Baseball is America’s pastime. Perhaps no time is that more evident than now, when the lazy days of summer turn to the crisp evenings of the pennant race. For a long time now too, baseball and writing have gone together. There’s been Who’s on First, The Natural, Casey at the Bat, and Ball Four. Perhaps most famously, in The Green Fields of the Mind, A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote the following:
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
I’ll leave the poetry to the poets, but inspired (among other things) by the hometown Colorado Rockies’ recent playoff push, I thought I’d write the 3 things baseball teaches us about copywriting. Because, well, it’s fun. And also because I think there’s a lot to learn.
1. Patience. Baseball, more than any other sport, rewards patience. While football is a savage game, and occurs over a 16-game season (basketball and hockey have 82), every baseball team plays a full 162 games. That means that during a baseball season, you can flat-out stink for a whole two months, and still have a decent year. Players can’t get too high during a streak, or two low during a slump. They can only work hard, consistently, and be patient knowing that their skills will yield the proper end results.
Writing is no different. It’s not like painting, movie-making, or in the case of business copywriting, not like link-building or SEO. It’s not flashy, and it can’t be forced — it’s a subtle artform that requires patience to perfect. You need to work hard, of course, and dedicate yourself to the proper process. But you also need to let it come at its proper time. The time it chooses.
2. Simplicity. It’s somewhat true that baseball is a complex game. Do you hit-and-run with 1-out to stay out of the double play? Or do you tell your heavy-footed catcher to stay put, and let your .276 hitter swing away? However, it’s the simplicity of the game, not the complexity, from which baseball draws its beauty. At its foundation, baseball is nothing more than throw the ball, hit the ball, field the ball. And of course, for the fans, about enjoying a hot dog while watching it all take place.
Writing is the same way. Sure, there are complexities involved. Do you use a semi-colon to extend a given sentence, and add a part of another onto it? Or do you stick with the simplicity of a comma, or perhaps an ellipsis? However, it doesn’t take William Shakespeare to tell us that the beauty of writing isn’t in its mechanics (though those are fun), it is in the ideas. Writing is great because it allows us to communicate. Copywriting is great because it allows one company, or one brand, to talk directly to its customers, buyers, or followers. And like all conversation, at least where I come from, this interaction is best done simply.
3. Outcomes. There are, of course, winners and losers in baseball. One team wins each game, no matter how many innings they have to play, and only one team wins the World Series in the fall. However, unlike sports like football and basketball, where the power struggle between teams defines the interaction, baseball has a subtlety to its competition. No sport keeps individual stats as fervently (most hitters can compute their batting average while running to first), and no sport fosters goodwill amongst those that appreciate the sport, beyond their team loyalties. Sure, competition is there, but it’s not all there is.
Copywriting, in this same way, hinges partly on competition.The copy is designed to sell something, and even if you don’t have any direct competition in your marketplace, you probably have certain barriers to sale that you’re trying to overcome. For bad copywriters, who write bad copy, this competition becomes paramount… and that’s where the dreaded “ten copywriting tricks you can use to dominate your market” come from.
Good copywriters however, knowing better, don’t concentrate solely on winning. They work to build communities, talk directly to like-minded people, and if there’s a theoretical fit, they work to find products, solutions, or services that meet the needs of their readers. In the end, these copywriters have more success, but only because they weren’t focused on dominating every single word, sentence, and paragraph.
So what, in sum, can we learn from baseball about copywriting? To be patient with your work, over days and perhaps even months… putting in the time and effort to produce a great final product, while always remembering that simplicity is beauty. And also, perhaps more than anything, to be straight-forward with your readers… trying to sell a product or service if that’s your cause, without selling yourself out for the WIN. Take some time to relax, some time to share a proverbial hot dog with your potential customers, and I trust that the communities you build in doing so will ensure your long-term success.
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