When it comes to training for, and playing, baseball, is there a fine line between the obsession for greatness and self torturing yourself over a game that carries a tremendous amount of routine failure?
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Just to clarify the question. An example of something that I actually saw at a training facility:
Kid comes out of the cage after a round of BP and he's obviously agitated and angry about how it went. He's enraged.
Adult nearby - no idea if it was dad or a coach? - says "Relax. It's batting practice. It doesn't count for anything and nobody cares."
To this, the kid says "You obviously have no idea what you are talking about..."
Now, is this a good thing that the kid is striving for perfection and won't settle for anything less? Or, is it a bad thing because the kid is beating himself up after a bad round of BP and he's playing a game where you're going to fail most of the time? Or, is the line between these two takes so fine that it's hard to separate them?
Depends on the Kid.
The young man is striving for "attention".
Bob
Part of being mentally tough is being able to let mistakes go, let bad workouts go, and come back the next day with a fresh start. Part of helping a kid mature is to coach him with techniques so he can learn to let things go and move on (parents saying "Relax..." is often just that). In my experience the kind of anger you describe is not helpful in achieving greatness, but usually results in frustration and quitting.
This isn't unique to baseball. In all aspects of life you have to think about what you did, learn from the mistakes, then put it aside and move on. Not easy.
Bob nailed it. I've seen truly competitive kids who are frustrated with failure. I've also seen kids who respond that way because that is the way they think they should respond as a learned behavior from their dad or maybe a teammate. Most of the kids I see like this though don't have the mental toughness to move past it and their performance that day continues to decline.
There was a team a year younger in the same program my son was in when he was 11u. They were going up a kid throwing harder than they were used to. They k'd 12 times. Every single kid on the team cried when they struck out. I asked one of the dads about his kid and he said he never did it until he joined that team.
There is failure in sports. In baseball a successful hitter fails 70% of the time. It’s important to learn how to adjust and fix failure. Instead of having a hissy fit the kid should have asked a skilled observer what he’s doing wrong.
One if my son’s high school teammates kicked and threw equipment when he struck out. Even senior year he was still crying some of the time he struck out. His face would get red. He had a psycho killer look. I wasn’t sure the kid knew where he was in the moment. The coach had to occasionally bench him for his behavior. The kid got to major conference college baseball and had a stroke.
Back when the kid was ten I told the mother the kid had to understand there’s a lot of failure in baseball. He needed to learn to adjust and move on. She explained I didn’t understand how badly the kid wants to be the best.
It's spot on that it absolutely depends/varies from athlete to athlete, but like most things in life, it requires balance. Plain and simple. In Francis's example above, ideally you want the athlete to be somewhere between "enraged" and "it's batting practice. There's a push/pull dichotomy in play there and for good reasons. It needs to be there. The "enraged" side needs to be there to push for improvement/greatness and the "it's batting practice" side needs to be there because failure in the game is inescapable. Mr. Miyagi knew what he was talking about - balance. Now cue Joe Esposito's 1984 classic hit "You're the Best"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p44G0U4sLCE
No self-confidence = No line
FWIW while thinking about it for a moment, every kid that comes to my mind with this issue never really went that far with sports in general ???
Like someone said it depends on the kid. It is very possible to be highly driven, even "obsessed" with being as good as possible and also have the composure and maturity to process and deal with "failures" in a positive manner.
Baseball is a very tough sport if you are going to get enraged with failure because that energy doesn't translate as easily into a physical/adrenaline-based action: a crushing tackle, dunk or check. You have to be able to learn the lesson and channel it into something productive. I think the fine line is between having a competitive spirit and an unbeatable work ethic...and not being able to let a bad outing go and carrying into the next practice/inning/etc.
Another take on this which would be interested to debate...PTWoodson is 2/3 of the way through team interviews and a couple of teams have asked him: "Which would characterize you best. You hate to lose or you love to win?"
Thoughts?
“Which would characterize you best. You hate to lose or you love to win?"
Both. I will do in preparation for the game and in the game anything that is within the lines of fair play to succeed.
It’s easy to enjoy winning. It’s harder to move on from losing. But it’s important to believe in yourself and move on. But win or lose, tomorrow is a new challenge.
I can tell you as a former coach, the wins were great and easy to sleep that evening. The losses, different story. Replayed in the mind over and over, unless it was a blowout.
@RJM posted:There is failure in sports. In baseball a successful hitter fails 70% of the time. It’s important to learn how to adjust and fix failure. Instead of having a hissy fit the kid should have asked a skilled observer what he’s doing wrong.
One if my son’s high school teammates kicked and threw equipment when he struck out. Even senior year he was still crying some of the time he struck out. His face would get red. He had a psycho killer look. I wasn’t sure the kid knew where he was in the moment. The coach had to occasionally bench him for his behavior. The kid got to major conference college baseball and had a stroke.
Back when the kid was ten I told the mother the kid had to understand there’s a lot of failure in baseball. He needed to learn to adjust and move on. She explained I didn’t understand how badly the kid wants to be the best.
I had a similar conversation with a parent of a kid on my son's team. I told the parent that if the kid "wanted to be the best" then he should learn from his failure instead of having a meltdown.
@Francis7 posted:I can tell you as a former coach, the wins were great and easy to sleep that evening. The losses, different story. Replayed in the mind over and over, unless it was a blowout.
Losses caused by a bad call or poor execution are the worst. I can get over the losses pretty quickly if I know the other team just beat us.
So I'm thinking about "love to win" and "hate to lose". Which one starts with "love to play"?
In a double-header, if you lose the first game, do you still have energy for the second?
@Francis7 posted:When it comes to training for, and playing, baseball, is there a fine line between the obsession for greatness and self torturing yourself over a game that carries a tremendous amount of routine failure?
To this I would say: it is difficult to succeed at baseball when the game becomes torturous. To become really special it takes a combination of tools and “true love”.
@RJM posted:But it’s important to believe in yourself and move on. But win or lose, tomorrow is a new challenge.
During my son's senior year of HS when his team won the district for the first time in 25 years and eventually advanced to the state tournament, the one common theme was they all believed in themselves. A loss or a bad day was chalked up as a learning experience and tomorrow was a new day.
To Francis - we all know baseball is a game of failure where even when a hitter fails 70% of the time it's considered a good thing. Bob is correct - the player you described was looking for attention and not working on improving his swing.
One thing my son and I learned over time is it doesn't help to dwell on what went wrong on a bad day or a loss. It was better to let it go and prepare for the next game. Not always easy to do. Dwelling on it won't correct what went wrong and won't turn a loss into a win.
My son was called up to varsity midway through freshman year. His first couple of @ bats resulted in K's. After the last one during a conference game, he was not happy. At home later the wife came into our bedroom and said he was in his room crying. Later that night, like 2 am the wife found him in the back building hitting off the tee. In the next game, he hit a triple off the fence and finished the year with a .491 BA.
At travel ball, some of the parents complained about his attitude. There was a dad who hung around away from the others. He approached me during a game and stated how much his older son was like mine. Over the top serious. Stated how he finally broke him. Told me how the kid was never the same player and please don't do that to your son.
A few years ago I had the good fortune of playing in a Senior Tour pro-am with Lee Trevino. Super nice guy, and funny. The format was 3 amateur sponsors paired with a professional. One of the amateurs got off to a rough start and he lost his temper a couple times. After the second time, Lee said "man, you're not good enough to get mad at a shot like that". That's exactly what I think when I see a kid over-react to something bad that happens.
@Smitty28 posted:A few years ago I had the good fortune of playing in a Senior Tour pro-am with Lee Trevino. Super nice guy, and funny. The format was 3 amateur sponsors paired with a professional. One of the amateurs got off to a rough start and he lost his temper a couple times. After the second time, Lee said "man, you're not good enough to get mad at a shot like that". That's exactly what I think when I see a kid over-react to something bad that happens.
😂
One thing I consider when thinking about this is how does it impact the team. I’ve watched teams become completely deflated or distracted because a kid has a temper tantrum. I’ve watched kids get angry and quickly compose themselves and move on to have great AB’s later on. I’ve also watched them keep pissing and moaning and yell at teammates who were trying to lift them up to move on.
As I've stated before the kid played in a fall league ran by a guy who now holds the title of Director of Scouting. So one game this kid k'd. Looked at a FB right down the middle. He turns around and started to run back to the dugout. About half way there the scout yells, at the top of his voice "WTF are you doing? You just struck out, badly, and now you are running back to the dugout. Why? Aren't you embarrassed? Don't you care?" After the game the kids got a long talking to about how soft they were and how, in the eyes of people at the pro level, they were falling far behind players from south of our border.
I got a call from him towards the end of the kids senior year wanting to know if he drafted him would we accept. I said no. I didn't think the kid was mature enough to go live with grown men. Some of which from third world countries. He was like "if I've ever seen a kid ready to deal with minor league ball it's him". So I wonder who was right? Me, because I saw a kid who couldn't handle failure, or him because he saw a kid who wouldn't accept it.
It depends. There are succesful Athleten who Beat up on themselves but not everyone can do it.
Ideal is probably not reacting negatively at all but some athletes are negative and still successful.
The most important thing is that you can get over it quickly. Some can get negative and forget it quickly but others will dwell on it and those guys need to make sure those negative emotions don't come up at all or they won't get out of the spiral.
In tennis you can see that pretty well. Federer and Nadal never really get negative, at least not visibly with very rare exceptions.
Djokovic on the other hand does get negative but he still can get out of it and is similarly successful as federer and Nadal.
But there are others who get negative and keep that attitude the whole match when they experience failure.