quote:I actually believe that one of the biggest and least appreciated skills is an ability to adapt and grow and grind as a competitor and a player...regardless of situation, of current playing time....It is pretty easy to work hard and have the confidence to overcome when you have a been a big fish in a small pond for your whole life, but stepping onto a college field is a different animal altogether...everybody can play, everybody was a superstar somewhere...everybody has had smoke blown up their backside by the coaches in recruiting...everybody believes they are the one. The question is how long do you hold on emotionally, mentally, not being a superstar and keep plugging...when for the first time in your life you are really stuggling on the field and off? Can you overcome?
O'44, your comments are an amazingly accurate description of the mental transition that challenges players at every step once they are beyond HS.
Whether the challenge is college baseball, Milb, or college then Milb, those mental challenges are the one constant. They can, frankly, in our experience, exhilarate some and move/motivate them to higher levels while proving to deflate others to a point of being stopped and ineffective.
And the challenges change from year to year. The number of sophomores who step up and truly excel is probably about the same as the number who didn't fully appreciate there would be a freshman coming in to challenge them for innings, or that better players from JC's would be recruited in behind them.
I have often thought that while most players are so much better off with college as their choice coming out of HS, the ideal might be to have one year of Milb as a tutorial or internship, and then return to college.
Milb truly is a learning experience as player, but playing a full season of Milb is even more important in terms of appreciating and managing the mental aspects of being a baseball player, getting better, understanding what is expected of you and doing what is needed to meet and exceed those expectations, all combined with succeeding against the highest level of competition even within your own organization.