Swinging for the Fences Every Day
Knowing it’s extremely hard to hit a home run
In Major League Baseball, the greatest players on the planet average one home run for every 23 at bats. Of all hits, only 3.3% are HRs, and only 33-42% of runs are scored on a home run. That means players rarely hit home runs and that singles, doubles, and triples score the vast majority of runs in a baseball game. Why? Because it’s extremely hard to hit a home run.
Okay, let’s translate this concept over to creativity.
Dare I say to hit the “proverbial” home run in any creative field is even harder than hitting an actual one in baseball? Advertising, movies, music, art, pick one. The first challenge: subjectivity as to what a “home run” is. This is very concrete in baseball. Over the fence HR, anything else not. In the arts, your definition of a home run and mine might vary greatly. Listen to any song with a group, discuss any movie, judge any ad and you will get the full gamut from love it to meh to hate it. A creative home run is when enough people think it’s an HR. That’s what makes it break out and be one. Also, fragmented media makes it very difficult to hit a home run. Niche audiences get served very narrow messaging, so any single piece struggles to get a large quantity of people to see it. Enter the power of virality, the new broad media “buy.” Plus, NOW everyone creates content all the time everywhere. The internet and social media are the world’s publishers. No need for an agent or curator or record label to anoint you the next big thing. Anoint yourself. In addition to this ridiculous competition add other challenges like context and cultural timing.
A sobering example of how hard it is to hit a creative home run.
Bruce Springsteen is a massively popular mainstream American artist. He has released 400 songs. 26 made it on the Billboard Hot 100. That’s only 6.5% of his total output. I am an average listener of music, perhaps even a little more because of my job. Personally, I do not know the vast majority of the songs he has recorded. Don’t know the words, couldn’t sing along, never heard it. With the exception of music fanatics, and people from New Jersey, I would say that is true of the typical music listener. That means the Boss has hit more singles, doubles, and triples, not to mention outs and strikeouts.
Hitting a home run is likely the most difficult thing to do in sports. Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams once famously said, “it’s a round ball and a round bat, and they tell you to hit it squarely.” Keep swinging for the fences, and when you hit a home run, celebrate it, stand at the plate and watch it leave the yard, then do a dramatic bat flip…the original mic drop. But also realize a clutch, bases-clearing double in the corner when you’re down two runs is better than a solo shot when you’re up eight.
Bonus:
Roy Wood Jr. in his morning show tour for the documentary Going, Going, Gone: The Magic of the Home Run (2025), said in basketball they bring average fans down at halftime to shoot from half court. In hockey, sometimes they have a fan shoot a puck the length of the ice into a small hole in front of the net. On a somewhat regular basis, we see footage on the news of a beer-filled spectator scoring the goal or hitting a swish and going nuts with LeBron or Ben Stiller! They NEVER invite an average fan down during the 7th-inning stretch to try to hit a home run over the fence. Because they can’t do it. Plain and simple. No one would ever win.
