Wednesday Words

Real knowledge is power.

Ignorance is not bliss.

I don’t know how or if the following story is related to those words, but I’m telling it, anyway. I once worked for a small (10-12 person) arbitration/litigation consulting firm. The owner/president of this company loved to say, “There’s a thin line between being a novice and being an expert.” He also used to argue with me about baseball “trivia” and he was never right.

According to my resume/CV my job title was Economist/Data Analyst. (I don’t really know what title I had, if any.) From my resume/CV:

• Established systems and procedures to evaluate economic impact of product liability issues.
• Planned strategies and performed statistical analysis for companies in litigation or arbitration to reduce judgment-based error and improve risk assessment.

What is not listed is that I was the de facto head of IT. I made recommendations for software purchases, which were almost always followed, and I purchased hardware. I was also the go-to guy when anyone in the company was having computer issues. More on that later…

I don’t remember which of these two events happened first. One event was that one day I brought in a baseball encyclopedia to show “the boss” he was wrong about a baseball trivia question and that I was right. The other event was after hearing his remark about “There’s a thin line” for the nth time I finally had to reply, “There’s a thin line between being a novice and thinking you’re an expert.”

Perhaps as no surprise I was fired by the president of the company although not immediately after the second event. The day of my firing I was cleaning out my office when the phone rang. I answered and the caller was one of my co-workers, an absolutely strange woman. She asked me about some computer issue. I answered, “I don’t know; I don’t work here anymore.” When she said, “What?” I repeated myself and then I heard her mutter as she hung up the phone.

I like to think that I got the last laugh. I fashioned a 20+ year career in major league baseball (the position with the arbitration/litigation firm was the last full-time job I had before my first full-time baseball job), wrote a book that The Wall Street Journal called without a doubt the best book of its kind ever written, earned two baseball championship rings with my name on them and, thanks to baseball, met the wonderful woman to whom I have been married for 22+ years.

Anyway…despite the plague of political correctness, the woke mob, faux equality and the like, don’t be afraid to display real knowledge. Oh, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.”

CRUDE LANGUAGE WARNING:

One reason why the world stinks is too many people talk out of their ass.

Sorry, no pictures, no cars and no pictures of cars today.

#WednesdayWords

#RealKnowledgeIsPower

#IgnoranceIsNotBliss

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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