The Grandfather, the Grandson and the Pitch Clock
Xavier Mascaros · · 2 min read
Fenway Park, Saturday evening. A grandfather and his grandson share the joy of legacy, respect for the game and hope that the final out tips the scales in favor of their team. Between innings, grandpa grumbles about how the game has changed. He romanticizes the bunts, the breaking balls, the submarine pitchers, the hit-and-run, the cleanup spot. All he sees now is the long ball, a game run by numbers: numbers on the scoreboard, timers for the pitcher and the batter, strikeouts with men on second and third. Nothing natural about it. The kid doesn't follow. He takes a bite of his hot dog, sips his soda and waits for the grand slam.
What grandpa forgets to mention are the five-hour games, the endless pitching mind games, the knees and ankles broken diving for a double play, the stars whose careers ended before they ever got to show all five tools. The diamond is the same. The rules are the same: most runs wins. But his grandson will never feel nostalgia for the game he loves. And it hits him: he's not watching the game of baseball. He's watching the product of MLB.
The world we live in is constantly changing, and with the tools at our fingertips, the changes come faster. Why? Because failing has become cheap. In a product-led organization, a piece of code, a wrong hypothesis or a proof of concept doesn't need to be set in stone before it's tried. There's always something to scrap and rebuild, and a lesson learned on the way to the success an organization needs to grow.
Baseball learned this too. Before the pitch clock reached the majors, MLB tested it in the minor leagues, measured the results and adjusted. When it arrived in 2023, the average game got roughly 25 minutes shorter. Same diamond, same rules, less dead time. That's not tradition losing; that's a product team doing its job.
It's not only about having the tools; it's how you use them. Purists will argue that the fast way lacks the expertise and elegance of the old way. Some will still double, triple and quadruple check before they ship, while working fast becomes the new working smart. You'll still hear someone argue that Windows 95 was the best software ever written. The market answers with the latest update of the latest AI tool.
The game is over. They walk home hand in hand. Their team won, or lost; it doesn't matter. They'll cherish the night, and grandpa will pin it to his memory of a better time. The show remains, the actors remain, but the act keeps changing. That's the adoption cycle, and it's where product management makes the winning move. Do you force the user's hand, or set up the conditions that lead users to adapt on their own? The answer is both, because you're building for both: the grandfather you can't afford to lose, and the grandson you need to win.