We love traditions, so it was with particular delight that we reconvened here in St. Louis earlier this month, for our annual summer family party. The shindig celebrated a dozen years as a firm – and counting. In my career I haven’t ever been part of a group with better chemistry across all age groups. The team and family fellowship is one of the main reasons I still love what I do!

No doubt about it. All of us here at Hill Investment Group are one team, regardless of whether we work out of St. Louis, Houston or wherever our clients want us to be. That said, we’re not without our civic pride. Let’s just say some of us more loudly cheer on the Astros, while others of us favor the Cardinals.

What else makes our home bases special in their own rights? We thought it would be fun to launch a series to share some of our cities’ favorite features and interesting oddities. We’ll start with a few points of historical pride.

History

• St. Louis – Founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, named after the 13^th Century French King Louis IX. Our famed Arch commemorates our reputation as the “Gateway to the West,” from where Lewis & Clark launched their 1804 expedition.
• Houston – Found in 1836 by brothers John and Augustus Allen, named after former General Sam Houston, a commander in the Texas Revolution for independence from Mexico. We’re probably best known for our oil and aerospace industries.

Famous Folk

• Houston – Jeff Bezos, Beyoncé, George H.W. and George W. Bush, A.J. Foyt, Howard Hughes, Dan Rather, Renée Zellweger.
• St. Louis – Maya Angelou, Yogi Berra, George Foreman, Redd Foxx, Ulysses S. Grant, Kevin Kline, Charles Lindbergh.

 Musical Heritage

• St. Louis – An early mecca for St. Louis blues, jazz, R&B and ragtime – Chuck Berry, Sheryl Crow, Miles Davis, Scott Joplin, and Ike & Tina Turner have called St. Louis home.
• Houston – Houston also hosts musicians across every genre – and who often cross multiple styles. Notables include Yolanda Adams, Clint Black, Lyle Lovett, Kenny Rogers and ZZ Top.

On Location (movies filmed or set in our home towns)

• Houston – “Apollo 13,” “Boyhood,” “Independence Day,” “Rushmore,” “Selena,” “Urban Cowboy.”
• St. Louis – “Escape from New York,” “Larger Than Life,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation,” “White Palace.”

Want to know more? In a future installment, we’ll share some of our favorite things to see, do, eat and drink in our respective home towns! And, by the way, if you’re ever visiting us in either locale, please let us know. We’d love to give you a grand tour of our favorite hot spots.

When I’m not busy helping people build long-term wealth via evidence-based investing, in my daydreams, I’m a starting pitcher in the major leagues.

Admittedly, if my dreams ever come true, I’ll probably throw out my shoulder on the third pitch, after giving up a couple of home runs. But besides that technicality, there actually are a number of similarities between my real day job and my fantasy career. I know this, because the Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow happens to be a fan of Matt Hall’s Odds On book. He even wrote an endorsement for the book, and he has stayed in touch with us ever since.

As we’ve covered before, author Michael Lewis published his now-iconic book Moneyball in 2003. Both the book and the award-winning motion picture showcase how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane employed empirical evidence over expert opinion, studied patience over rapid reaction, and cost control over splashy spending to take his underdog team in a dramatically new direction on a shoestring budget.

Sounds a lot like what we aim to do for investors, doesn’t it? But a happy Hollywood ending is one thing. Can the strategy really work over time in baseball, or was it a sensational flash in the pan?

That’s where additional data points from Luhnow come in, when he chose to take Beane’s analytical approach one step further with “extreme Moneyball,” as described in this 2014 Bloomberg piece. Similar to the A’s, the Astros were underperforming at the time – big time. They literally had the worst record in baseball EVER during the first two years of Luhnow’s tenure.

Then came his fresh, evidence-based approach. The Astros made the American League playoffs in 2015 and, as I draft this piece, this recent Wall Street Journal piece describes Luhnow’s data-driven shift to maintain the team’s home run averages while reducing its strike-outs. The results so far? The WSJ reports: “More than 40% of the way through the season, the Astros own the best record in the majors, blitzing the competition with a lineup that defies all logic.”

Well, not all logic.  The article also describes Luhnow as the “architect of perhaps the sport’s most data-driven organization.”

If you ask me, that probably explains it. Will the Astros take their first World Series in their 55-year history? Either way, come what may, I look forward to seeing what they have in store for 2017!