On the afternoon of July 13, 2002, the door to the visiting bullpen swung open at Jacobs Field in Cleveland, Ohio. Through that door trotted Mariano Rivera.
Rivera had one mission: Pitch a clean inning to lock up the game for the New York Yankees.
But that would prove to be quite the challenge.
For the Cleveland batters Rivera would face had already picked up on something from prior games. All of Rivera’s pitches — his signature cut fastballs — were ending up in the same spot, just off home plate.
As the inning progressed, a litany of lefthanded hitters trudged to the plate and dug their heels into the back edge of the batter’s box.
The batters were too far back to reach pitches on the opposite side of home plate. But it didn’t matter. They knew Rivera’s wouldn’t throw anything out there. All they’d see is the cut fastball on their half of the plate. And they’d be primed to hit it.
Soon enough, Cleveland had loaded the bases. With his team trailing by one run, journeyman Bill Selby strode to the plate.
Selby took aim at several cut fastballs, driving them into the stands in foul territory. It was clear he had Rivera’s cutter timed up.
If Rivera had thrown just one pitch to the other side of the plate, Selby would have been toast. But instead, Rivera kept throwing the cutter, harder and harder.
Ultimately, Selby’s persistence paid off. He lined a cut fastball over the right-field wall for a game-winning grand slam. The Yankees trudged off the field in disbelief while Cleveland fans and players celebrated.
Rivera had gone to the well one too many times.
Mariano Rivera had already built a name for himself before that fateful day in Cleveland.
He had guided the Yankees to four world titles, won a World Series MVP award, and been selected to five All-Star teams.
But after that defeat, he seemed to get even better.
For Rivera started to mix a straight fastball into his arsenal. A pitch he could splash over the other side of home plate if batters tried to cheat on his cut fastball.
Soon, it was virtually impossible to beat Rivera.
By the time he retired in 2013, Rivera had saved 652 games — with about two-thirds of those saves coming after the Cleveland debacle. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame unanimously the first year he was eligible. And he’s widely considered the greatest closer of all time.
Still, even with all that sustained excellence, the great Mariano Rivera had to learn to adapt. For if he’d kept going to the well — firing that cut fastball to the same spot, game after game — eventually other teams would have ambushed him the way Cleveland did. His performance would have declined, and his legacy would have been incomplete.
The fact that Rivera had the open-mindedness to change his approach while at the peak of his game says as much about him as any of the accolades that he racked up. It transformed him from a ballplayer into an example worth following.
Why keep going to the well?
Why keep reverting to the same old pattern, over and over?
It doesn’t make much sense.
After all, we know that perfection is unattainable. If one of the greatest baseball players ever can come up short now and then, why do we expect any better of a fate in our endeavors?
And if insanity is doing the same thing over and over, our affinity for routine might be nothing short of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, why do we ignore these inexorable truths? Blame two F’s — fear and familiarity.
We fear making a critical error by venturing into the unknown. So, we stick to the familiar, expecting predictably cozy results.
The irony is palpable.
For not only do we often find such assuredness lacking when we follow this approach. But we also are left unprepared when things inevitably go off-script.
This is bad enough when it befalls us individually. But if the issue is societal, it can be downright disastrous.
Recent history is littered with instances of slow and clunky responses to an emergent threat. A blossoming pandemic and a spiraling inflation crisis are but two examples of this.
We went to the well of familiar approaches in each case, only to watch the threat linger and intensify, strangling us slowly like a boa constrictor.
As this has occurred, fear has set in. Certainty has faded away. And a sustainable path forward has proven harder to reach.
The old well has gone dry. It’s time to change things up.
About a year into my news career, a new face joined our newsroom.
Like me, the new hire worked behind the scenes, in an off-air role. Unlike me, he had plenty of big-city news experience.
Things started off amicable but quickly deteriorated.
For the new hire wanted our small, local news operation to focus coverage on developments in the Middle East. And I wanted to cover every arrest and car wreck in the metro area.
The best solution would probably have been a compromise — a mix of Middle East coverage from the network feed and local reporting from our journalists in-house.
But I was too hard-headed to acquiesce to such an agreement. Instead, I kept going back to the well, demanding that local news stay local.
A power struggle ensued, and I emerged victorious. The new hire eventually left the station, and I continued building the nightly newscasts the way I always had.
Looking back, I’m not filled with satisfaction at this development. I’m overcome by shame.
I wish that I had handled the situation better. That I’d been open-minded enough to listen to what my erstwhile co-worker was saying. That I’d leaned in to calls for change in an industry that was all about the unexpected.
Instead, I went back to the well. I demanded to do things the way they had been done before. And all that left me with was a divided newsroom and burned bridges.
In the years since that incident, I’ve tried to be more open-minded. When I’ve found myself going to the well, I’ve asked myself why I was doing so. And if I don’t have a solid answer, I’ve shifted my approach.
There’s nothing preventing us all from doing this. Nothing but ourselves.
So, let’s resolve to be better. To be shrewder. To be more open-minded.
Let’s not allow the tried-and-true to tie us in knots.
It’s time to lean into a fresh approach, and the wonders it unlocks.