What Does Better Management, Tennis, Golf, and Illegal Baseball Pitches Have In Common?
Frederick Winslow Taylor, of course!
Fred Taylor was about to get a good butt-kicking. It was his first real job and the opinionated young engineer just didn’t like the way the plant was being operated. Following an economic recession, he had taken a job as an apprentice, then clerk, a machinist, and then had advanced to foreman. However, in those days it was up to the machinists and their foreman to determine how much work could be done.
“I am now working on the side of management, he proclaimed when asked to slow the work quota. “I propose to do whatever I can do get a fair day’s work.” By the young Taylor’s admission, this set off a war. Threats grew. Taylor moved away from the regular neighborhoods from fear “his wife would have been abused and his children stoned.” He was advised by workers to avoid walking home by a deserted area near the railroad tracks or risk his own life being taken.
“A display of timidity is apt to increase rather than decrease the risk,” wrote Taylor. For three years, he intentionally walked home unarmed every night, right up to the railroad track. “I never would carry any weapon of any kind,” explained Taylor. “I told them they could shoot and be damned”
“The fact is that the more attractive qualities of good manners, education, and even special training and skill, which are more apparent on the surface, count for less in an executive position than the grit, determination and bulldog endurance and tenacity that knows no defeat and comes up smiling to be knocked down over and over again.” — Frederick Taylor, Shop Management
This son of working parents would not be intimidated by anything. The father of scientific management, Taylor would leave his mark on sports, society, and politics. Brilliant, brash, and extremely creative, Frederick Winslow Taylor would have been a great Medium writer too — in multiple genres.
Tennis
Taylor won the first tennis doubles US National Championships (later the US Open) while he was trying to avoid getting his butt kicked by the machinists at the Midvale plant. He was 25 years old and working on a graduate degree in engineering, too. He won the tournament with his own invention, a spoon-handled tennis racket, that would patent a few years later.
Tennis rules for rackets were vague at the time. And while the rules and the standards related to rackets would become formalized in this period, Taylor was as creative in the sports he played as he was in industrial manufacturing. Taylor looked for the one best way to do all things. His spoon-handled racket would not stand the test of time, but the teardrop and oval rackets heads he also experimented with are the norms today. Taylor would also patent a new type of tennis net like the ones we use today. He sold the patent to the infant sporting goods company of A.G. Spalding.
Golf
Tennis and baseball were Taylor’s early passions. Golf became his obsession. He finished fourth in golf at the Olympic Games at the age of 44. At that time, Taylor had also become the best-best paid management consultant in the world, the holder of more than a dozen patents, and a person sought by Progressive Era reformers trying to find the single best way to operate society.
Taylor basked in the reputational limelight. Many said he abused it by taking inordinate sums of money. Few doubted Taylor’s single biggest focus for the rest of his life was creating better golf clubs and growing better putting greens.
He patented a split-shafted putter that had some promise but was banned by the US Golf Association. His patent for improving the heads of golf clubs was a precursor to some of the features in modern clubs. His attempt to develop a longer, more efficient driver was also 100 years ahead of its time. And of course. the improvements he made in designing and fabricating better club shafts were significant.
Taylor also was obsessed with growing better grass and building better greens. He was the first to develop a special earth mix specific to the greens that would improve the consistency of the roll of the ball and allow for better grass to grow faster. Taylor was more right than wrong about his assertion that the best grass was a blend of creeping bentgrass and red fescue. However, agronomists rather quickly concluded that his “best grass” and “best soil” were not best together.
In the end, Taylor was not an agronomist, or a biologist, and not much of a golfer. His two-day score at the US Olympics averaged 90. He reportedly improved his handicap to 8, although many golfers refused to play with him because he experimented with unorthodox swing mechanics and clubs. There was a good reason that he was obsessed with putters, drivers, and putting surfaces. With that said, his reputation alone catapulted his ideas to change the way golf courses in the United States were built.
Baseball
Taylor had a passion for baseball that is worth mentioning too. The myth is that Taylor created the overhand pitching motion while pitching in college. There is little doubt that Taylor understood physics-related aspects such as ball spin, trajectory, and speed. And little doubt from his future journeys in tennis and golf that he would push to the edge of the rules with his creativity and invention. While there are accounts that Taylor could spin a ball to go almost sideways, his pitches came regularly from below the shoulder (as was the norm in that day). The myth was both created and debunked long after his death.
Management
Few of us have a philosophy, and a movement, attributed to us. Taylor did, and it prevails in many aspects of life today. Taylorism can be approximately summarized as finding the most efficient way to do something. The whole field of Management Science is rooted in it, as are generations of business schools and management consultants. As a political and social movement, The Progressive Movement embraced many of Taylor’s observations — with some good and much bad — but it is wrong to say that Taylor was the father of the Progressive Movement (another story for another day).
“Men are not born equal, and any attempt to make them so is contrary to nature’s laws and will fail.” — Frederick Taylor, Shop Management
Taylor spent the last 15 years of his life making money from his reputation and obsessed with the golf course. His thoughts inspired great movements, but he was obsessed with sport.
Thinking About It
The father of scientific management, Taylor left his mark on sports, society, and politics. Brilliant, brash, and extremely creative, it would have been fun to spend a little time with him (although maybe not while he was experimenting with golf clubs and swing mechanics). Frederick Winslow Taylor would have been a great Medium writer too — in multiple genres.
