Step Up To The Plate

Barry Zito: You Need To Shake Yourself

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All that money and Zito can't get out of his funk.

Barry Zito gave up the goods again last night against the Mets and the Giants couldn't recover, despite a late inning rally which produced 3 runs in the bottom of the ninth.  Pedro comes off the DL, gets two knocks and beats Zito. This team is young, definitely more fun to watch then last year and has some character now that there isn't the daily circus of Barry Bonds to deal with. They continue to make dumb mistakes (Ray Durham last night booted a double play ball which led to 2 runs) and show their youth. Just think where they would be if Zito had shown up this year...

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Practice Doesn't Make Perfect, Perfect Practice Does

Hitting a baseball purely is an amazing feeling, but hard to do consistently. One difficult thing about hitting is that your swing can change. Just like that.  Maybe you are pulling off the ball a touch (meaning: leading too much with your shoulder), maybe your swing is too long.  This can happen in a blink of an eye. You could be 20 for your last 25 and boom - your swing goes away. Reading a post by Steve Rubel reminded me how important it was playing baseball (and in business) having "perfect practice" so you could minimize the times your swing went bad & have the solid daily habits to quickly correct. Having a mentor teach you how to do this makes all the difference.

Become An Expert With The Power Of Deliberate Practice

During my time with the Phillies organization, my mentor was Billy DeMars. Aside from Bill Robinson, my coach while I was in Reading, Billy was the only guy who could help me improve my swing. The rest of the coaches were "cosmetic" coaches that could point out the obvious in what you were doing wrong without telling you ANYTHING on how to correct it.  Billy's routine was having you hit off the tee OR throwing soft-toss. Every swing you would take, Billy would make a comment either telling you what you did wrong, or that you were perfect. More times than not (especially the first few years) he would find something wrong in your swing. Billy preached the importance of being a perfectionist both when you stepped up to the plate and while you were practicing in the cage. While I was living in Clearwater, Florida during one off season, Billy would meet me at the Spring Training Complex and have me hit hundreds of baseballs until my hands bled. (So that Office episode was especially funny to me.) He literally broke down each aspect of the "perfect swing" so that I developed consistency. Changing my swing to be more consistent must have taken over a ten thousand swings.  Here are five things I learned:

The Mitchell Report

Mitchell Report
Summary of George Mitchell's comprehensive investigative report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball. Includes links to all related stories.

Click here for the PDF of the Mitchell Report.

Click here for the PDF of the Clemens Report.

Zito Gets Demoted

San Francisco- For $126 million, you expect more . That is an understatement. Zito's demise show how fragile the confidence is  for baseball players. Slumps are a part of baseball.  With Zito, i am surprised that he hasn't had the ability to pull himself out of this funk. Something integral to being a successful baseball player is having a rock solid routine. This routine keeps in line your physical efforts as well as your mental efforts. Do you remember how anal Wade Boggs was with his routine? Far too often, players don't put any training into the mental side and then when struggle it all falls apart. I don't know what Barry Zito's problem is, but I do see a ton of pretty distrubing symptoms for such a highly paid player.

1. He is pitching behind.
2. He isn't finishing his breaking pitches...so they hang. ("You hang it, they bang it.)
3. His team is getting that "here we go again" look so their defense has sucked.
4. His focus is lost.

Let's hope that Barry's move to the bullpen gets him focus, confidence in his mechanics and some perspective so he can earn his keep.

Curt Schilling and Authenticity

I give Curt major props on his authenticity. Generally Curt Schilling gets a strong reaction from baseball fans. Love him or hate him, keep him or leave him, in Boston or New York, fans have a strong opinion. He tells it as he sees it. 

Curt does one of the best jobs in professional sports using his blog to  speak his mind in an authentic straighforward manner.  While voicing his opinion, he doesn't use marketing drivel or any media-trained language that Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh was quick to pick up in Bull Durham.

"A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.  (Bull Durham, 1998)

I remember being in spring training prior to playing for the Reading Phillies when Schilling came in with Paul "The Pope" Owens and Bill Giles to speak to the hundreds of minor leaguers. Schilling was very outspoken: "be yourself." Schilling went on to speak passionately (in a way only Curt Schilling could speak) to the hundreds of ball players telling us to be true to who we are. Not to change our hair, our name, our personality, our game to either try to fit in or to try to stand out. "We have seen it all..." he said. 15 years later, the same Curt Schilling writes on his blog. 

Yesterday's post:

I’m 41, injured and rehabbing, and the personal history involved. To “GO” somewhere in this game takes two parties, and I would think it would be a safe bet that the Yankees, and their fans, will manage just fine without me ever donning pinstripes.

What if all players took Curt's lead and shared their thoughts with their fans through a blog? (Sure, there would be an ensuing PR nightmare for some players, but big leaguers are in the big leagues because they can make quick adjustments!) What if they then linked to the hundred's of fan sites on MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites? They will.