“There’s no crying in baseball!” That is a famous line from the 1992 movie titled, A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall. The famous words were shouted by down-on-his-luck Chicago Cubs star Jimmy Dugan, who coaches the Rockford Peaches Baseball Team, a role played by famous actor Tom Hanks. In the movie, Jimmy Dugan, a fallen formerly great baseball player was given a last chance to pull himself out of his drunken despair by coaching a women’s baseball team. The team was formed to bring baseball back as an entertaining pastime during World War II.


Of course, there were challenges and obstacles to this all- female league. The women were recruited from varied walks and stations in life, and the concept of a female league steadily faced cancelation due to poor game attendance. The coach the Peaches were given was not at the top of his game and the team appeared destined for failure barring a miracle. The miracle was the women and their willingness to use stunts and sacrifice to sell the game. The women’s shenanigans included one doing splits while catching a ball. Those splits caused photographers to snap pictures which eventually ended up on the front page of newspapers. Those papers increased attendance at the games and made the whole endeavor a success.


The movie is inspirational, and the messages found throughout the movie are a perfect segway for discussion on obstacles in managing condominium associations. In this scenario, the league is the full complement of buildings that are professionally managed by licensed community managers. The teams are the various property management firms and the supporting service partners used in the league such as bankers, structural engineers, plumbers, auditors, et all. The players are the individual community managers, the ones who run the day-to-day operations of the association, who supervise, organize, interact with owners, build relationships with boards, forecast the annual community budget while trying to get it all right, much like a batter trying to hit the right ball out of the park. The games are the recurring events the community faces in its annual lifecycle. For example, baseball begins at spring training and ends with the World Series. Community Management starts with the new board and ends with the election of the next board.


Community associations and their boards function as a team with the community manager performing as the coach. Like the baseball team coach, for communities, when obstacles present themselves, the manager must find successful ways to navigate the community around them and get back on track.


What are obstacles to managing community associations? A surprising


obstacle is PERSONALITIES. The selfish personality describes those folks who want to see their own agenda followed by the association board. An example of this is someone who wants to change the landscaping of the community. The ABC Condominium association board voted to replace the landscaping of a


community with a rock garden. The reason for the change was prompted by the poor makeup of the soil in the planters and how inadequate the soil performed when trying to grow grass or flowers. The board put a committee together to learn the full impact of replacing flowers with seasonal planting each year. The committee found due to the lack of discretionary funds in the budget for this annual planting, a rock garden could be realized as a source of savings. A nice garden was proposed by a reasonable company with experience in landscape rock design, that design was put on a display board for everyone to see in the common area and owners could vote yes or no to the design. The design was approved overwhelmingly and planted that summer.


However, one homeowner loves flowers and was determined to see flowers returned and rid the community of what they thought was an unattractive rock garden. The flower loving homeowner continually delayed important discussions at later board meetings with repeated requests to return the flowers, simply not accepting the actions of the board nor all the other committee members. The desire to see their own design at any cost was selfish. The movie highlights a similar scenario when the talent scout was seeking players and settled on Dottie. Kit, Dottie’s younger sister, was jealous and she wanted to play, so Dottie told the scout she would play only if her younger sister could also play. Because they wanted Dottie on the team, Kit was allowed to join. It didn’t matter to Kit that Dottie didn’t really want to join the team, that she was happy at home with their parents. Kit overlooked Dottie’s desires for her own selfishness. Eventually, both girls would not be able to stay on the same team and Kit was traded to the Racine Belles. Eventually, that one endless request every meeting for the board to rescind the rock garden and replant the flowers would be traded for another unit owner’s pet peeve or personal agenda.


Another personality in condominium associations presenting obstacles is the self-centered and lonely owner. These are owners who run for the board or a committee for social activity whether that activity is drama caused by arguing, snappy condemning tones used to intimidate and generate discord, or the heightened emotionally charged discussions caused by conflict itself. These situations are just disagreements for some, but entertainment for others. Overcoming these strong personality types and keeping order during meetings can present its own obstacles to conducting the business of the board. Whether the board allows the interruptions and prematurely ends the meeting or finds another means of


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