I don't know much about other writers and I don't know much about musicians. But I do know a bit about a sport called baseball. Baseball is similar to writing (and being a classical musician I suppose) in a number of ways. You don't have to be over 6'-5" or weigh 275 pounds or run fast or be a certain shape or even a select gender. You don't need a degree nor does it matter if you are young or old. You don't need to have money nor do you need to know someone in the business in order to excel in baseball. Like writing and music, baseball is an undertaking where failure is the norm yet the few successes that come to us are what folks remember. The people unequaled in the sport fail six times out of ten. (How many times was your story rejected before it was published?) The good ones fail seven times out of ten and the mediocre eight. That's an awful lot of failure compared to success. This is true whether you’re speaking about the professional game, a little league match or even a beer-belly contest at a company picnic.

     Ted Williams, the last professional ballplayer to hit .400, said, "The hardest single thing in sports is to hit a round ball thrown at high speeds with a round bat." Perhaps the same could be said of writing a novel or a decent poem. What does it take to be good at it? I think the formula requires three ingredients. You need ability, skill and luck. It is difficult to reach the professional level in any endeavor without a combination of these three elements.

     There are two types of ability, natural and learned. Skill is a refinement honed through repetition. Luck seems to just happen, but actually it's brought about by the combination of applied ability and skill. The longer you keep plugging away at something the more luck you seem to have where its concerned. Skill, being a refinement of ability, takes longer for some to acquire than for other people. There are ballplayers who make it in the big leagues without ever posting a single at bat in the minors. Others take years to work their way up. Is a person who hits .300 in his first year in the majors without any minor league experience a better hitter than the person who, after ten years in the minors, finally makes it to the bigs and hits .300? No. They're both .300 hitters.

     The same is true in writing. Is the person who gets published the first time he submits a story a better writer than one who takes ten years to reach his goal? I don’t think that’s true. So we come to ability, natural vs. learned, which is basically what my friend Kara wrote about.

     You must have natural ability to some degree to excel at anything. You must also have learned ability. However, the percentages of each that show up in a star professional may vary immensely. Babe Ruth was a natural ballplayer. He was coached on certain fundamentals so he had learned ability, but his skill came mostly from his natural resources. When asked to give advice to youngsters on how to hit better he said, "All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good."

     Yogi Berra, one of the best clutch hitters in the history of the game was much the same. On being told by his manager in his early years that he'd be more successful as a hitter if he'd think when he goes up to the plate, Berra responded, "Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time!" Berra denies saying that but it is still widely attributed to him. Yogi did tip his cap to the thinking ballplayer by saying, "Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical."

     Ty Cobb and the aforementioned Ted Williams, on the other hand, had more learned than natural ability. Both worked for hours daily to hone their craft and were active students of the art of hitting. They could speak for hours about the hows and whys of their success. Cobb said, "The longer I live, the longer I realize that hitting is more a mental matter than it is physical. The ability to grasp the bat, swing at the proper time, take a proper stance, all these are elemental. Batting rather is a study in psychology, a sizing up of pitcher and catcher, and observing little details that are of immense importance. It's like the study of crime, the work of a detective as he picks up clues."    Williams once observed, "There has always been a saying in baseball that you can't make a hitter. But I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game." He also got the quote right, Mr. Berra, "Hitting is 50% above the shoulders."

     So which ability is better? Purely natural or natural combined with learned? Cobb and Williams both hit over .400 in their careers. Berra and Ruth never managed the feat. But Cobb and Williams also had something else that was not apparent in either Berra or Ruth. That ingredient was an inner fire to be the very best at what they were doing.

      

Cobb described it this way, "Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher." To which he added, "I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me... but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch." When Williams was psyching himself up in the on-deck circle before stepping up to the plate he'd say to himself, "My name is Ted fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball." By the time he stepped into the batters box he actually felt sorry for the pitcher. Ruth even acknowledged Cobb's fiery drive, saying, "Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit." So I maintain there's not that much difference between natural and learned ability. Yet I do think to reach the top of any profession, writing, music, or anything else, you need to acquire that fiery drive.

     If that's the case, Kara, perhaps each time you sit at your keyboard to knock out a short story, whether by inner soul or set procedure, you should state graphically, categorically, and with authority, "My name is Kara fucking Kliess and I'm the greatest writer who's ever lived!"