Forty years apart, two World Series games taught me the same lesson from opposite directions: the biggest moment in a game - or a case, or a marketing campaign - doesn't wait for you to be paying attention, and it isn't over just because you're sure it is.
Start with the audit → Email Russell See ServicesOne night I wasn't watching when I should have been. The other, I was watching, and still got the ending wrong. Between them is basically everything I know about not declaring victory early.
The reason I was at either game in the first place was my father's client list, not my own doing. He sold insurance, and a good chunk of his book was Major League clubs and the people who ran them. The perk that came with it was a pass that got him into any regular-season game in any major league park, and enough of a relationship with the right people that playoffs and World Series tickets could get arranged when it mattered. I didn't grow up thinking of a stadium as a special place. I grew up thinking of it as somewhere my dad had a standing invitation - which is exactly why I was relaxed enough at both games to be in the bathroom for one and running my mouth during the other.
October 21, 1975 • Game 6, 12th inning
I was in the bathroom. Carlton Fisk hit the home run that's been replayed every October since - waving his arms down the left-field line, willing the ball fair off the foul pole, forcing a Game 7 - and I picked that exact half-inning to step away. Same building, same game, and I still found the one five-minute window to miss it.
What it taught me: the biggest break in a firm's marketing - the review that turns into ten more, the case that keeps the phone ringing for a year - runs on its own schedule, not yours. If you only pay attention when it's convenient, you miss the moment that mattered, the same way I missed Fisk.
October 25, 1986 • Game 6, bottom of the 10th
This time I was watching - and mocking every Mets fan in earshot while I did it. Boston led 5-3, two outs, nobody on, one strike from its first title since 1918. The Shea scoreboard actually flashed "Congratulations Boston Red Sox, 1986 World Champions." Then Carter singled, Mitchell singled, Knight singled, Bob Stanley's wild pitch tied it, and Mookie Wilson's roller went through Bill Buckner's legs.
What it taught me: I'd started celebrating before the game was actually decided. Firms do the same thing with a case that looks won, a lead that looks signed, or a competitor that looks beaten - and stop doing the work that was winning it.
I've stood next to defendants waiting for a verdict more times than I can count - one trial in Alaska, one case in Massachusetts, and eleven more in Rhode Island, all while I was still in law school, then more than two hundred bench trials in my first year alone in Virginia Beach (over three hundred across the full stint, January 1996 to October 1997), and twenty-one years after that back in Massachusetts district courts. You learn fast that a good afternoon of testimony doesn't mean anything until the verdict is actually read - a case that feels won at 4 p.m. can be lost by 4:15, and a case that feels lost in the moment can turn on one juror who was paying closer attention than you gave them credit for. Shea Stadium's scoreboard operator made that mistake in front of 55,000 people and a national television audience. I made a smaller version of it in the stands. Neither of us waited for the actual last out.
A verdict, a ballgame, and a marketing campaign are all decided by the same rule: not when you're sure, but when the outcome actually happens - and usually a beat later than you think.
Fisk taught me the other half of it. The biggest moments don't announce themselves in advance, and they don't wait for you to be at your seat. A law firm's marketing works the same way. The review that changes everything, the AI answer that starts recommending your firm by name, the referral that turns into your best client of the year - none of it happens on a schedule that's convenient for you to check. That's the actual argument for a system that's watching every day instead of a lawyer who checks in when there's time: not because any single day matters more than another, but because you can never tell in advance which one will.
Put the two together and you get how I actually run a marketing engagement: build something that's paying attention constantly, because the break can come at any time, and never let a client stop working a market because one good month made the job feel finished. The game isn't over when it feels over. It's over when it's over - and by then, the firms still swinging are the ones still ahead.
Game facts verified against the history of Fisk's home run (October 21, 1975, Fenway Park, 12th inning) and the account of Game 6, 1986 (October 25, 1986, Shea Stadium, bottom of the 10th, including the scoreboard's premature message).
For criminal defense lawyers who want a marketing system built to catch the moment that matters - and the discipline not to stop working the day something looks won.
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