In baseball, the act of hitting is singular. You step up to the plate, work your count, and either you get on base or head back to the dugout. The next person in line heads up after you, works their own count, either gets on base or heads back to the dugout.
If you’re pitching in a baseball game, however, there’s a very legitimate chance that everything goes awry. Sure, there’s still only an 25% chance that the batter hits the ball, considering they only have an 0.4 seconds to react. But how often do you see zero runs in a game?
Never. It’s quite literally impossible. And when those runs come in, when the batters start timing themselves up with your arm, it’s time to turn to the bullpen. There’s always a next man up, ready to run in, take your ball, and make the same — if not better — effort that you did. And if he fails, someone else is ready to go right behind him.
There’s a rhythm to the bullpen theory. One person begins, working their stuff on the mound, and when they’ve built a sufficient amount, another person comes to continue building upon their work. In a way, it’s a never-ending cycle of succession and fulfillment. The pitcher who gets pulled isn’t necessarily failing — they’re just a part of the natural rhythm of the game.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT, it was immediately deemed revolutionary, despite Meta’s chief AI scientist saying it wasn’t so. It very quickly democratized access to artificial intelligence, and made life undoubtedly simpler for millions of people.
It has undoubtedly, also, made life much more stressful for millions of people. Over a quarter of all Americans use it on a daily basis. Jump to how many have used it over the past six months, and that number skyrockets to over two-thirds. Early-career fields are suffering as executives have found a more efficient, cost-effective solution to their administrative problems. In a way, new pitchers are warming up in record numbers.
Highlighting technology’s innovations without emphasizing its real-life, groundroots impact would be devastating. Behind every innovation that makes life simpler for millions is someone staring at their skillset like it's a relic from another era. The bullpen isn't just about baseball or tech companies trading places in the market. It's about the person who built their identity around being indispensable, only to discover that indispensability was always temporary.
But that’s just the part of being in the bullpen: getting displaced is routine, but the impact it has on personal lives is very real. Getting jumped by another innovation, getting pulled from the game is a rhythm that’s been playing out long before AI and will continue long after it.
Author Rebecca Kuang stated that each time she does publicity on one of her novels, it’s as if she’s returning to a past version of herself that she’s “already grown out of.” Developments in writing — as with technology, politics, etc. — are all fluctuating. To remain one version of yourself, one pitcher throughout the whole game, is to accept stagnancy when it’s not necessary.
But to be in the bullpen, to move on from that stagnancy is not to forget that you were once in the game at all. The bullpen asks something different of us than the mound does. It asks us to hold our readiness and our obsolescence in the same breath. To love the thing that will eventually move on without us. We, as Kuang did, can return to past versions of ourselves and not try to live there. We can know the weight of the ball before we hand it over. We can understand the game was never really about us.
This, is grace.