1) Focus on things that make a difference - ignore the chatter and buzz, the click-bait and easy gotchas - they just chip away at time. Baseball announcers have to fill a lot of dead air, so can talk about anything from root canals and outboard motors and somehow connect it to the game. My mother called it "diarrhea of the mouth", but in baseball circles they call it "a good living" or "Harry Carey", depending.

2) Time is money, money is time, and we don't have enough of either. Stop the class warfare over money - money largely wins elections and ball games. Everyone says the players are overpaid, but they still buy tickets and fill the stadium. Care about values, cultivate rich ethical friends, fast track the road to wins.

(Jesus corollary: as the poor will be with us always, so will the rich and glamorous and obnoxious. Deal with it).

3) Watch Moneyball, take away key points: a) adapt or die, b) you're not out to replace a player - you're out to buy scores and wins, c) the competition will copy your successful techniques if allowed, d) don't trust the polls - do your own analytics.

PS - argue about candidate values and flaws and street-cred *after* you win the pennant - until then, make lemonade: get up earlier, hustle after grounders, and don't confuse being a player with being a commentator.

4) Small isn't so beautiful. Think globally (nationally), act globally (nationally) - like Whitman, contain multitudes. Yeah, including think how our fave policies will affect and be received abroad by poor and wealthy countries alike - global appeal is good. Instead of a 50-state push, we're stuck in a swing-state slump. Lots of players look good in the minors, but can never hit a really fast pitch in the majors.

5) As Hillary said, things you say and believe in private, things you say in public - most straight shooters lose - pick your battles. This year's is an outlier by many many standards. Half of Bernie's appeal, half of Trump's appeal was not saying too much, not going into details. Cause that's what they hang you on, when they're not making "boring policy wonk" jokes. Hillary, a lifelong Cubs fan, was smart enough to root for *both* Mets and Yankees as a budding Senator. Corollary: do your homework, just don't be the first to raise your hand.

6) Bucky Fuller tip: embrace new technology. The Brazilians didn't try to make up for their missing railways - for the most part they skipped the train and built out their airport system, which fit the times and their countryside better. Who knows how much better money can be spent in 2017 than traditional media buys. My family for one don't watch a *single* network TV program, and anything we do watch is on catchup TV. Read: no ads. Mobile phones, chats, social media, etc.? Tons of.

(Money where mouth is disclaimer: Currently working on killing traditional print buys completely for 1 company, though may opt for a *single* promising channel.)

7) Learn just enough* psychology and persuasion. Baseball is largely about psyching out batters and unnering pitchers. If you were going to sell someone a vehicle, you'd want to know if they lived in the city or country, had a family, type of lifestyle, or even afraid of driving. Yet we assume people think and are persuaded by some standard logic. Instead, for example our lazy brains substitute repetition - times we heard something - for a rough approximation of "truth". Here's Kahneman's short version of "Fast and Slow Thinking" or a 3rd party summary, or you can watch a quick summary instead. Think about how many times over the last year we've though of such behavior as "irrational", but it's the *standard way of thinking for all humans* - we do not think like computers.

*Under the Pareto rule (via Guerrilla Six Sigma), 5% of effort gives 50% the results. (Most people think of 20-80, but who has even that much time?). 

8) Figure out how much change you can absorb - slowly slowly catchee monkey... Spring training is just a start - players perfect over the season. No one remembers April once September rolls around, and as Nate Silver points out analytically, your good performers in April are often bad in May and vice-versa. Play for the duration.

9) Baseball is America's sport (politics a close second) - boring, takes too long to play out, half of the action is off the field. Nobody goes to the ballpark to root for the team's moral values or policy positions - they go there just to be on the winning side. If your family's Cubbies or Mets fans, you sure as hell better be a Cubbie or Mets fan too.

10) To be continued - in case no one noticed, this league's games largely take place in leap years, so think of it as a 4-year-long 7th inning stretch - a lot of beer and hot dogs and popcorn to get sick on. Though I guess with the famous Black Sox playing, we'll at least have enough to talk about, like whether they'll steal the stadium fixtures and raid the parking lot on the way home.