Baseball and the Blame Game

I got into baseball last year and realized: baseball and the office are basically the same thing. Same rules, same playbook, no one really watching.

Nine of them against one of you. When it's your turn, you're alone against all of them. The office is no different — you think you have teammates, but you don't.

There's exactly one situation where a coworker actually cares about you: they've already taken a base, they need you to not strike out, they need you to move them forward. The moment your interests line up, they care. The rest of the time, nobody is catching the ball for you.

Every pitch is someone trying to pin something on you.

The ball flies in, you don't know if it's meant for you. If it isn't in your zone, that's a ball — don't move. The blame doesn't land, and the person who threw it just exposed themselves. The second you swing, it's yours.

The most important skill is reading whether it's coming into your zone. The mistake juniors make is panicking and swinging.

If it's in your zone, you have to swing. The point isn't to hit the ball back — it's to throw the blame somewhere else.

But you can't put it directly into someone's hands. That's a caught fly ball. Everyone saw it. Everyone knows it came from you.

Either knock it out of the park — home run — and the blame vanishes. Or hit it where nobody can catch it cleanly, then run like hell and get yourself on base.

Getting on base is grabbing onto a boss's leg. The blame is still floating around, but you're standing on something solid.

Standing on base isn't winning, though.

People keep coming for you. Three strikes and you're out. The round is over.

How does the strikeout happen so easily? Because your coworkers all know you're going to throw the blame somewhere. They've already taken up every position on the field — wherever you want to throw it, they're already standing there. The angle and force of your swing? They've predicted it.

Real home runs — the ones that actually clear the park — are rare. Most balls land inside their range. They reach out and catch.

The hard part of baseball isn't swinging. It's knowing when not to.

But there's a harder call than that — whether you're on the field today, or up in the stands.

It's not a difference in job. It's a difference in posture. In the same company, some people are out there grinding for every at-bat, while others sit in the stands with a beer and watch the whole thing play out.

But honestly, neither of those is right.

Baseball is baseball. The office shouldn't be baseball.

Nine guys on the field grinding through a game nobody's watching — that's their job. The office isn't supposed to be like that. The office is supposed to be a place where you produce value. What you ship runs or it doesn't. It saved a headcount or it didn't. A customer paid for it or they didn't. There's no blame to pass, because there's nothing to blame anyone for.

Over the next few years, there's going to be a new player on the field. More specifically: an AI player. The person who brings him onto the field is what's now being called an FDE — a Forward Deployed Engineer.

This player can pitch, catch, run, and deflect — all at once. He knows your strike zone. He knows where you want to throw the blame. He can stand at all nine positions at the same time. Hit it clean and he reaches out and catches. Even a home run — he gets to the wall first.

In the office, he's the handoff that used to take three people a week — now it takes ten minutes.

Reading this, you might be thinking: isn't this exactly the work that's going to replace mine?

Yes. Partly. But more precisely — he's not here to replace you. He's here to replace the game itself. This game nobody was watching, he can play it alone. The only real question left is whether you want to keep stepping up to bat, or stop playing this game.

You might still be thinking: even if I stop, the coach isn't going to let me have any of that saved time off.

He won't — if you're still on his team.

Here's another angle. The AI player can do everything, but he doesn't know what to do. Which process is broken. Which Excel everyone hates. Which handoff is the worst — none of that lives in the documentation. None of it lives in the data.

It lives in the break room complaints. In the 5:47 PM message someone fires into the group chat and deletes a minute later. In the 'don't tell the boss' that a coworker drops over a cigarette right before telling you anyway.

People only say this kind of thing to other people. That's the part AI can't take.

You've been on this field for years. So you know.

Take that — the things only humans tell other humans — into another company, bring the AI player with you, and you're the FDE.

Freelancing, building your own product, working solo with a craft — these count too. None of them put you on this field.

Of course, not every one of those paths will work for everyone. That's OK — this game isn't going to wrap up in a day, and you don't have to leave in one either. Knowing what AI can do, and what it still can't, is enough.

Where you go doesn't matter. Just stop playing.

People who stop playing this game come home tired and can still go watch a real one. A beer, some peanuts, friends.