As the high school/community season ends and the summer season starts, it’s important to assess how things have gone so far and decide how to precede the rest of the way. Hopefully things have gone well up until now. If that’s the case, keep doing what you are doing! If not, you really should do some soul searching and come up with a game plan for the rest of the way.
If things have not gone the way you would have liked, step #1 is to take full responsibility. Don’t blame the coach. Don’t blame the weather. Don’t blame anyone or anything. Take responsibility and just decide your response from here on out.
In a post a long time ago I wrote about the following equation: E + R = O which stands for Events + Response = Outcome. Events happen to us all the time. Some are good and some are bad. Most are totally out of our control. However, the next two parts are totally under our control. We determine what our Response is and therefore get to determine the final Outcome. The example I used before was something like this …
You want every outcome to be a 10. The coach sits you down and starts to play someone else at your position. We’ll give that setback a score of a four. The equation become 4 + R = 10. What does R need to be? It needs to be a 6. Now let’s say you know you are better than the guy ahead of you and no matter what you seem to do in practice the coach does not play you. We’ll give that a 2. 2 + R = 10. Your response needs to be an 8.
The point is, complaining about how things are going do not accomplish anything. What players need to understand is that every event requires an appropriate response so that the outcome is a 10. Unfortunately, here is what a lot of players do. They are rolling along and doing fairly well (8) which only requires a response of 2. 8 + 2 = 10. Then the coach sits them (3) but they still respond with a 2 because that’s what they are used to (and comfortable) doing. 3 + 2 = 5. No wonder they are miserable.
In life and in baseball we have to be willing to change our response accordingly to get the outcome we want. If your season has not gone well so far, how has your response been? Have you turned up your response enough with positive thinking, more practice on your own, studying the game, trying a new position, helping your teammates improve, etc? Or have you just sulked which made it more likely your downturn lasted longer?
If things are not going your way, get off your butt, stop feeling sorry for yourself, take responsibility, and improve your overall response.
Next post: Playing behind the runner at first base
