Baseball Is a Game of Waiting Correctly

Baseball gets accused of being slow by people who are waiting for the wrong thing. They are waiting for a ball to be hit hard, a runner to slide, a scoreboard to change, something unmistakable and immediate. They want visible proof that the evening is moving. Baseball does not always provide it on schedule. It asks for attention before it pays you back. It asks you to notice the count, the runner's lead, the catcher setting up outside, the third baseman creeping forward, the pitcher taking one extra look toward first. The action is often already underway. It is just quiet enough that you have to meet it halfway.

That is why baseball is not really a game of waiting. It is a game of waiting correctly and there is a difference. Passive waiting is sitting there hoping the thing you want will eventually happen. Correct waiting has a purpose. It has posture. It is the hitter who lets a borderline pitch go because he knows what he is hunting. It is the runner at first who does not take off just because he is restless, but knows the pitcher has a slow move and the catcher has a long exchange. It is the shortstop who does not drift because the ball has not been hit yet. Everybody looks still until the decision arrives. Then you find out who was actually ready.

This is one of the things minor league baseball makes easy to see. You are watching people learn the difference in public. A young hitter may have enough talent to punish a fastball, but not yet enough discipline to stop chasing the slider that starts in the same place and disappears late. A young pitcher may throw hard enough to make the whole ballpark sit up, but not yet know how to use the count without giving away what he wants to do next. A runner may have speed, but speed is not baserunning. Speed is a resource. Baserunning is judgment applied under a clock nobody can see.

The scoreboard records the result, but the development is usually hiding in the decisions that came before it. A strikeout can come after a good at-bat. A single can come after four pitches that never should have been swung at. A walk can change an inning more than an anxious swing ever could. The box score will not always tell you who waited correctly. The game will, though, if you are looking long enough.

Pitch selection is the cleanest version of this lesson. From the stands, it is easy to become offended on behalf of a hitter. The pitch looks close. The count looks favorable. The fastball is right there. Swing the bat. But a hitter is not waiting for any pitch that can be reached. He is waiting for a pitch he can do something useful with. There is a difference between contact and advantage. There is a difference between putting the ball in play and giving the pitcher exactly what he wanted.

That is patience, but it is not passivity. The hitter is not disengaged. He is not vague. He is not merely hoping the pitcher loses the strike zone and mails him a gift. He is tracking spin, speed, location, sequence, and the small habits a pitcher reveals when he is uncomfortable. He is waiting with information. When the right pitch comes, the decision should not look hesitant. It should look immediate because it has been forming for the previous five minutes.

Baserunning carries the same logic with more dirt on it. The runner who gets picked off did not necessarily fail because he wanted too much. Sometimes he failed because he wanted movement more than he wanted the right movement. There are people who treat every opportunity to advance as a moral obligation. The runner has a lead. The pitcher has not thrown over in a while. The crowd is beginning to murmur. Go. But the right decision may be to hold. It may be to take the extra half-step and wait one more pitch. It may be to force the pitcher to think about you without giving him the easy out he has been trying to create.

A good lead is not a declaration. It is a question asked with your cleats. How much attention are you willing to spend on me? Can you still make the pitch you want while keeping me close? The runner is not passive. The runner is making the other side work. That may not appear on the scoreboard, but it changes what is possible for everyone who follows.

Then there is the bunt, the small act of baseball that somehow still produces disbelief. The other team knows the bunt is coming. The broadcaster knows. The dugout knows. Half the people eating soft pretzels know. And sometimes it still works.

This confuses people because we have been trained to believe that once a strategy becomes obvious, it becomes useless. But a good plan does not become worthless just because it is visible. It becomes a test of execution. The batter still has to square late enough, soften the ball, and place it where the defense has the hardest play. The runner still has to read the ball cleanly and move without becoming an out at third. The pitcher has to field, decide, and throw under pressure. The third baseman has to charge without overrunning the play. The first baseman has to cover. The catcher may have to direct traffic. Everyone knows what is about to happen, and the play still asks everyone to do their part exactly right in a very short amount of time.

That is not trickery. That is strategy. Sometimes you can know the play and still be unable to stop it because the plan is fundamentally sound, the timing is right, and the people involved execute it well. In baseball, as in life, there are things you cannot outsmart by merely announcing that you see them coming. You still have to respond better than the other side performs.

The bunting team is not trying to surprise anybody. It is trying to trade something small for something valuable. An out, possibly, for a runner in scoring position. A loss of individual glory for a better inning. A reduction in options so the remaining option gets stronger. It is hard not to see the larger lesson in that.

Baseball understands the productive out in a way most of life does not. The language itself sounds strange if you are used to measuring worth through visible wins. An out is bad, right? An out is the thing you are supposed to avoid. But a productive out is an out that changes the situation for the people who come next. It moves a runner from second to third. It brings a run home from third with fewer than two outs. It makes the defense move. It turns a hard inning into an inning where the next hitter has a chance to do something meaningful.

Nobody buys a jersey because a player grounded out to the right side with a runner on second. There are no little kids outside the stadium asking for the autograph of the person who laid down a perfect game-winning bunt in the bottom of the 10th. Yet good teams need those things. They need players who understand that the plate appearance belongs to the inning, not only to them. They need people who can see the entire shape of the problem instead of treating every moment as an audition for personal heroics.

That may be the most practical philosophy baseball offers: not every contribution gets applause, and that does not make it small.

At work, the productive out is the person who does the ugly handoff so the project can move. It is the person who spends an hour clarifying the decision that everyone else assumed was already made. It is the person who uses their meeting time to give the next speaker room rather than make the best possible case for their own importance. It is the person who absorbs the annoying bit of coordination, gets the assets into the right place, catches the ambiguity before it becomes a public emergency, and walks away without a dramatic before-and-after photo to prove that they helped.

Some people mistake that kind of work for losing because it does not produce a clean personal statistic. But teams, families, and organizations are full of innings where somebody needs to move the runner. Somebody needs to make the next thing possible. Somebody needs to recognize that getting on base is not the only way to contribute.

The opposite problem is chasing. Baseball is full of reminders that a person can ruin a perfectly good situation by insisting on an outcome that is not there. The hitter chases the slider six inches off the plate because he wants to be the one who ends the inning. The runner tries to take an extra base because standing on second feels insufficient. The manager abandons the patient approach after two quiet innings because the crowd wants visible movement. The fan sees a player take two pitches and calls it passive when it may be the most active decision made all night.

Chasing feels like effort. That is why it is seductive. It produces movement, noise, and an immediate story you can tell yourself. Waiting correctly looks less impressive in the moment. It may look like doing nothing. It may look like letting someone else have the spotlight. It may look like allowing the count to get deeper, allowing the process to mature, allowing a plan to become visible before you decide whether it is working.

But correct waiting is not the absence of agency. It is agency with discipline. It is attention held in reserve until the moment calls for it. It is trusting a strategy without becoming blind to the field. It is knowing that not every pitch deserves your swing, not every opening is an invitation, not every problem should be solved at full volume the second it appears.

Minor league baseball is an unusually good place to sit with this because almost everybody on the field is waiting correctly for something larger. The players are waiting for a call-up, a healthier body, a better stretch of at-bats, a chance to prove they can handle the next level. The coaches are waiting to see whether a lesson becomes a habit. The staff is waiting for the gates to open, the weather to hold, the crowd to settle in. The fans are waiting for the game to give them a story worth carrying home.

Nobody gets to skip the waiting. The question is whether they can use it.

That is the deeper value of a long season. It gives you enough repetitions to stop confusing a single moment with the whole truth. A bad at-bat can be corrected. A missed sign can become a conversation. A player can be sent down, work on something unglamorous, and come back more complete. The season does not care much about your need for instant resolution. It keeps asking: What did you learn from that pitch? What will you do when you see it again?

There is mercy in that, although it does not always feel merciful from the seats. Baseball gives people another pitch, another at-bat, another inning, another game. It makes room for a person to learn the lesson before they become the lesson permanently. It also makes clear that another chance is not magic. You have to notice what happened. You have to make an adjustment. You have to wait correctly the next time.

The most satisfying baseball moments often arrive after a stretch of restraint. The hitter who lets two difficult pitches go and then drives the one he wanted. The runner who spends three pitches making the pitcher uncomfortable and finally gets the right jump. The team that moves a runner over, keeps the inning alive, and scores two batters later. Nothing about that sequence is passive. It is a chain of people deciding that the first available move is not always the best one.

That is a useful thing to remember anywhere people are tempted to confuse urgency with competence. You do not have to swing at every pitch. You do not have to chase every problem. You do not have to be the hero of every inning. Sometimes the best thing you can do is wait with your eyes open, recognize the play as it develops, make the necessary contribution, and trust that moving the runner is still movement.

The game will eventually ask you to act. It always does. The art is being ready when it asks, and not wasting the moment before that pretending motion is the same thing as progress.