Chalk Talk (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

Talent alone does not create success. There’s more to success than just the physical part of the game. In sports there are two components for performing: the physical and the non-physical. Now, the physical component is easy to explain. In baseball it’s the mechanics of swinging a bat. In football it’s the quarterback’s footwork. In basketball it’s the crossover dribble to get by a defender. In other words it’s how you control your body to complete the task at hand.

Then there is the non-physical component, which is comprised of two distinct categories: mental and emotional. The mental category is your general sports knowledge. In the baseball world it’s called a player’s baseball IQ, for example, knowing where to be defensively like backing up or knowing which base to throw to or understanding game situations and the importance of pitch counts, etc. There are plenty of “handbook”- type publications that can help with that.

Then there is the emotional category—your mindset. This part of the non-physical component is why I state, “Talent alone does not create success.” Your mindset is the collection of thoughts and beliefs that shape what you think and how you feel—your emotions and attitude—which in turn have an effect on what you do physically—or don’t do.

When I ask players if they are willing to give 100 percent of their efforts in their physical development, I get a resounding “YES!” And when I ask what percentage they think their mental attitude plays in their performance, the answers I get are usually in the 20 to 30 percent range. So there is some thought process concerning the role it plays. But the players’ faces are most interesting when my follow-up question is “Knowing it’s important, how much time can you honestly say you spend working on your mental game?” And you should see their faces when I ask, “As a pitcher or a hitter how successful will you be if you only bring 70 to 80 percent of your abilities to the mound or plate?”

I have been coaching youth baseball for over thirty years, twenty-four at the high school level, so I have worked with a tremendous number of players. And obviously these players possessed a wide range of abilities. While there was disparity in their abilities, they all had one thing in common—the desire to work on improving their physical abilities, especially their hitting. For example, unless he was injured, I don’t think I can ever remember a player telling me at practice that he didn’t want to take his “hacks.”

But it’s been my experience that the most difficult instructional component within the framework of coaching is convincing players of the integral part the non-physical—the emotional—part of their game plays in their development. When asked what part they think their mental part plays, they give the answer they think the coach wants to hear. So they will acknowledge the importance of the mindset, but it’s hard to get them to commit to it.

This is a mistake because it’s the difference between being a fair player and a good player or a good player and a great player. Or as Tom Seaver, ex NY Mets pitcher, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game, states, “The difference between the physical abilities of the players in the Major Leagues is not that great and the difference between the teams is not that great. So what it comes down to is that the dividing factor between the team that wins and the one that loses is the mental attitude…the mental alertness that keeps them from making mental mistakes. That’s the…intangible.” In other words, he is saying that to be successful you have to understand and believe that THE GAME IS PLAYED FROM THE NECK UP.

One reason why it’s so difficult to get young players to grasp the importance of the mindset is that it’s not measurable. It’s objective. If I work on a batter’s mechanics and the player’s batting average goes from .250 to .300, that’s objective—and measurable. But if I get that same player to focus on his mental game and his batting average goes from .250 to .300, there’s no way to determine if it went up because of the player’s mind improvement or his physical improvement or a little bit of both. It’s subjective.

Another reason is that change does not happen overnight—it needs time. We live in a microwave society, so it doesn’t take long for our patience to run out. When a player makes a change in his hitting mechanics, he works on it at practice but goes 0 for 10 in the next three games. Because he doesn’t experience immediate results, he reverts back to the “old way.” It doesn’t matter if it’s physical or mental—when an attempt at changing is made, if there aren’t immediate results, people take the easy route. They fall back to what they did in the past—which was nothing.

Then we have what I refer to as the fear of the unknown. Players and in some cases coaches don’t know what they can do regarding learning or teaching aspects of the mental side. “How do I get started? What should I discuss?” There are plenty of sports psychology books out there filled with suggestions. But that increases the uncertainty. “What books should I buy? Which one is considered the best one for my sport?” Then there’s fear of incompetence. “What if I don’t comprehend the 150-plus pages of scientific babble? I don’t want to feel stupid! How do I teach it?”

There’s also a fear of change. In general, no one likes change. We are creatures of habit. We are comfortable with our routine, so we have difficulty incorporating changes no matter how beneficial they may seem. It’s different. It’s the unknown. “I’ve never done it before, so why should I do it now?” “It’s extra work.” “Is the reward worth the effort?”

In the end it feels overwhelming. So players and coaches spend minimal or no time and effort on changing their approach in their daily process of developing their game. It’s simply easier not to do it. Or as management consultant Rosabeth Kanter writes in an issue of the Harvard Business Review, “People will often prefer to remain mired…than to head to the unknown.” This reminds me of the old expression “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Yes, players will tell you that spending time on their mental game is important and they will tell you they do or will work on it, but the reality is they don’t “walk the talk.” It’s easy to say but hard to do, especially for the young players who have experienced success and are considered some of the better players, maybe the stars, in their minds, on top of their game. What they don’t realize is that they have been on top because of their raw ability, their athleticism, and in some cases the level of competition they have faced.

But at some point this failure to recognize the importance of the mental game will catch up to them. It could happen at any time—during play-off games or while playing against elite fall teams or when they go up a level, like high school or college, and when they begin competing against players of equal ability. While some players will realize they need more than just natural abilities, many won’t. While some will change their approach to their game, many won’t. Remember, baseball is a game of adversity, and how you handle it will define you as a player and a person. So the real question is how do you—will you—handle the adversity?

This book is my attempt to convince you that instead of paying lip service concerning your mental game, buy into it. Don’t just acknowledge it, but commit to it and have patience. Now to be clear, technically, this is not a how-to book. Instead it’s a collection of “chalk talk” sessions.

“Chalk talk” refers to a talk or lecture in which the speaker uses a chalkboard to convey some thoughts or an idea. So the speaker lists points and/or issues on the chalkboard, discusses them, and invokes participation from the audience. In other words the speaker gets the audience to consider the point and/or issue he or she is trying to convey.

The high school team I coached was located in a cold weather state, so there were a lot of times, especially early in the season, when we were forced to go inside. And because it was a small school the space and time allocation to the baseball team was limited. So to overcome that problem, prior to our scheduled starting time, we would go to a classroom. Whenever we did this, because we used the chalkboard, we referred to it as having a chalk talk. Even when we eventually did go outside, we still started each practice with a chalk talk—minus the chalkboard. The players knew that this was when the coaching staff was going to “get into their heads” and work on the mental and emotional side of their development.

That’s where the title of the book comes from. The book is a collection of the written version of the chalk talks. The various articles represent my thoughts pertaining to the makeup of a player’s mindset like attitude, emotions, confidence, etc. The themes came from specific sports incidents, articles from sports subscriptions like Sports Illustrated, a famous sports figure and how they responded to certain situations from the previous game, etc., that I felt reflected the point I wanted to make. And because I’m not a sports psychologist, to give each chalk talk some expert validity, I have interjected some pertinent statements and conclusions made by the authors of...