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№ 2017.003 — Yale University — Yale College Class Day address
Theo Epstein
Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations
Visual speech map
Theo Epstein at Yale, 2017
A Class Day address about baseball, failure, patience, team culture, connection, and choosing heads-up leadership.
- 01 Old Campus
- 02 Cubs architect
- 03 Game Seven
- 04 Rain delay
- 05 108 years
- 06 Team culture
- 07 Heads up
- 08 Connection
Frame
Baseball becomes the speechs working language
Epstein opens with Yale jokes and then uses baseball as a practical vocabulary for failure, patience, culture, and communal meaning.
The address nods to campus change, student teams, residential college lore, and alumni self-mockery.
Baseball is described as entertainment that can still teach serious lessons about repeated failure.
One World Series game carries the whole argument instead of a list of generic advice.
Rebuild
A long drought requires a long plan
The Cubs 108-year wait and a painful rebuilding period make patience visible: progress can look like losing before it becomes durable.
The century-long championship gap gives the graduates a scale for inherited longing and delayed reward.
A five-year plan survives public doubt, bad seasons, and jokes about whether fans have enough time.
Young players are empowered to be bold, visible, playful, and fully themselves.
Rain Delay
The crisis reveals the culture already built
When Game Seven nearly collapses, the rain delay shows the team shoulder to shoulder instead of isolated at lockers assigning blame.
A 97 percent expectation falls into a tie game, forcing everyone to face sudden uncertainty.
Players gather around the struggling pitcher and turn panic into shared determination.
The meeting works because connection was already a habit before the weather stopped play.
Charge
Choose heads-up connection before the rain
The closing lesson asks graduates to stop living only by numbers, grades, and resumes, and to lead as real members of teams.
Leadership starts with noticing other people, embracing difference, and putting collective interests in view.
Rain-delay moments come to everyone; the choice to connect has to be made before crisis.
Winning becomes less about randomness and more about being part of something larger than the self.
Transcript
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Category: Athletics