Unexpected Leadership Lessons from the Drunk Guy at the Ballpark

Recently I attended a Major League Baseball game in Milwaukee, where the home town Brewers were playing the Toronto Blue Jays. I was excited to take another step on my lifetime bucket list of MLB stadiums, this being my 15th stadium among the existing 30.

Traveling always brings surprises. In this case, the foremost surprise was getting a real lesson in leadership from a drunk guy who just wanted to start the wave.

Our seats were in the bleachers in fair territory beyond the left field fence. Behind us were four rows or so of people who appeared to be friends and family members. They had arrived at the stadium in a bus. On this bus, alcohol had been offered, and the offer had been generously accepted. Their conversation was loud and unrelated to baseball. Mostly they ranged from topics including how drunk they were, to penis jokes, to how much drunker they were going to get when they got back on the bus.

For a while the conversation that I was most invested in was the one in the row behind me. Here, a group of people were urging the man directly behind me to eat more. They were trying to make him vomit. I turned around and quietly offered him my support for his restraint.

If the seats did not offer decent company, they did provide a decent view of the full…