Confronting the Harsh Reality of Baseball Careers
"Burn the boats" is a saying that comes to mind when I reflect on what got me to the highest level of baseball in the world. For those who aren't familiar, the statement is a reference to Hernan Cortes, who in 1519, when he and his troops landed in Veracruz, told his men to burn the boats they came in on so that retreat was not an option. They had no choice but to emerge victorious or die. When it comes to achieving anything worthwhile, I tend to agree with this approach because the reality is that you are competing against other people, and in some cases, those people are facing dire consequences if they don't succeed in whatever field they are working in. Ultimately I believe that those who want it the most are the ones who ultimately achieve it.
My parents used to ask me what my backup plan was if baseball didn't work out. I said I didn't have one because having a Plan B only distracts from Plan A. Who knows if that's what ultimately made the difference, but I do think there was a degree of luck to the success that I ultimately had.
As I said, I still believe that leaving yourself with no other option is ultimately the way to find the most success. But having lived a little longer and going through the entire course of my career, I've found that it is possible to be 100% dedicated while setting yourself up for a future outside of the game. One of the things I learned is that I needed a release - something to take my mind off of baseball. No matter what career you're in, it's healthy to have something that gives you a break from grinding away at your primary goal. Early in my professional career, that break was typically video games with some reading sprinkled in. I would say more than half of the guys I played with were the same way, with more weighting on the video game side.
It wasn't until I actually had some money to play around with that I started learning about finances and realized that I actually found it very interesting. I've been on a constant quest for knowledge ever since, and I'm constantly learning new things. This type of knowledge tends to be exponential as well. In other words, I have learned way more in the last 3 years than I have in the 3 years before that. So I can't help but wonder, how much further along would I be if I had taken an interest in finances in 2011 instead of 2014? How many hours did I drone away in front of a TV screen that could have gotten me closer to my post-playing goals?
This brings me to my point. We all need a break from baseball at some point, why not use at least some of that time on something that might be useful later? If you're fortunate enough to play this game for a long time, the money generally starts to flow in on the tail end of that. The harsh reality is that we can't all play this game forever, and we really never know when it's going to stop. But when it stops, the income stops along with it. So it's not so much about having a Plan B as it is about adding to your knowledge base or skill set that could come in handy sometime in the future.
To use myself as an example, by the time I retired I owned 3 rental properties. The income on these properties wasn't even that great from a ROI perspective, but it was income nonetheless. So when those paychecks from baseball stopped coming in, I felt like I could take my time figuring out what it was that I wanted to do next because at least I had something coming in. I look at what an alternative scenario might have been. Had I been sweeping my income to a brokerage account every month, chances are the income from that account would not have approached what I was making in rental income cash flow, and I think I would have felt more pressure to replace that income quickly.
Most importantly, I would have abdicated my financial responsibility to my advisor, and I would have no clue what to do next. I'm thankful that for whatever reason, I found a productive way to spend my downtime while I was still playing and it has given me an extremely useful skillset for my post-playing days.
Real estate isn't for everyone, and it doesn't have to be. I've decided to be very heavily weighted towards real estate because I can understand it and I can control it. But that's just me. So my advice to someone who's still playing is to find something that you enjoy or have some natural interest in, whether it be the stock market or real estate or a business idea, and start learning about it because you WANT to. It's not a backup plan. Your primary focus is still on succeeding at baseball. You're just shortening the transition time when that fateful day does come and you've decided to put a bookend on baseball.
If you need some help coming up with subjects to look into or just want to talk about finances in general, please reach out to me. I really enjoy talking to current players about these things and would love to help you find a rabbit hole to dive down.
