In October 2006, I was in St. Louis for a business trip. Unfortunately, this happened to be during the World Series.
Mrs. and Mr. LDK picked me up at my hotel and we headed to a wonderful Italian restaurant for dinner. Of course we got stuck in the mass of traffic that was heading for the stadium.
We spoke a little bit about the Cardinals and the games and the Yankees and baseball in general for several minutes. And then I thought it was kind of silly for us to struggle to talk about it like this. I said something to the effect of, "You know, we all have more than enough geek cred that we don't have to talk about sports."
As I recall everyone relaxed a bit and we settled into a series of exciting conversations about science, Star Trek, technology, astronomy, and doctoral dissertations.
(Is that how it went LDK, or have I just twisted things to meet my own personal mythology?)
Spring training is slowly getting started and opening day will sneak up on us before we realize it.
This year I plan to follow the Mariners more closely. I've always been a Yankee fan, but I rarely read the sports pages. After all, by favoring the Yankees, I've already made the right choice so why read further?
But this is business. As a marketing guy in the high tech world, I need to be able to converse with two groups of people -- the techies and the non-techies. When it comes to the work related stuff, that's no problem.
When it comes to the non-work small talk, it gets a little more complicated. I can talk to the geeks with no problem. From a pop culture stand point, they're my peeps. Heck, I own the domain for Shatner-Palooza.com. I can easily discuss the holy trio of geek topics: Star Trek, Star Wars, and LOTR, and have impassioned arguments on them. I'm no longer an expert in the Marvel/DC universes, but I spent enough time there in high school to understand the basic mythology and hold my own in a conversation.
The sports people, on the other hand, are more of a challenge for me. When they find out I live in Seattle, the first thing they ask about is the Mariners. And I have very little to say. Sometimes I can steer the conversation to the ballpark and talk about Safeco Field (an awesome ball park, by the way) but I can't intelligently discuss the line up or player performance.
I have no intention of becoming an expert or memorizing books of stats; that's not me. But I do need to get to the point where my face doesn't go blank when I'm asked about relief pitching.
It's not a question of pretending to be something I'm not. It about having something else to talk about in a conversation and having the tools needed to build those business relationships.
And even if this initiative fails, I will go to a few games this year. There's something relaxing about sitting in Safeco Field with my feet up on the empty seat in front of me and a beer in my hand, while the sun gradually dips below the waters Puget Sound. The beauty of the game is its own reward.
