Read Time: 4 minutes
As another baseball season begins, it's the perfect time to explore an unexpected parallel between America's pastime and the world of IT and cybersecurity.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Ask ten baseball fans to identify the most challenging position in the sport, and you'll receive at least five or six different answers—possibly ten. However, the toughest job in baseball belongs to the closer, though not for the most obvious reasons.
Certainly, closers enter games under intense pressure, facing opposing teams' best pinch hitters who are mentally locked in, with minimal margin for error. After all, managers don't deploy closers when leading by six runs. But the most compelling reason closers face baseball's most difficult role is this fundamental reality: as a closer, you cannot win—you can only lose.
Your team has battled for eight innings, managing to score one or two more runs than their opponent. Your job is straightforward: secure three outs without losing the lead. Simply put: don't mess it up. Any position where failure generates one hundred times more attention than success represents an exceptionally challenging and mentally taxing responsibility.
This dynamic perfectly mirrors the world of IT and cybersecurity professionals. Consider these scenarios:
Have you ever emailed your company's IT team at day's end to thank them for seamless computer performance, network reliability, and flawless application functionality? How often does the CEO call the CISO to congratulate them on another breach-free week? Does the IT team receive special recognition at quarterly company meetings for successfully patching 100 critical vulnerabilities?
The probability of any of these occurring hovers near zero.
When Things Go Wrong
Conversely, when one out of 100 applied patches disrupts accounting systems for an hour, how quickly does the first angry communication reach the IT team? The response time typically measures in minutes, not hours. Similarly, CISOs only capture Board attention when defending budgets—often characterized as cost centers or necessary evils—or responding to actual breaches.
Interestingly, everyone suddenly prioritizes cybersecurity immediately after receiving ransomware demands.
This mirrors the closer experience precisely. When the Orioles win a game (living in Baltimore, I've endured countless jokes), sports writers dedicate ten paragraphs to player heroics, concluding with: "...and closer Felix Bautista worked a perfect ninth to secure the save."
However, if Felix surrenders the lead in the ninth inning, headlines emphasize the blown save while 80% of the article focuses on that single disappointing performance.
IT and cybersecurity professionals, like baseball closers, become the story's protagonist only during failures. Success remains expected and, frankly, unappreciated. Maintaining this standard day after day proves extraordinarily challenging.
Modern platforms like IT Agent (formerly TrackD) aim to change this dynamic by providing vulnerability remediation teams with data-driven insights that reduce the risk of those high-visibility failures, enabling more confident patching decisions that protect both systems and professional reputations.
For baseball fans wondering about my analogy's obvious flaw: elite Major League closers earn approximately $20 million annually. Perhaps baseball closers and IT/cybersecurity professionals aren't entirely comparable after all.
IT professionals face significantly more challenging circumstances with substantially different compensation structures. They operate under similar pressure dynamics but with fewer financial rewards and often less organizational recognition for their critical contributions.
The comparison reveals an important truth about organizational culture and recognition patterns. Both closers and IT professionals operate in environments where perfection is expected and mistakes are magnified. However, while closers enjoy substantial financial compensation and periodic recognition for their specialized skills, IT professionals often struggle for basic acknowledgment of their daily contributions to organizational success.
Addressing this recognition gap requires fundamental cultural shifts in how organizations view and value IT and cybersecurity contributions. Success stories deserve celebration, not just crisis responses.
Baseball teaches us that even the most skilled closers occasionally blow saves—it's an inherent part of the role. Similarly, IT professionals will occasionally face system disruptions or security incidents despite their best efforts.
The measure of both positions lies not in perfect records, but in consistent performance under pressure and the ability to learn from setbacks while maintaining professional excellence.
Understanding the pressures faced by IT and cybersecurity professionals helps organizations create more supportive environments that recognize daily contributions while building resilience for inevitable challenges.
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