Game on - Dating as Baseball

Monday Apr 10, 2006

With the fast approach of the 2006 baseball season coupled with my reading of Money Ball, I find myself in a Baseball state of mind. So it stands to reason that I have come to think about the dating process as though a GM might approach the amateur draft or a position player might approach an at-bat. While some might feel that these comparisons have no validity, I argue that they are more than apt and could probably be helpful to many of you out there who are playing the Dating Game (note - I am referring to dating as a game not as game playing. There is a subtle but very importance there).

There are several aspects to the dating game. The two I would like to focus on are: Recruitment and Connection. I will be discussing most of these issues from a male centric perspective as I am male and these ideas are mine. However, I honestly believe that the issues are not gender specific and can be used by men and women alike seeking anything under the sun (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, monogamy, polygamy, you name it...),

A lot of what I have to say and believe comes from a lot of time spent thinking about, discussing, acting on, and reading about dating and recruitment. Nothing in this section is based on anything more than a hypothetical so please do not read into its content.

When looking into meeting a potential romantic interest there are a variety of characteristics people examine and value. Most people start with physical attraction and then move onto seeking a deeper personal connection. What I will be discussing here is keying in on certain attributes that can be used as predictors for emotional compatibility.

When Billy Beane took over the helm of the Oakland A's front office he had a very difficult equation to figure out. He had a major league team that struggled to draw and had a front office that failed to invest the big market dollars in their product. To stay competitive at the big league level he had to find a way to get better talent on the field than his competition for less money (quite a riddle).

How he went about solving this riddle is not dissimilar to how many people compete in competitive markets. He found attributes that he felt were strong indicators of success that his competition undervalued or ignored all together. Instead of keying on the five tools that the rest of the league looked at (arm, foot speed, hitting, defense, hitting for power), he valued on base percentage and character as the highest commodities. Instead of chasing after high school players who looked the part and that grown men could hang their dreams on, he focused instead on college players who could control the strike zone.

Billy keyed in on these attributes, not just at random. but rather because they demonstrated that they were proven indicators of big leauge success. Talent was wide spread but character, ambition, and patience were the rare tools that would contribute directly to the Oakland A's win column.

What I am to suggest now is that in the infallible world of human emotion there are in fact attributes that you can key on during dating that will help you to measure and predict compatibility. Perhaps you've noticed that you are typically get along with people who are the oldest sibling. As you look at all of your friends and relationships you notice that more than 70% of the people important to you are in fact the oldest sibling. Is this random, or is it a greater indicator of potential success and compatibility? I would argue that psychology has shown that the eldest child has a different experience growing up at that perhaps something about that experience ties in nicely with who you are and how you approach life.

What exactly am I suggesting? In a measurable game like baseball where every little statistic can be categorized and understood in the frame of the rules and goal to win this is a much easier task. When human emotion enters into the process, with the rules constantly changing, and no winning or losing being part of game, keying in on certain "stats" is much more difficult. However if you can find certain categories that prove to be good indicators of success it will make the process that much easier.

Some other examples of these characteristics would include: raising in a cold weather state, the person being a minority, class, where the person attended college, the person's fitness level, whether the person is musically inclined... and so on. You can key in on whatever you think has a reasonable connection to compatiability and has shown such over time.

Beyond connection, the most important part of the dating process, there exists the simple process of recruiting. As stated before this starts with the physical. Unfortunately for women if a man is not attracted to your look there is little that you can do about changing his mind. Women aren't as visual as men and their attraction can be triggered in many different ways, the most powerful being through personality.

How do you find these people? Well there are several routes as we all know. The traditional and most comfortable one is meeting through mutual friends/family. Having a topic to discuss from the get go, namely these commonalities, allows for things to feel a little more natural and a little less awkward.

How else do people meet? Bars, airports, train rides, libraries, and yes of course the Internet. Before the turn of the century, and I'm of course referring now to the 20th to 21st change over, people actually met each other in person. But in today's society with careers, education, and technology spreading people allover the globe away from their community and safety nets they grew up enjoying, there are fewer outlets with which individuals can seek out others to date.

Point being, once you get over the initial awkwardness of meeting people for dating purposes you will find that a lot of opportunities are out there. You will have to devise a system which you will utilize to evaluate and filter people you are considering spending time with. A lot of this already occurs naturally but often times you want to avoid certain situations that your natural filters do not block out. This is when you key in on attributes of success.

Now the article is dating as baseball so I must draw a further comparison. This was born of the natural flow of the courtship process. When you are meeting new people you don't bring them directly into your life right off the bat. You test and evaluate and make sure before you get into a commitment, that is you should be doing these things. Often times however people are looking from weakness instead of a place of strength and so they look with dependency in their heart.

Such a search is a fool's errand as you will not be creating the foundation of a strong relationship. Baseball has a system that can help. Its called the minor leagues. After a team makes their draft picks and signs them they ship these young men off to professional teams that are not at the major league level. There is a big difference between playing for the love of the game and playing for money just as there exists a giant rift between meeting someone new and being in a relationship with that individual.

Point being you need to take the time to get to know someone. You need to build a friendship and make sure that they are right for you. Envisioning you new connection climbing the ranks of the minor leagues to determine whether or not its ready for the big time may be a great way to pace yourself and understand where things are at.

Though I could talk for years on the subject this is neither the time nor the place. I will say this though, if you do not worry about getting someone to be with you but rather are present to the moment and see each moment as a chance to wake up to know yourself and the rest of the world you won't sweat the small stuff and you will have a successful journey.

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Game on - Dating as Baseball

Monday Apr 10, 2006