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- The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived
His name was Ted Williams.
He is the The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.
Ted was born in California on August 30, 1918. He played baseball for the Boston Red Socks from 1939 until 1960, when he retired. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. Ted had a career batting average of .3444. This is the highest of any player who played his entire career in the live-ball era following 1920.
Oh. I almost forgot.
Ted also fought in two wars - WW2 and the Korean War.
Ted is famous, but as a South African who knows virtually nothing about Baseball, I didn’t know he existed. That is, until I read an excerpt from Warren Buffet’s 1994 Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway.
Here’s the quote:
Nevertheless, we will stick with the approach that got us here and try not to relax our standards. Ted Williams, in The Story of My Life, explains why: "My argument is, to be a good hitter, you've got to get a good ball to hit. It's the first rule in the book. If I have to bite at stuff that is out of my happy zone, I'm not a .344 hitter. I might only be a .250 hitter." Charlie and I agree and will try to wait for opportunities that are well within our own "happy zone."
Buffet is teaching us a valuable lesson:
Know what you are good at. Do that. Say no to the rest.
This secret to success sounds simple but is actually challenging. “Boring” investors know that chasing every sparkly opportunity out there is not the path to success.
“Boring” investors are like The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived. We wait patiently. We wait for the right opportunities, and then we strike.
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Arena.
Until we meet again, good luck being “boring”.
~ Mordi