Broken Baseball Bats: How I Became An Entrepreneur at The Age of Nine

Article by Herb Rubenstein

Introduction

When I was nine years old, I started playing little league baseball. In my several years of playing little league baseball I went three for four one day, drove in three runs, and got my picture in the paper. In another game, I had three errors playing shortstop and the only thing keeping me from getting a fourth error was the coach took me out in the middle of the inning. In my defense, I usually played outfield and I had a glove that I am sure we pulled out of a trash can.

But during one of those little league years, I noticed that my teammates were having trouble with broken bats. This was before metal bats. Once the bat was broken, the player or the coach would pick up the pieces and throw them away. I did not have the money to buy a bat for myself, but I had something better than money. I had the skill and the equipment to repair the bats and as I explain below, once I fixed them, they were better than brand new.

The Facts - Short Version

My father sold ladies shoes, was a good high school baseball player, and did some advertising on the side. For his advertising business, he had the smallest nails on the planet. “Nail sizes are classified in a rather unusual way. Length is defined by the word “penny,” which has its origins in England.” He had one penny nails that were very thin, perfect for putting bats back together. For

So, when I brought the broken bats home, I took a very small hammer and drove the one penny nails into the wooden bat, carefully making both pieces of the bat fit together perfectly. Then, of course, I put tape on the bats, and first black electrical tape, and then some tape to help the baseball player grip the baseball bat. This “taping job” improved the bat, and I did not have a bat rebreak after I fixed it.

Of course, I claimed all the bats I fixed were (the legal term for this I would learn in law school was “abandoned property” which granted me all the legal rights to the bats). I let everyone on my team use “my bats.” At the end of the season, I had a quite a few bats. I never sold them, but rather I gave them away when I decided to quit playing baseball and begin my golf career at the age of twelve. I am now a PGA member more than fifty years after I quit playing little league baseball.

Lessons Learned

Although I did not “make any money” from fixing “broken baseball bats,” I created significant value without spending much money. I probably spent five or ten cents on materials (in 1962 dollars) on each bat.

And that is what entrepreneurs do. They invest their time, energy, skills, knowledge, some physical and financial resources, and produce something much more valuable than what they value of the resources they spend on the product or service they produce. At a time in my life when I could not afford a bat, I had many great bats. In essence, when it came to baseball bats, I was wealthy, or at least, affluent. By “affluent,” I mean that I knew I had more bats than I needed.

A second lesson I learned from this experience is more psychological than economic. By fixing bats, I not only improved my net worth in a way that was measurable and material to me at the time, I created a sense of affluence or well-being for myself. I also created a sense of knowing that I could produce something of value from very meager resources. Money does not buy you anything when you are playing a little league game of baseball in a league, (except maybe a good glove and good shoes). During the game, only winning or losing or how you play the game is all that matters. But, great baseball bats, with several to choose from whenever I went up to the plate, and my teammates using “my bats”, that was affluence and a good feeling.

The final lesson I learned from this experience is never to view something as “broken.” Rather, view it as something than might be able to be repaired at little cost. In our throwaway society, who fixes a Breville Oven when only after three years the on-off switch stops working properly because that area of the unit got overheated? Virtually, no one. So, we toss the old oven into the trash/landfill, which is where the baseball bats would have gone if I had not collected their pieces and fixed them.

Keeping things out of the “landfill” is one route to “sustainability” and helping preserve the planet. By big and small efforts, all of us can learn the biggest lesson I learned from broken baseball bats. That is, when something is broken, if we can fix it, we should, because it helps the planet, which means it helps everyone.

Conclusion

I would bet you have had a broken baseball bat, or B3, experience in your life. The lessons we can learn from such an experience are timeless. However, they are often the types of lessons that we forget as we get older.

We live in a wealthy nation where many of the “wealthy” do not “feel” affluent or experience “affluence.” I recently asked a man whom I respect greatly who had millions of dollars when he was in his nineties, “When did you start feeling affluent?” His answer, “Never.”

Learning how to feel affluent in our wealthy nation is something Americans have simply forgotten how to do. Or, as I prefer to put it, they have forgotten how to remember it. These same Americans felt affluent many times in their lives, like the day they got their first job (which paid very little), the day they got a good grade in school (which alone is not worth a lot of money), or the day they got into college (which cost them a lot of money, but in the long run was probably a brilliant investment of their time and whoever paid for them to go to college).

If you live in a million-dollar house and have some equity, or have a lifetime earnings potential of several million dollars, or if you have a little more sports equipment, clothes, OR material possessions than you use on a monthly basis, you are affluent.

By writing this article, I not only challenge you to see if you can remember how to feel affluent, I urge you to work at creating the experience of being and feeling affluent each and every day of your life. In life, I hope that you will continue to fix broken bats and will work hard at helping yourself and others have the great experience of “feeling affluent.”

Finally, one of the times I feel most affluent is when I give away some of what I own. It is amazing how much-stored value we have in America, sitting in places like basements, cabinets, closets, storage facilities, and throughout our houses and offices where such things will never be used. I urge every reader to work hard at giving away items, including sporting equipment, kitchen equipment, clothes, art, and books that you will not use in the foreseeable future.

Amazing what thoughts broken baseball bats can generate more than 60 years after I started fixing them.