When it comes to the pursuit of continuous learning one should not lose sight of the benefits of humility and gratitude in all they will ever learn and achieve.

I read where the Chicago Cubs’ offense has become offensive for its die-hard fans. The experts say they are perplexed but collectively speaking, their hitters are off to a historically awful start.

Pitchers are on to whatever they may have been doing successfully in the past.

When an opponent or competitor, whether in business or sports, appears to have your number, it’s time to either unlearn what you know about the game and learn something new to regain your edge.

Hitting a baseball has been called one of the hardest things to do in all sports. With pitches coming at you at 100 miles per hour from 60 feet, six inches away, I would tend to agree the difficulty of achieving success is formidable.

What humbles the best hitters is the fact a good batting average reflects a batsman getting a hit at the rate of less than 33% of their times’ at-bat. Consequently, a .300 batting average is considered quite good.

If you own your own business you need to do better than a .300 batting average when it comes to closing sales on products or services, or else face having your company go belly up posthaste.

I don’t have any suggestions for the Cubs except for management to possibly blow the team up, sell-off, and start over come the trading deadline (unless they improve significantly before then).

Personally, I thought the Cubs played over their heads during their World Series year. Only time will tell if this is a plausible explanation for their current woes. I want to say they’ve deteriorated offensively each of the years since their World Championship, and maybe that season simply featured career years for all their guys.

One thing is for certain is that for whatever reason, the output of Baez, Rizzo, Bryant, et al. is down, perhaps reflecting a plateau, to put it mildly, or at an extreme, an abyss they’ve plunged into from which they will be hard-pressed to remove themselves.

Monetizing the blog

Sure, there is a paywall on this site and there are also ads. Neither is in your face offensive (unlike the Cubs’ offense).

At one time I had a completely free of charge site where all the content was available to whoever visited. I built up a following and then once I had the time, migrated the site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org.

It was a good decision for several reasons as I was able to do things like put up a paywall and also display advertising. The site essentially became commercialized, but in a good, not-so-in-your-face way, dare I say.

Devoted readers can still visit if they pay a nominal fee for either access to an individual story or unlimited access for a month (which does not auto-renew).

Monetizing the blog was the best way for me to improve the quality of the content, protect it from copyright violations, and still make it completely affordable for my loyal readership base.

I am grateful for the tools available for me to be successful. And I am humbled by the ability to do something I love and in the process share it with my readers near and far.

It’s time for Cubs management to follow suit more or less as if you have made money off a loyal fan base, it’s time to move on to a better product on the field as soon as feasible.

Devoted fans surely deserve better, and should not have to endure players’ continued humbling at the arms of major league pitchers.

In the meantime, please know I am grateful and humbled by your continued patronage here. Thank you!