Tag: Writing

A Sales Problem, Not a Marketing Problem

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The goal of the game is to make money. You make money by selling. You sell with a playbook, not a bigger funnel.

A person I met yesterday is looking for marketing help. I think he’s wrong. 

He’d paid someone $25,000 to post constantly and drive traffic to his site. He was dissatisfied, given the large outlay (his whole company only makes a few hundred thousand dollars a year). I looked at his website. He doesn’t have a marketing problem. He has a sales problem.

What is marketing, and what is sales?

Marketing is not an intrinsic good.

To a company, money is an intrinsic good. One could reasonably argue that revenue and costs are therefore intrinsic. Even culture – which is incredibly impactful – is only instrumental, since for this particular game, the goal is money. Marketing is also instrumental: what you actually want is to sell.

Take sales and marketing to their logical extreme: 

  • A pure salesperson with no marketing is a traveling salesman knocking on doors. It’s slow and expensive, but it works. 
  • All marketing and no sales is the reverse: every eyeball on earth is on your company, but you have no way to take their money.

So what does a good salesperson actually do? Not just put the product in front of people. For something complex, like a SaaS tool, they’re handling objections, talking through integrations, working out which pain points it solves. They’re getting to the right person: is it the college IT guy, the professor, or the dean? The fundraiser, or the head of the university? Sometimes that means bouncing through a few people to get there.

Sales is also theatrical: taking someone on a journey that ends at the solution to their problems.

Sales is the funnel: wide at the top, narrowing as people move down, with customers at the bottom. People drop out at any stage; the good fits make it down, the bad fits fall away.

Marketing is different. Marketing sits above the funnel and feeds it: catching attention, nudging people toward interest.

And marketing is often much more wishy-washy (I say this as someone who’s worked in it most of my life). It’s about how we want to be perceived, how we want to relate. 

Removing people from the equation: 

  • Marketing is the ads you see on another site.
  • Sales is the checkout flow on the site. 

A sales process is a repeatable playbook for getting someone to buy. It covers:

  • Which personas actually buy
  • What they find convincing
  • What they fear, and how you assuage it
  • The pricing

A salesperson also runs field research: selling in the wild, then coming back with data.

Back to my guy

Let’s say he sells IT software to universities, through what look like channel partners, and that has gotten him to reliable revenue. If you’re a go-getter CEO who was active at your own school, with a big-enough family wired into a few other alumni networks, you can probably close three or four deals on warm intros alone.

So you think: I just need more people in the funnel, then I’ll close them. But if your process is a handful of local channel partners (one runs hackathons, another chess clubs, another debate), more volume does nothing when your hackathon guy doesn’t know how to sell. He can’t expand his close past the set of folks who he understands. Enthusiasm can take you from 0 to 1, but you need a reliable process to go from 1 to N. 

An ideal playbook, once you’ve stood up the sales team, looks like:

  • How to filter for the people worth talking to
  • Which stakeholders to reach
  • The objections you’ll hit
  • How to overcome them
  • Then the soft stuff: rapport, persuasion, all the convincing

So now, my question: 

  • What happens when I tell this guy that he doesn’t need a marketer; he needs a salesperson? 
  • Will he hire me to stand up his sales team? 
  • I bet I could do it. I’m hungry for exactly this sort of role with exactly this sort of impact. The product is one I’m interested in. I’ve done all the pieces that this role has (sales, travel, small-team hustle, bushwhacking in a novel area, coaching); this role is just combining them in a new way. 

I’ve already marketed to him. The question: Can I close the sale? 

Games Played

I saw a play today about the House Un-American Activities Committee investigation of Hollywood. I did not expect the play to increase my sympathy toward the investigator’s position. But it did. 

Before the play, my perception of the investigation can be summed up as “it was a witch-hunt”. 

After the play, my new conclusion: Yes, it was a witch hunt. But – as made clear by the Korean War – there actually was witchcraft (Communism), and there actually were witches (people who wanted to replace the US constitutional government with communism). But these people (the Hollywood actors) were not the witches. 

Finding My People

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Most of success is just showing up. But showing up to the right place… 

Before I moved to New York, I told my Partner that merely by living here, I’d find work. There’s so much economic opportunity in this city that I’d harness some.

One month in, I met a former founder who hired me to ghostwrite a blog post.

Three months later (two weeks ago), a random VC firm pinged me on LinkedIn about a private-markets mixer. I signed up. Yesterday, the organizer texted to make sure I was actually coming.

En route to the club, I noticed that I smelled. So I ducked into a CVS for deodorant. Not a good start.

I entered the club at 3:51pm. The doorman made me take off my hat. Getting worse.

At 4pm, the hosts arrived. They’d expected a room more suited to their needs: an open room, not a big table ringed with chairs. Rough continuation.

Upstairs, another host told me to take off my hat again. Ugh, come on. 

For the next 90 minutes, I met mostly people in wealth management and late-stage investing. Not my areas.

But then! Someone walked in with a pep in his step, someone I immediately pegged as Interesting. I snuck my way over. He grows hydroponic ginseng for a healthy soda company. He sold his last startup, a guitar-amplifier company. Now he wants to bring this healthy soda to the world.

And another! A guy doing video-based sabermetrics for sports other than baseball. And he’s complaining about marketing. These are my people. The ones I can help.

We exchanged emails. I’ll message them about coffee.

All in all, a very successful meeting.

If you show up as your specific self, you’ll meet the people you can actually help. 

Also, I ate 4 lamb lollipops, 2 falafel balls, and 1 small slice of fig pizza. I count that as a win.

Games Played

Me at the bathroom supply store: “Are you salaried or paid on commission?” 

Salesperson: “I’m not going to share that information.” 

Me in my mind: <Commission it is.> 

A Conservatory-Trained Beggar

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The goal of the game is to survive. You survive by earning a living. You earn a living by choosing the corner, not perfecting the song.

His sign reads “food for my baby and / my family can you help / me with a job / God bless you”, and hot damn can this guy play violin.

The last time I saw a violinist of such emotional expression, I located her on instagram, spotted she was recently married, and messaged her anyway to ask her out. She did not respond. 

This guy stations on Broadway between 88th st and 89th st, outside the shuttered retail store beside the Wells Fargo. He plucks. He strums. He fingers. He twangs. He draws a crowd.

The crowd contains a woman sitting on her walker, her caretaker, a woman of about 60 who offers me a tissue when she hears me sniffle, and Yours Truly. Not a bad crowd for a horrendous location.

Five children pass with their two adults. They stop. The male adult says “this is Mozart”.

When passing through Lisbon, I met a local trumpeter. He asked where I live. I told him New York. He loves New York. He can earn $800 or $900 per day in 3 or 4 hours of play, he told me. He played on the east side of Central Park, by the fountain where the summer sailboats swim.

This violinist, in 15 minutes, made maybe $5. $20 per hour is not the rate you’re looking for, my guy. You want a spot with greater throughput.

Just as musical skill does not determine a musician’s popularity, musicality does not determine a busker’s success.

A busker sells music. And like any retail in New York, location matters. But his store is even more tailored.

His sign asks for a job. He doesn’t need a job. He needs to make this one work.

He plays a few classical pieces, then a jewish one. He might know he’s on the Upper West Side (a Jewish hub). I wonder if he knows something I don’t know. I don’t think he does. But how would I know? 

I thanked him for decorating my space via a $3 venmo donation. I had just spent $3 on 18 ounces of blackberries. The least I can do is contribute an equivalent amount of thanks to him.

Hold up: he’s now looping. I’ve heard this song before. From him, like 10 minutes ago.

Are these his only songs? His only moneymakers? Does he loop the same 10-minute concert? That would be very New York of him. My first time living in New York, I donated to a guitarist in Central Park when he played a song of emotional resonance to me. I only realized when I returned the following day that he plays that same set on loop because my song has emotional resonance for everyone.

Most of the donations come from passers-by, not from the crowd. The crowd helps: without us, fewer would stop and listen. But this guy is good enough that he would grab attention even if I weren’t here.

Around 15 minutes in, the battery on his backing track died.

Location and preparation: not his strengths. Violin: absolutely.

I once spitballed with a friend the idea of A/B testing homeless beggar signs. What works, where, for whom.

The problem with that business, aside from the ethical qualms: an unreliable workforce. Data collection and reliable money collection: not good.

I wonder how much I could make as a beggar in NYC. If I cosplayed and A/B tested. What is a beggar but an emotional street performer? This violinist creates beauty. The beggar creates pity. A clown creates joy. French beggars prostrate themselves. American ones open doors to Dunkin Donuts in hopes of capitalizing on the reciprocity. 

I bet I’d enjoy A/B testing different begging in NYC. And by “begging”, I include street performing in general. Be a psychic one day, a debater another, a jokester a third.

The performer’s baby watches videos on a cell phone. Its mother (presumably his wife) swipes. The king’s kids just call him dad.

After the performance, the audience member with the tissue introduces herself as Vicky. Vicky tells me if she were eating the blackberries I was eating, she would have spilled them all over herself. I offer her a clamshell of blackberries. She declines. I tell her about my favorite fruit vendor, where they’re only $1 per 6oz clamshell. Vicky tells me the performer is conservatory-trained, from Venezuela. Everyone around her becomes successful, she says. She tells me the violinist used to play a block south. Now he’s here. Vicky asks for my information and I tell her about my trumpeter friend. I approach the performer to scan his Venmo. Vicky tells the violinist I have something to say. I ask him, through a translator: how did he choose this place? He tells me he lives in the Bronx. I say this street: how did you choose this street? He says by walking (which I interpret as arbitrary). I tell him that my buddy the trumpeter used to play at that location in Central Park and made $800 in 3-4 hours. Vicky says she’ll miss him.

I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I’d like to. But if I don’t, is that better?

The $20 Locker

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Even when this city smacks me, I still see its beauty. 

I love New York’s reasonableness. 

Today I visited a Yankees game. The metal detector dinged on me when I passed. The bag inspector told me I can’t take a laptop inside. He summoned his teammate. His teammate pointed me to a business across the street. He said, “There’s lockers right across the street. They’re not affiliated with us but people use them all the time. When you come back, tell the security and they’ll let you skip the line.” I asked his name. He said Anthony.

The security guards moved the barriers as I shortcutted back through the zigzagging line. I sped across the street. Inside, the worker charged me $20 and ushered me to the back where the lockers live. I placed my laptop inside, pocketed the key, and told him “okay” when he said the locker rental ends 30 minutes after the game. I asked him his name. His coworker said “Ahmed”. He repeated “Ahmed.”

I spent $25 on the Yankees ticket. On one hand, $20 is expensive. On the other hand, the policies are reasonable at every step of the way. Can policy easily distinguish between a laptop and a recording device? Perhaps not. Is this policy public on their website? Yes. Did I check? No, but I could have and that’s my fault. Is there a reasonable solution to this problem? Yes, and it’s not $100 when it very well could be.

When I returned, I told the security guards that I had visited the lockers and Anthony told me to skip the line. My ticket buzzed in, and I retrieved my limited-edition Yankees soccer jersey. For which I paid an additional $10 over the cost of normal tickets. Not because I care about the jersey, but because my father was in town, and he’s always wanted to visit Yankee Stadium. 

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy the ingredients. 

Lost and Found

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To win, be kind. To be kind, break the rules.

I twice lost faith in humanity today. Once, I got it back. The rules cost my faith. People breaking them gave it back. 

Three airport snippets and a meander: 

1. The bag with no status (lost #1)

At Houston Hobby Airport, I entered my information into my airline’s bag-check kiosk. It told me to see an agent. I approached one at an empty desk. She asked if I had status. I said the machine sent me to you. She asked if I had status. I said no. She told me to go to the info desk around the corner. I told her the kiosk sent me to her. She asked again if I had status. I have the right credit card and a bunch of points, so I shrugged and said yes. She asked what I needed. I said I’d like to check a bag. She checked the bag. Then she told me I didn’t have status, so next time I’d have to go to the other desk. Her questioning about my status took longer than the bag check, and it ultimately didn’t matter. The rules may be dumb. But at least they’re poorly enforced. 

2. Carousel 5 says Denver (lost #2)

Landing at LGA, I went to carousel 5, where the flight attendants said our bags would be. The sign over it said “Denver.” I had flown from Houston. Houston is not Denver. I asked the agent standing there. He said all the Houston bags were out; if mine wasn’t, I should go to the office. I went to the office. I gave the office agent my flight number. She asked for my claim check. I told her I’d left it on the plane. She tutted, found my information anyway, and told me to go back to the carousel. I went back. My bag was there. The agent at the carousel told me he’d tried to shout for me to come back the moment he realized he’d been wrong. He might have been wrong. But at least he tried to fix it, however poorly. 

3. The green bag (regained)

When the plane landed, the woman beside me turned around and said, “My bag’s in the overhead of row 13, five rows back. Green bag. Could you pass it up?” And people did. A wheely bag, no less. At least 6 strangers joined the mission. Great move. I’m surprised it worked. Well played. 

Keeping the Faith

In downtown Houston, I yelled “Praise the Lord!” Two women on the street ahead of me turned around. In New York, where I live, and Chicago, where I’d spent the last 5 days, strangers don’t look at crazy people. In Houston they do. Maybe Houston keeps its crazy people off the street. In 24 hours downtown, I didn’t see any.

I wondered if Houston just removes them. I looked it up: it’s a mix. Houston housed a lot of its homeless, Texas bans public camping, and a city built for cars has fewer sidewalks to be seen on anyway.

About 18 hours later, I boarded a Houston tram. A man with wild eyes came to the door, clasped his hands, and started begging a being only he could see. No one moved away from him. Back home we’d have given him a wide berth. Here, the crowd understands him.

Houston gives a pass for praying.

Who’s That Groomsman? 

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The goal of the game is bonding. You bond by guessing each other.

The bachelor party organizer tasked me with creating an activity. Here’s what I did:

The Method: 

0. Learn the constraints. How many people? What duration? When? Where? Vibe (chill/athletic).

  • 10 people, 60-90 minutes, outdoors sitting around a firepit

1. Learn the goals. 

  • First or second activity at a bachelor party: bonding, getting to know each other.

2. Select a theme. 

  • The groom loves Pokémon, so Pokémon it is.

3. Coalesce. What is the easiest way to achieve the goals in theme?

  • A simple game of “who’s that Pokémon.” 

4. Research. 

  • Ask the groom: what Pokémon would each person be, and why?

5. Make simple game. 

  • Show a picture and read a description of the Pokémon, then see who can guess which person it is. Then read the groom’s description of them and prompt new guesses. Repeat for all people.

Bing, bang, boom.

The Field Report 

We ran the activity today. 8/10 people enjoyed it. 1/10 demonstrated boredom two-thirds of the way through. The last 1 gave side-eye throughout the entire night, so it’s probably not exclusively about the activity that he gave it side-eye too. 

No one was offended. Most people enjoyed their Pokémon. When the experience dragged, we sped it up. 

My one misstep: after my own Pokémon was guessed, I forgot to have the groom describe why I am the Pokémon he said I am. (This step existed to enable group understanding and friendship-forming and bonding.) So the event worked well for everyone else, and only 80% well for me. 

8/10 and 80%? Sounds like a win.

I originally met the groom on an interview tour of an arts school. We connected because I was the most aggressively-forward social butterfly in the group: during the hour-long tour, I spoke with every single one of the 20 aspiring students. The groom had noticed my occupying this social position, and therefore decided he didn’t want to meet me, from a “this social position only has room for one” mentality. Having met everyone himself, we finally chatted in an elevator near the end of the tour. The conversation was so delicious we went out for drinks that night and spent a decent part of COVID playing video games together from a distance. 

I didn’t have the chance to be introduced to the group? Sounds like it’s time to turn on that social butterfly again, introducing the rest of the party to the same version of me that’s the reason I’m here at all.

Why Do People Live Here?

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To win, position well. To position well, realize it’s a choice. 

“Why do people live here?”

It’s a common refrain when I travel. And I travel a lot.

Between 2018 and 2025, I lived in a van, driving around the U.S. and Canada. For 4 months in 2022, I lived in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, and South Korea. And most places make absolutely no sense to me.

New Orleans, New York, San Francisco: I get. Austin, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo: totally. But Chicago? Kansas City? Cleveland? Dallas and Houston? Those tiny towns in Nevada and Colorado and Oregon with more elevation than people?

I’m in Chicago for a friend’s wedding. A surprise thunderstorm shook our windows. Two years ago when I visited, I heard a siren. I asked my friend: “What’s that siren for?” He said it’s a weather warning: we were about to be cold enough to be deadly.

The trains run above ground (terribly noisy), and most don’t even run all night. The weather is always either too hot or too cold. The theater and art are good, but not as good as New York or L.A. The food is tasty, but overwhelmingly unhealthy. Maybe it’s the sports?

I don’t buy that most people intentionally choose where to live based on their values and preferences.

Where & why? 

Ask people why they live where they live (I do, constantly) and most people give one of 4 answers:

  1. They were born there. (This is Partner’s most frequent response when I pose the question.)
  2. Work or school took them there.
  3. A lover took them there.
  4. It’s the nearest city to where they were born. (Partner grew up in the “big city” for her area, because it had a Walmart. This “big city”: 16,000 people.)

Who’s the actor here? 

Every answer describes something that happened to the person. Born there: the game placed you. Work took you: the company (or admissions committee) chose. A lover took you: the lover chose (or their company did). Nearest city: the game placed you, plus a radius.

Where you live is one of the biggest decisions in your life. It decides your environment, your friends, your culture, your wages, your rent, and your weekends. And it’s a rare big game where most players never even realize they’re playing. The board hands them an opening setup, and they just accept it.

I can count on one hand the friends who chose their place to live by auditioning and deciding.

Reality & possibility

How many people decide where to go? Between 18 and 30, do you explore while you can (no mortgage, no kids, career still portable)? After your kids leave home, do you think about moving?

Money, visas, family gravity: there are good reasons to stay where you live. But a lot of it strikes me as activation energy. You’re a distinct person with individual tastes. And you just happen to have been born in exactly the right place? 

I’ll take the other side of that bet.

French Security: Worse Than Nothing

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Whatever they’re trying to do, they’re failing.

French security sucks. It’s worse than nothing. At least nothing wouldn’t delay tourists.

I approach the metal detector. I hand the officer my backpack. I walk through the detector. He hands me my backpack. Sounds like a normal security process. Except he never looked inside my bag.

Same thing yesterday at the Paris catacombs: at the end, a man seated at a desk with a sign saying open your bags so we can ensure you’re not stealing bones. But he doesn’t open your bags. He doesn’t even wave you on. He just plays on his phone.

Three months ago at a Parisian rugby match: the security officers pat down every entrant. Partner stayed in my line. The officer gestured her to a line with a female agent. Partner walked past him. He let her go.

At Orly Airport, you must navigate through all of the stanchions in sequence, even if the line is 0 people. An extra 60 meters of walking per person. One white-haired woman ducked under the rope. The officers yelled at her. She said, “I’m old, it’s hard to walk!” They demanded she go back.

The Louvre was heisted last October. Has nothing changed? Do none of the workers know the point of their jobs? Do none of them believe in their work? Are they too snoozy from the fondue lunch? (Author’s note: fondue is Swiss. But it does make me snoozy.)

What game is this?

The goal of the game is to win. I say that a lot. Sometimes too much. The goal of the game is to win; you win by doing X. But it’s pretty fundamental: if you’re not trying to win, what are you doing?

Sometimes the goal is different. Sometimes it’s to not-lose. Sometimes it’s to survive. Sometimes it’s to tie. But this security bullshit? Whatever it is, it’s not achieving it.

Even some contrived goal, like “create a specific form of job stability for a certain number of people in France without disrupting the general French living and working systems”, couldn’t you do that better? And that’s already super contrived.

The best rebuttal: fake security still deters. Which is fair. True. Like the faux eyes on the wings of a moth, the mere existence of security may prevent me from attempting to sneak a gun into the [insert grand French monument].

But fake security works when it appears real. If the moth has a sign saying “These are just mock eyes; I’m actually a helpless moth, teehee”, that bug is getting nommed. And today, at the Palais de Justice, a guard waves visitors through a body scanner. The alarm went off on the visitor behind me. The guard ignored it, clicked “Ok,” and waved the woman through. You can’t advertise the fakeness! Bluffing is one thing! This is bluffing while turning your cards face up!

Even I get it!

I don’t like security. I’m fully anti-TSA. Considering the rate of deaths by terrorist attack vs the rate of deaths by automobile crashes, I’m even pro-shrug-it-off re 9/11.

But even I understand the point of security. I get why we have it. I just think it’s dumb.

This version of security is the worst version! Not only does it have no impact; it also wastes people’s time! What the hell are you doing, France?!

Do you want to get invaded by the Germans for the fourth time in 160 years? Because you’re sure acting like it!

The Walk Becomes a Sprint

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To inherit a game, serve the crowd its keepers forgot. To serve the crowd, cut the boring parts.

Four times, strangers have asked whether my hat is a Savannah Bananas reference. It isn’t. Now that I know what they are, I wish it were.

A month ago, Partner told me I’d like the Savannah Bananas. The recommendation sat on my to-do list (read: “email inbox”) until this morning, when I finally read up. I am hooked. At least on the concept. 

Two decades ago, my father told me he didn’t get the appeal of e-sports. I asked whether he got the appeal of regular sports. He did. So I asked: when you watch football on TV, how do you know those are real people? If they swapped every player for a digital avatar, how would you know? 

Professional sports is entertainment. The money comes from the people watching, not the people playing. Say that out loud, and a lot of baseball starts to look indefensible. (Partner thinks I should henceforth refer to old baseball as “indefensi-ball”. I like the joke, but fear readers would find it intolera-ball.) 

The Savannah Bananas play Banana Ball, which is baseball, except someone took the rulebook and asked, of every slow part, Who is this for? A walk is the most boring thing in the sport: four boring balls, a slow and boring trot to first, a predictable outcome, nothing to see. So Banana Ball has no walks. Ball four starts a sprint, where the batter runs as far around the bases as he can while every fielder but the pitcher handles the ball in turn. The dullest outcome in baseball became a footrace.

The rest rhymes. No mound visits. No stepping out of the box. A 2-hour clock, so the game can’t sprawl. Catch a foul ball in the stands and the batter is out, which turns the crowd into a tenth defender. One guy plays on stilts (Dakota Albritton). Another bats in a cape (Reese Alexiades). I’m surprised the players still go by their own names. 

The cape doesn’t help him play baseball better. It does help him play banana ball better.

Scoring changed too. Win an inning (i.e. score the most runs in it), and you get a point. One point per inning, like sets in tennis. My grandfather leaves every baseball game before the 9th “to beat the traffic.” He couldn’t pull that in banana ball, because in the final inning every run is its own point, leaving every banana ball game to a dramatic finish. He would stay.

One detail sold me. This scoring system means the home team has an obvious edge: batting last every inning, it only has to hit until its ahead by one run. (Baseball fans would notice this as a host of walk-off opportunities.) I noticed that and assumed it was a flaw. But they even invented a rule for it! It’s called the Equalizer Point. If the visiting team pulls off more trick plays than the home team by the 8th (a behind-the-back toss for an out, a backflip catch, popping the ball off your glove and into your bare hand for a catch), the visitors get a free point before the last inning. The home team’s structural advantage, paid back to the road team in degree of difficulty. Whoever built this spends their showers thinking about the same fairness questions a real league does. They just answer them in the currency of the show. Because this league is just as real as Major League Baseball. 

Even the charity is a pun: the team’s nonprofit, Bananas Foster, supports foster kids. It’s a real charity. And also a pun. It’s bits all the way down! 

You could file all of this under parody, and parody has a ceiling. It works only while you remember the original, so it can never outgrow the thing it mocks. But the Bananas aren’t mocking baseball. They kept the bones (a pitcher, a batter, a diamond, innings) and rebuilt the rest out of love. That is what an heir does.

Heirs don’t stay capped by the thing they came from. They inherit it. Rome spent the better part of 3 centuries feeding Christians to lions; then, in the year 380, the empire made Christianity its official religion, and the church went on to inherit Rome’s whole apparatus: its language, its hierarchy, its capital, even the old chief priest’s title, Pontifex Maximus, which the Pope still carries. The offshoot outlived the host.

Games run the same play on a faster clock. Cricket already did it. A Test match can last 5 days, and the purists love every hour, but a stripped-down, made-for-TV format called T20 showed up and became the sport’s commercial engine, the version with the crowds and the money. Later this week, I’m attending the Rugby 7s world championship. I’ve only been to one match of full rugby (15 per side) – never again! – but the 20-minute, seven-person format has made me a diehard fan. 

In 2023 Major League Baseball, the incumbent itself, gave itself a pitch clock. Games got 24 minutes shorter, attendance crossed 70 million for the first time since 2017, and ratings rose for the first time since 2012. Banana ball has had a game clock since 2020. (It started in 2018.) That is what the early innings of a succession look like.

The mechanism is always the same. A game gets, well, gamed to the point where it’s no fun anymore. It calcifies. It gets boring to watch, which is fatal, because the watching is what pays. Then someone arrives who treats fun as an engineering problem, and the crowd starts to drift his way, and the money follows the crowd. I’ve made this argument at the scale of a sandwich shop. The Bananas are making it at the scale of America’s Pastime.

You could call the Bananas a parasite. They feed on a host they need alive; half the jokes only work if you know the real game. (“What counts as a trick play?” requires a frame of reference.) Sure. But a parasite that devours its host and moves into the empty niche is just evolution running on schedule. We mammals also once lived in burrows, waiting out the dinosaurs. (As a PhD in biology, Partner does not support this analogy.) 

Give Banana Ball 30 years and it will have its own record book, its own purists, its own slow sacred stretches no one is allowed to touch, maybe even its own children’s rec and traveling teams, and some new weirdo will turn up to strip it for parts. Christianity inherited Rome, then spent centuries hardening into the thing Luther showed up to protest. Every heir becomes an incumbent. Every incumbent grows an heir.

None of this works unless there’s nothing sacred underneath, and there isn’t. No essence of baseball is being betrayed, because there is no essence of baseball, the same way (as I’ve argued before) there is no essence of golf. “Real baseball” is just the version that happened to harden before you were born. Strip it down, hand it back to the crowd, and the purists will call it desecration. It’s only the next version.

Catholics took 3 centuries to get from the lions to the leadership. Baseball is only up to the pitch clock. The new game is less competitive than the old one. It is also, at last, worth watching to the end. Even my grandfather would accept the traffic.

I’m Now a Pirate

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To guard your blind side, see it coming. You can’t. That’s the trouble.

At the Saturday market, the fruit vendor asked what happened to my eye. Surgery yesterday, I said. Then: “I’m now a pirate.”

He laughed. He handed us a banana and a peach for free, then offered a pair of melons for 5 euros. I said no. He said 3 euros. I said no. He said the French version of “come on.” I thanked him and said no. (I have one working eye, not one working braincell.) 

He totaled it up. Partner counted out the change. (We play a game when we’re about to leave a country. It’s called spend all the fiddly little coins. Yesterday I paid my rent in cents.) He held out his hand. I dropped the coins three inches closer than where his palm actually was. He tutted. “It’s new,” I said, about the eye.

Depth perception. One of the main benefits of binocular vision.

The costs since have been small and physical and easy to laugh at. I have to put medicated drops in the bad eye 3 times a day, and I can’t see well enough out of it to aim, so the eye can’t guide the drops that fix the eye. Tonight Paris Saint-Germain won, and Étampes spilled into the street to celebrate, and I caught about half of it. Partner walks on my left now so I can see her. I poked myself in the eye briefly when blowing my nose. None of it bothers me for more than a few seconds. The eye will heal in a week or two. I agreed to this difficulty. 

At the bakery, Partner said, “He’s staring at you. You should say some pirate things.” Or that’s what she told me later. She talks fast, and I don’t always catch her, so in the moment I missed it and bought my bread. 

Outside, she said, “How come you didn’t make pirate noises for the little boy? He’d have loved that.”

“Little boy?”

She laughed. “He was on your right side.”

That’s the blind one.

The drops, the coins, the half a celebration, the side she walks on now: Unlike things on my right side, I saw those coming. The boy, I didn’t see at all. A kid was standing right there, wanting a gift I was eager to share, and he’d picked the single spot where I’ve got nothing. I only know because Partner saw it and told me. 

Guess I’ll need a parrot for that shoulder.