A Baseball Mind

A quick way to get ahead as a baseball player is to simply have what I would describe as a baseball mind. To me, having a baseball mind is really as simple as just being inquisitive about the sport and looking into everything that’s available to help you succeed in the game that you’re spending so much time investing in.

I want you to imagine going up to the plate and striking out every single at-bat. During each at-bat, you swing and miss at all 3 pitches. What is your immediate thought when picturing yourself in this scenario? To me, it’s obvious: I need to figure out why this is happening to me so that I can change. Unfortunately, for most players, that’s not the case. Most players' response is to be angry, frustrated, or defeated, without any thought of why this keeps happening. Unfortunately for those players, baseball is not an emotional sport; it’s a very meticulous, mechanical, analytical sport that requires the intelligence to solve problems.

Maturity is definitely a piece of beginning to think this way, so my next question is, at what age does this become something that needs to start happening? I believe the sooner, the better. By the time little league comes to an end, or call it at the age of 13, the encouragement to become an inquisitive player should be pushed by both coaches and parents. This isn’t something that should be overwhelming or too much to ask of a young teenager. At this point, it’s likely that most players have been playing the game for around 5 years or more. The other guarantee in the sport is that the older you get, the more difficult the game becomes, leading to a much higher degree of failure.

Anytime I would have a tough game or began to struggle, my dad would ask me the same question, “Did you ask your coach what you could do differently?” Whether he knew it or not, when I think back on him asking me that question, it was the best response I could have gotten to help me develop the thinking of when something doesn’t work, don’t get upset; ask how to fix it.

Thankfully, I was playing for a coach who was a former Major Leaguer and seemingly always had the answers to my questions as a young ballplayer. This brings me to my last point I want to touch on.

Whether you’re a player reading this or the parent of a player, finding quality coaching should be the number one thing you’re searching for when playing on a team, especially early on in baseball. I’m not saying that the coach needs to be a pro or a former pro, but a coach that is teaching the game and encouraging this way of thinking rather than putting fun first or, god forbid, winning tournaments first. As I mentioned before, baseball gets more and more difficult the further on you play. Over the last decade of coaching, I have not seen one player who does not think this way outperform a player that does, not one. Unfortunately, at the high school level, it’s rare to have players that have this baseball mind, but each one that does has gone on to get better and better and inevitably gone on and played college baseball. As for the others, baseball is done with them come senior year of high school, whether they like it or not.

So, if you want a quick way to get ahead of the competition, start to think like a baseball player and start to develop your baseball mind.