Real estate is like baseball. Now, I didn't think this until an hour ago, but sometimes these epiphanies come at the strangest times - and they all begin with a story...

I had just been reading in Yahoo Sports about the baseball's National League Cy Young award winner, Jake Peavy of the San Diego Padres. Peavy was the unanimous winner this year, and posted some great numbers. There was one notation in the article that caught my eye: Peavy didn't pitch a complete game (CG) the entire 2007 season! In fact, only he and Roger Clemens are Cy Young winners with that particular - and peculiar - statistic attached to their names.

That little stat - plus a quick look at Peavy's career ERA - motivated me to Google one of my two favorite pitchers in all of baseball - Tom Seaver. I needed to see just how many CGs he had. No comparison, as there seldom is when comparing records in different sports eras. But how glaringly different it was - that's what surprised me.

I looked at Seaver's numbers from his first year - 1967 - through 1973 - no other stats were available on the website I found. Seaver started between 35 and 36 games every season and pitched all nine innings for half of them, averaging about 17 complete games every year. In this era of middle relievers, short relievers, and closers, Seaver would have been an anomaly. In fact, even in his own era, he was such.

But again, you can't compare eras in baseball. In Seaver's day, athletes used Spring Training to get in shape. Today, there is no real off season, so they arrive in condition and ready to go. So many other differences - higher pitcher's mounds, larger strike zones, physically inferior batters, etc all played a part in Seaver's game, just as incredible microsurgeries, scientifically balanced nutrition, supplements (legal and illegal), and home plate armor affect Peavy's game.

And the game is played differently with teams carrying fifteen or more pitchers when they used to carry eight or ten. Players, coaches, scouts, and fans all adjust to the new game. Yet the purity of the game remains - nine innings, three outs per inning, and nine guys take the field at a time. High score wins.

I liken this implausibility of era comparison in sports to era comparison in the real estate industry. "Back in the day' it was a sellers's market and mortgage money flowed to buyers smoothly. Transactions were almost effortless in their relative ease. Business was plentiful.

But today's market is different - and in ways we all know, so I won't list them here. So we need to adjust to today's market, this era of real estate. All the players - title, mortgage, appraisers, inspectors, Realtors, etc. - and the customers (our fans) - need to understand this new game. The rules have not changed - market, meet, educate, guide, and - finally -close the deal. We still need to do what it takes to play - and play well - in our own era.

Tom Seaver would have been a super star in any era of baseball. He would do everything it took to perform at his highest level, to be a success. He was said to have a "combination of raw power, pinpoint control, intelligence, and, perhaps most of all, an intense scrutiny of performance." Regardless of conditions and variables.

Are we willing to do the same in real estate? For ourselves, our clients, our families? Are we true superstars of integrity and performance in our era? Any era? It's up to each of us to determine the answer.

Art Blanchet

Bill Quigley

Your Home-Your Money

A famous quote about Seaver is attributed to Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson: "Blind men come to the park just to hear him pitch."  I love that.