Donald “Mr. Baseball” Trump, everyone:
“You win the pennant and now you’re in the World Series — you gonna change?” Mr. Trump said. “People like the way I’m doing.”
Given he’s a New Yorker, a city with a history of teams regularly winning the World Series, you’d think Trump would have at least some passing knowledge about the American Pastime. You see, teams that win World Series absolutely change things from series to series!
Want an example?
I think if you look at the 2007 Cubs for instance, the team had the best record in baseball but was swept by the Dodgers mainly due to the Dodgers never throwing a lefty at a righty heavy Cubs lineup.
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All the Cubs’ regular season glory was irrelevant because of a tactical shift by their playoff opponent. Baseball is a game of never-ending adjustments. You find a weakness in your opponent and you exploit it, you change your lineup, your pitching rotation, your infield and outfield placement, etc. If the data says that a player performs poorly on Tuesdays following a full moon, then that player sits every Tuesday following a full moon (I joke, but day vs. evening games will absolutely impact numbers). Any manager that sits on past success and refuses to adjust for their upcoming opponents, the stadium, the weather, and whatever other factors the sabermetricians can conjure up won’t be managing for long.
And that’s not even including in-game changes, from pinch hitters, to relief pitchers, to infield and outfield shifts, to making sure the guy who is hitting every fastball in sight gets nothing but changeups. Heck, the “adjustment” side of baseball may be its saving grace, because it sure isn’t the action on the field. It’s the strategy side that makes the game so interesting.
Of course no one knows baseball better than Trump. He’s tremendous. Amazing. The best. And yet we aren’t really surprised by his ignorance, are we?
But maybe it’s not ignorance. Maybe it’s a baked-in worldview, one in which he thinks success in one area (however suspect, in his case) somehow applies to everything else. Perhaps that’s why he can say, with a straight face, “I think I’ll be absolutely great on the military and military strategy.” He considers himself to be quite fantastic, so why wouldn’t he be fantastic at everything?
And all the time, he’s completely ignorant about his ignorance.