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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, all the rest of the month is available for your curiosity, about either baseball or Tarot. Leave a comment with a prompt if you want in. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
Some people are just talented at things. They can look at a lump of raw material and see the process that will turn it into art. You could give them a kitchen with ingredients and they will turn out tasty food without a recipe. They see a thing happen and they can duplicate it, or duplicate it while improving it. They can think in code effortlessly and build giant structures in game worlds as testaments to their ability. They can make sounds that evoke emotions, anthems to shout, and earworms that will pass around the radio, Internet, and other communication methods.
Or they have the power of words, able to convince anyone of anything, using speech or writing to build arguments or worlds of fantasy for people to disappear into. There are enough people with natural talent at something to fill a market for that thing and still have plenty left over who are trying their hardest to get into that space, whether to make a living at it or just for the good feelings that come when people say they like your work and want to see more of it.
Athletics has their own suite of talented people. Just about anyone who has made it to a level where they will be seen by television cameras and broadcast to a viewing audience has some amount of talent at the sport they are playing. But then there are people who have that talent in spades - with no formal training, they can pick up a bat and crush a ball to the outfield fence, or they can throw at Major League fastball speeds, or they can see where balls are going to be as soon as they leave the bat. Scouts travel to all sorts of locations to see players in their current leagues and levels and make formal assessments for teams about whether those teams want to expend draft picks or sign them to contacts with the organization and start them on the journey toward playing with the marquee team in the organization.
With many sports, there are certain nations that seem to turn out excellent players on a regular basis. Canadian, Scandinavian, and Russian players show up a lot in ice hockey, Brazil and Germany in association football, and New Zealand in both rugby and cricket. Baseball, for a long while, seemed to be recruiting from Central America, with the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Mexico sending many players to join United States teams. More recently, Nippon Professional Baseball players, following the stellar breakouts of Suzuki Ichiro and Matsui Hideki, have been sending both pitchers and hitters to Major League Baseball, making the organization even more international than it was before.
Unlike other sports, since the United States still wants to see baseball as the National Pastime, the infusion of players from other countries and leagues sometimes provokes xenophobia from people who want to have a thing all to themselves and not share it with the rest of the world so they can beat their chests about being the very best in the world at it. Perhaps because of them, or because they don't believe other leagues to have the same caliber of player, players coming from outside the country are often on the extreme end of talent, the same kind of talent that makes the game look effortless and the nativists nervous that everyone playing outside the States is this good, and is this good through natural talent, without any of the refinement and coaching that comes from playing professional ball. (Those who truly believe that, I have some delicious cake for you at the end of your testing chambers.)
The Natural is a player with raw talent for the game, often, but not always, a rookie, but almost always a player that has little experience in the league that they are playing in. The player usually enjoys significant success during this time in the league by putting their talent to work and taking advantage of the fact that their bad habits, proclivities, and percentages are not yet fully known. Getting out of the gate fast enough and effectively enough will help the team get ahead and won a few fans on the strength of their relative unknown status.
Thing is, one can only be a talented unknown for so long. At some point, the rest of the league catches up. This is the danger point for many Naturals, as trying to continue on their own talent without assistance will result in their fortunes turning in reverse, down more toward the average of any given player in the league, or worse, into what appears to be a slump compared to the previous years' successes. The issue can sometimes be self-reinforcing to the point where a player has to overcome their own mental blocks just just to get to the point where they can let their talent shine again, and then get it improved upon with coaching and practice. The people who stay in the league are the ones that take their talent and then refine it and improve upon it, and while it's possible that someone can do this themselves, it usually requires a lot of experience and failure against people who are better at it than they are, And then being able to take the right lessons from each defeat until they can start winning again (or at least getting back to parity). How much easier it is to have a guide along the way, assuming ego and stubbornness don't get in the way of learning what they have to teach.
The Rider-Waite version of this card is The Empress, and the presence of The Natural in your reading is an indication of raw, unrefined talent. Might be yours. Might be someone else's. Either way, the best thing you can do with it is nuture it, feed it, and let it develop into a fuller expression. For a little while, this will be easy, as the results and rewards of doing so well be easily obtainable and pretty clear. One theory suggests, however that it takes ten thousand hours of experience at something before expertise and mastery can be fully conferred. Once the beginning period is over, now it becomes time for the work. Odds are that the talent will still turn out good things, but since good things will now be the expectation, it won't be as easy to reap joy from the results in pursuit of making them better. Ira Glass can explain this phenomenon really well, so I'll let them do so:
If you can't see the talent as being yours, maybe the card is signaling to you that someone around you had this kind of talent and is going to need you to be coach, buddy, mentor, or cheering section (and possibly all at once). Happiness often comes when we can apply our talents usefully and see good results from them, but we don't always have the perspective to see it (or the rewards are delayed or invisible). The more you can help the Natural understand, the more likely they are to be able to stick with it and turn themselves into an All-Star.
There's a downside to the Natural, too. If ego gets in the way, or they're used to great successes and now they aren't coming, it can be very difficult to get them into the next phase of development and convince them of the need for the work. They might have to crash completely before they can start to build. Be there for them when they do, but try not to get caught in their destructive path on the way down.
The other bad side is that Naturals can be exploited and taken advantage of by shady dealers, over-enthusiastic fanatics, and con artists, used up and then thrown away when something better comes along. Don't do this to them - be fair to your creatives and compensate them properly, whether with money or trade goods of equal quality than what they give you. Strip-mining or clear cutting trees is not a long term sustainable strategy, and they both have nasty environmental pollution effects in addition to the goods they produce. Far better for the quality of the work to be long-term sustainable so as to avoid burnout and increase the yield.
Talent is a useful first step along the way. For those who are going to make it, though, behind the talent is a backstop of work, experience, and encouragement.
Some people are just talented at things. They can look at a lump of raw material and see the process that will turn it into art. You could give them a kitchen with ingredients and they will turn out tasty food without a recipe. They see a thing happen and they can duplicate it, or duplicate it while improving it. They can think in code effortlessly and build giant structures in game worlds as testaments to their ability. They can make sounds that evoke emotions, anthems to shout, and earworms that will pass around the radio, Internet, and other communication methods.
Or they have the power of words, able to convince anyone of anything, using speech or writing to build arguments or worlds of fantasy for people to disappear into. There are enough people with natural talent at something to fill a market for that thing and still have plenty left over who are trying their hardest to get into that space, whether to make a living at it or just for the good feelings that come when people say they like your work and want to see more of it.
Athletics has their own suite of talented people. Just about anyone who has made it to a level where they will be seen by television cameras and broadcast to a viewing audience has some amount of talent at the sport they are playing. But then there are people who have that talent in spades - with no formal training, they can pick up a bat and crush a ball to the outfield fence, or they can throw at Major League fastball speeds, or they can see where balls are going to be as soon as they leave the bat. Scouts travel to all sorts of locations to see players in their current leagues and levels and make formal assessments for teams about whether those teams want to expend draft picks or sign them to contacts with the organization and start them on the journey toward playing with the marquee team in the organization.
With many sports, there are certain nations that seem to turn out excellent players on a regular basis. Canadian, Scandinavian, and Russian players show up a lot in ice hockey, Brazil and Germany in association football, and New Zealand in both rugby and cricket. Baseball, for a long while, seemed to be recruiting from Central America, with the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Mexico sending many players to join United States teams. More recently, Nippon Professional Baseball players, following the stellar breakouts of Suzuki Ichiro and Matsui Hideki, have been sending both pitchers and hitters to Major League Baseball, making the organization even more international than it was before.
Unlike other sports, since the United States still wants to see baseball as the National Pastime, the infusion of players from other countries and leagues sometimes provokes xenophobia from people who want to have a thing all to themselves and not share it with the rest of the world so they can beat their chests about being the very best in the world at it. Perhaps because of them, or because they don't believe other leagues to have the same caliber of player, players coming from outside the country are often on the extreme end of talent, the same kind of talent that makes the game look effortless and the nativists nervous that everyone playing outside the States is this good, and is this good through natural talent, without any of the refinement and coaching that comes from playing professional ball. (Those who truly believe that, I have some delicious cake for you at the end of your testing chambers.)
The Natural is a player with raw talent for the game, often, but not always, a rookie, but almost always a player that has little experience in the league that they are playing in. The player usually enjoys significant success during this time in the league by putting their talent to work and taking advantage of the fact that their bad habits, proclivities, and percentages are not yet fully known. Getting out of the gate fast enough and effectively enough will help the team get ahead and won a few fans on the strength of their relative unknown status.
Thing is, one can only be a talented unknown for so long. At some point, the rest of the league catches up. This is the danger point for many Naturals, as trying to continue on their own talent without assistance will result in their fortunes turning in reverse, down more toward the average of any given player in the league, or worse, into what appears to be a slump compared to the previous years' successes. The issue can sometimes be self-reinforcing to the point where a player has to overcome their own mental blocks just just to get to the point where they can let their talent shine again, and then get it improved upon with coaching and practice. The people who stay in the league are the ones that take their talent and then refine it and improve upon it, and while it's possible that someone can do this themselves, it usually requires a lot of experience and failure against people who are better at it than they are, And then being able to take the right lessons from each defeat until they can start winning again (or at least getting back to parity). How much easier it is to have a guide along the way, assuming ego and stubbornness don't get in the way of learning what they have to teach.
The Rider-Waite version of this card is The Empress, and the presence of The Natural in your reading is an indication of raw, unrefined talent. Might be yours. Might be someone else's. Either way, the best thing you can do with it is nuture it, feed it, and let it develop into a fuller expression. For a little while, this will be easy, as the results and rewards of doing so well be easily obtainable and pretty clear. One theory suggests, however that it takes ten thousand hours of experience at something before expertise and mastery can be fully conferred. Once the beginning period is over, now it becomes time for the work. Odds are that the talent will still turn out good things, but since good things will now be the expectation, it won't be as easy to reap joy from the results in pursuit of making them better. Ira Glass can explain this phenomenon really well, so I'll let them do so:
“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me... is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.Being a Natural delays the onset of this period some, but it always catches up to you in the end. If you're there, now might be the time to find a coach, a workout buddy, or someone else who can help you get through, help you improve your skills, and keep you encouraged until skill catches up to taste.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
If you can't see the talent as being yours, maybe the card is signaling to you that someone around you had this kind of talent and is going to need you to be coach, buddy, mentor, or cheering section (and possibly all at once). Happiness often comes when we can apply our talents usefully and see good results from them, but we don't always have the perspective to see it (or the rewards are delayed or invisible). The more you can help the Natural understand, the more likely they are to be able to stick with it and turn themselves into an All-Star.
There's a downside to the Natural, too. If ego gets in the way, or they're used to great successes and now they aren't coming, it can be very difficult to get them into the next phase of development and convince them of the need for the work. They might have to crash completely before they can start to build. Be there for them when they do, but try not to get caught in their destructive path on the way down.
The other bad side is that Naturals can be exploited and taken advantage of by shady dealers, over-enthusiastic fanatics, and con artists, used up and then thrown away when something better comes along. Don't do this to them - be fair to your creatives and compensate them properly, whether with money or trade goods of equal quality than what they give you. Strip-mining or clear cutting trees is not a long term sustainable strategy, and they both have nasty environmental pollution effects in addition to the goods they produce. Far better for the quality of the work to be long-term sustainable so as to avoid burnout and increase the yield.
Talent is a useful first step along the way. For those who are going to make it, though, behind the talent is a backstop of work, experience, and encouragement.
