Chapter 91 - The Science of Hitting
Today’s Chapter is based on the book “The Science of Hitting” by Ted Williams.
Ted Williams, an iconic baseball player for the Boston Red Sox from 1939 to 1960, is celebrated as one of the greatest hitters in MLB history, boasting a career batting average of .344 and hitting .406 in 1941—the last player to surpass .400 in a season. Warren Buffett frequently draws parallels between investing and baseball, particularly referencing Ted Williams' disciplined hitting approach.
Here’s what I learned:
Circle of Competence
“I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots.”
— Tom Watson Sr.
One of the most fundamental lessons Ted Williams imparts in his book is the importance of discipline and selectiveness. As a hitter, Williams was known for his exceptional ability to wait for the right pitch, the one in his "happy zone" where he could maximize his chances of success. He believed that even the greatest hitters couldn’t be successful if they swung at bad pitches.
As a matter of fact, Williams notes that “a good hitter can hit a pitch that is over the plate three times better than a great hitter with a questionable ball in a tough spot. Pitchers still make enough mistakes to give you some in your happy zone. But the greatest hitter living can’t hit bad balls good."
“The first rule in the book... is to get a good ball to hit.”
— Ted Williams
Similarly, this concept of waiting for the right pitch is directly applicable to investing. In the world of finance, there are countless opportunities to invest, but not all of them are worth swinging at. Investors often make the mistake of chasing every market trend or jumping on every stock that seems to be rising. However, like Williams, successful investors know the value of being selective. They don’t invest in every opportunity that comes their way; rather, they wait for the right opportunity—one that fits within their own circle of competence.
Legendary investors like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have long advocated for this approach. Munger, in 1994, delivered a talk to the USC Business School called “A Lesson on Elementary Wordly Wisdom” where he explained how Buffett succeeded in investing by being extremely selective in his bets.
“When Warren lectures at business schools, he says, “I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches—representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all.”
He says, “Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you’d do so much better.”
Again, this is a concept that seems perfectly obvious to me. And to Warren it seems perfectly obvious. But this is one of the very few business classes in the U.S. where anybody will be saying so. It just isn’t the conventional wisdom.
To me, it’s obvious that the winner has to bet very selectively. It’s been obvious to me since very early in life. I don’t know why it’s not obvious to very many other people.”
— Charlie Munger
However, there is a big difference between investing and in baseball. In baseball, you get strike out after three strikes, but in investing, you have even more reasons to be selective. While Williams once said, "Only when the situation demands it should a hitter go for the low-percentage pitch.", investors should never invest unless the odds are greatly in their favor.
As we have previously learned from Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, they will only invest in companies that are in their circle of competence. As Munger once said, “I want to think about things where I have an advantage over other people. I don’t want to play a game where people have an advantage over me. I don’t play in a game where other people are wise and I am stupid. I look for a game where I am wise and they are stupid. And believe me it works better. God bless our stupid competitors. They make us rich.”
Similarly, in Buffett’s case, near the end of 1999, while technology stocks were providing extraordinary returns to their shareholders, he refused to invest in technology companies. Why? Buffett understood that he knew “about as much about semiconductors or integrated circuits as I do of the mating habits of the chrzaszcz.” As Buffett once said, “What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note that word “selected”: You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.”
“You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.
If you want to be the best tennis player in the world, you may start out trying and soon find out that it’s hopeless—that other people blow right by you. However, if you want to become the best plumbing contractor in Bemidji, that is probably doable by two-thirds of you. It takes a will. It takes the intelligence. But after a while, you’d gradually know all about the plumbing business in Bemidji and master the art. That is an attainable objective, given enough discipline. And people who could never win a chess tournament or stand in center court in a respectable tennis tournament can rise quite high in life by slowly developing a circle of competence—which results partly from what they were born with and partly from what they slowly develop through work.”
— Charlie Munger
Proper Thinking
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”
— Henry Ford
Ted Williams’ greatness as a hitter is not solely due to his natural talent. In fact, he was a student of the game, constantly analyzing pitchers and anticipating what they might throw in different situations. He believed that proper thinking and preparation were as important as physical ability when it came to hitting effectively. As he once said, “Proper Thinking is 50 percent of effective hitting, and it is more than just doing your homework on a pitcher or studying the situation in a game. It is 'anticipating,' too, when you are at the plate."
To become a good hitter, Williams mentions that one must be able to “guess” the next pitch which can only be done by thorough research and analysis. As he explains, "Obviously, you don’t just 'guess' curve or 'guess' fastball. You work from a frame of reference, you learn what you might expect in certain instances, and you guess from there."
"You think of the count, the game situation. You remember the series before, the way he worked. You can be sure if he got you out on a bad ball he’ll be coming back with it."
— Ted Williams
As such, Williams believed that self-learning is extremely important to become a good hitter. He once said, “I think you will find as we go along that much of what I have to say about hitting is self-education—thinking it out, learning the situations, knowing your opponent, and most important, knowing yourself.”
Luckily, Williams believed that it isn’t so complicated to study pitchers in baseball. He explains that “It's a matter of being observant, of learning through trial and error, of picking up things. You watch a pitcher warm up, and you see everything's high, or his breaking ball is in the dirt. If he isn't getting the breaking ball over you can think about waiting for the fast ball. Or if he's making you hit the breaking ball, you can lay for it.”
This reminds me of the importance of being a keen observer in order to find patterns of great opportunities in business. As we have learned previously from Wayne Huizenga, the founder of Blockbuster, due to his curiosity and entrepreneur spirit, he was able to build himself a pattern system that allowed him to identify great business opportunities and to build success companies beyond his field of expertise.
As a matter of fact, when he first started Blockbuster, he knew nothing about videos or entertainment, but he did know about customer services and running a rental company and that was enough for him to be confident in investing $17 million. He was able, by leveraging his previous experience running a garbage renting company, to build Blockbuster into the largest video rental business in the word.
Here’s how an outsider explains Huizenga’s pattern for success:
"He likes to take industries that are fragmented with no clear leader, take market share from moms and pops, in an industry that is growing and has economies of scale in having a large company and he likes service companies with repeat business."
— Randall E. Haase
This concept of pattern recognition derives from the power of convergence in evolutionary biology. Charles Darwin was one of the first to recognise the power of convergence when he said, “Animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may readily become adapted to similar conditions, and thus assume a close external resemblance.” Similarly, in terms of business, while two businesses may not be in the same industry, the same business model may be used in order to succeed. This is what happened with Huizenga with Waste Management Inc. and Blockbuster.
In his book “What I Have Learned About Investing From Darwin” by Pulak Prasad, he explains that rather than to invest in individual businesses, he prefers to invest in convergent patterns based on the power of convergence in evolutionary biology. As Prasad explains, “As we saw, “replaying the tape of life” often yields the same result. We operate on the principle that the business world is no different.” And I believe Huizenga’s story is a perfect example of this.
“There is a big difference between asserting “I love this business” and “I love this business construct.” We are fans of the latter, not the former. We don’t care about a business; we are deeply attached to a business template.”
— Pulak Prasad
Practice, Practice, Practice
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
— Michael Jordan
Ted Williams also mentions in his book that practice was a vital component of success. He believes that even the most talented hitters need to constantly work on their craft, whether it was by taking extra swings or refining their batting stance. This dedication to continuous improvement is what separated him from other players. As he once said, "I don’t think you can emphasize enough the importance of practice. When I say practice, I mean with a bat."
Furthermore, Williams truly believed that finding the right batting stance comes from years of experimentation. As he once said, "I was forever trying a new stance, trying to hit like Greenberg or Foxx or somebody, and then going back to my old way. I recommend that for kids. Experiment. Try what you see that looks good on somebody else. Try different bats, a bigger handle, a bigger barrel, anything.” As a matter of fact, Williams himself was often talking with other batters, experimenting with new batting stances and swapping bats.
Ted Williams also believed that having clear goals is an important aspect of continuous improvement. Williams set high standards for himself—whether it was hitting 35 home runs or batting over .330—and these goals kept him focused. He once said, "Goals keep you on your toes, make you bear down, give you objectives at those times when you might otherwise be inclined to just go through the motions."
"In my twenty-two years of professional baseball, I went to bat almost 8,000 times, and every trip to the plate was an adventure, one that I could remember and store up as information."
— Ted Williams
This constant desire to improve through deliberate practice reminds me of Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Mentality. As we have learned, Kobe Bryant is known for initiating the phrase “Mamba Mentality” to symbolize his work ethic and his way of life. As he once said, “The mindset isn’t about seeking a result—it’s more about the process of getting to that result. It’s about the journey and the approach. It’s a way of life. I do think that it’s important, in all endeavors, to have that [Mamba] mentality.”
Bryant was obsessed in becoming the best and he “had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best.” As he once said, “If you want to be a better player, you have to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more.”
One way he did this was by watching game tapes of other players in order to figure out their weakness. His mentality was to dominate his opponents. He reiterates that “Whether it was AI, Tracy, Vince—or, if I were coming up today, LeBron, Russ, Steph—my goal was to figure you out. And to do that, to figure those puzzles out, I was willing to do way more than anyone else.”
Furthermore, Kobe believes that part of the reason to his success is due to the fact that he was never satisfied even when he reached the top. He always had that desire to be better even when he was winning championships. As he once said, “I’m at the gym at the same time after losing 50 games as I am after winning a championship. It doesn’t change for me.”
In fact, this continuous obsession to improve and to become better cannot change if one is to reach the top. Kobe reiterates that “The only aspect that can’t change, though, is that obsession. You have to enter every activity, every single time, with a want and need to do it to the best of your ability.”
“I always felt like if I started my day early, I could train more each day. If I started at 11, I’d get in a few hours, rest for four hours, and then get back to the gym around 5 to 7. But if I started at 5 AM and went until 7, I could go again from 11 until 2 and 6 until 8. By starting earlier, I set myself up for an extra workout each day. Over the course of a summer, that’s a lot of extra hours in the gym.”
— Kobe Bryant
Beyond the Book
Read "The Buffett Series - The Science of Hitting" by Investment Masters Class
Read "The Perfect Pitch" by Farnam Street
Watch "Warren Buffett : Ted Williams: Science of Hitting." on YouTube
Read "Mastering Success: Navigating Within Your Circle of Competence" by Farnam Street
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