of Famer. He immediately understood that Giants first baseman Will Clark was headed our way. Mr. Clark arrived suddenly and crashed into my lap with the ball in his glove. It was then that Willie showed why he was different.

"As Mr. Clark landed on me, Willie reached out and grabbed Mr. Clark’s legs to keep his spiked cleats from cutting us both. While I was tracking the ball, Willie was tracking the danger. He helped Mr. Clark get on his feet and turned him back toward the field.

"Willie had been thinking ahead. He fully anticipated the crash and executed a deft intervention. Once I saw what he had done, I realized what his talent had given him. I told him I was beyond grateful for his protection—and for the up-close demonstration of his unique ability to anticipate what was about to happen in the course of a ball taking flight.

"Willie looked down while we mortals looked up. He knew when to take his eye off the ball. The rest of us reacted while Willie was thinking ahead. He was simply different and his kind is rare indeed."

We work in a non-serious business now. We spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars awarding ourselves with awards we purchase at a time when our purchase with clients and consumers withers and dies. We celebrate work that never runs while the work that does run is more and more offensive and ugly and ineffective and insulting. 

To paraphrase Churchill's praise of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, "Never have so few done so little of consequence and applauded themselves for it so mightily." 

We've fired the Willies.

And promoted the sillies.