On dropping the ball: much like baseball, insurance is a game best played with professionalism, a team mentality and a winning spirit.

A little boy played in his first baseball game and his father, unable to attend, couldn't wait to get home and see how it went. "So, how did you do, son?" he asked.

"You'll never believe it!" the boy told his father. "I was responsible for the winning run!"

"Really!" said the proud father. "How'd you do that?"

"I dropped the ball!" the boy exclaimed.

Insurance and baseball share a lot of the same traits. Many times in our game of insurance, we also have "dropped the ball," and at other times, in the bottom of the ninth with the game tied, we have hit a home rtm to win it for the team.

There are rules to learn and signs to watch for. Numerous long, hard days of boredom are spent in the batting cage, or in our case, doing our jobs each day. Most of the time with insurance, just like in baseball, you have to move from the minor leagues up to the majors.

Insurance and baseball are about staying on top of your game, digging deeper to make the play or the sale, keeping the pressure on yourself, looking for an assist from your teammates, paying attention to your coach, celebrating like a professional when your team wins and learning to lose with grace.

Insurance teaches about preparation before the game. In sports, you have to prepare by stretching those usually sedentary muscles before game time. In the insurance game, you have to stretch your brain and your experience to meet the ever-changing challenges of the industry.

In athletics, the emphasis is on practice, training, team effort and knowing about fairness. Likewise, insurance is made up of all of these traits, but especially hard work and sportsmanship.

At the forefront of any successful player or employee are discipline and hard work. These traits lead to success in the insurance and sporting worlds. There really are natural athletes, but for most of us that is not the case. Hank Greenberg--no, not that Hank Greenberg, but the Detroit Tigers first baseman of the late 1930s--made hard work and discipline his daily way. Though hardly a natural (he was massive, gawky and clumsy), he had tremendous strength and an obsessive work ethic.

Greenberg would take hours of extra batting and fielding practice. He showed up early every day and stayed late each night. He rarely complained and always was asking other players to teach him about their successes. It paid off, as he was twice named American League Most Valuable Player, and led the league in home runs and runs batted in four times. In 1956, he became the first Jewish player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite playing only nine full seasons in the major leagues.

The same holds true for the players in the insurance industry. We have to work at something in order to achieve results. It's an astonishing effort to try to get really good at something, whether underwriting, claims, risk control or sales.

Sports and insurance offer the opportunity to become better and to become the best in our given professions. Examples could be setting a new sales record, reducing errors or claims, increasing client satisfaction by 20%, or even getting the correct insurance policy received within nine months (O.K., so there are some dreams not attainable). But there never is an end to what we can do to better ourselves and our careers. It just takes hard work and discipline.

The famous sportswriter Heywood Hale Brown once said, "Sports do not build character. They reveal it." This holds true in our industry as well. Good sportsmanship is conforming to the hales of the game, or in our case, the rules of the industry.

Unfortunately, the media seem to enjoy showing the blatant and occasional incivility that occurs on the baseball field as well as in our Insurance world. But on the whole, 99% of the players in insurance and baseball follow the rules of the game, respect the calls of the umpires and treat the fans/clients and their fellow players with respect and dignity.

Good sportsmanship is a habit and an attitude. It can have an encouraging influence on all those around you. As a famous anonymous saying goes, "Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really appreciated." That quote also works for insurance.

Whether as a broker, an agent, an underwriter or a risk management professional, the world of insurance has a lot in common with America's pastime: hard work and sportsmanship.

Lance Ewing, a Best's Review columnist, is vice president, Risk Management, for Harrah's Entertainment. He can be reached at [e-mail].