Well I am back after a little break away from the blog. We just got back from the road a couple days ago. The road trip was not a very good one as we were 1-5 on that trip. We did however win our first game back at home last night so hopefully the wins will continue today! While we were on the road we had a lot of injuries and that set the stage for my first start at third base probably in my entire life. I was a short stop my first 3 years of baseball when I was a kid then turned into a catcher at the age of 9. Been doing just that for the last 15 years. I think I played 3 innings at third in a scrimmage in college. I hadnn't taken a ground ball probably in about 6 years! Good thing nothing came my way other than a line shot that I dove for but was just out of my reach. I kinda wanted to make at least one play just to throw the ball across the infield. I think that would have been a lot of fun to let one fly. It was fun playing a different position though. Little change of pace from catching everyday.
My hitting woes have continued a little bit. There is a tape that I have had since I was a little kid and it is a sport psychologist talking to a hitting guy. He is a well known baseball sports psychologist and listening to that tape has always reminded me of the correct way to approach hitting in practice and in games. Here is a good piece of advice that I sometimes forget to do myself. Take batting practice like it is the game. Full concentration. Make game situations. Don't just hop in there and take swings and hop out. Do it with a focused purpose. When I do my hitting lessons a lot of times I will end the lessons with game situations. i.e. hit and run, move the runner, man on third, infield in, infield back, counts, etc. These are the types of things that get you mentally ready to hit in games. This is something I forgot about so far this year until I listened to the tape. I was kinda just swinging in bp and not really focusing like I would in a game. So my goal is to focus more in bp like it is a game and make situations in my head during bp. The other thing that the tape reminds me is to stick with my stance and such. A lot of times when guys start going bad we tend to change our stance or something which just makes us think too much. He talks about trusting your talents and letting them take over, something I did last year. This is a big part of confidence. If you believe you have talent and are able to trust that talent then you will be ok. I noticed that I was making my goals more result oriented that behavior oriented. Its not always about results because we can't control results. We can control our behavior, our approach, and our response to the results. Instead of saying, "I want to get 2 hits tonight," it's better to say, "I want to have 3 good at bats out of 4 tonight." We can't control if we get a hit or not but we can control whether or not we have a good at bat.
I hope this is helpful for some of you guys. The mental part of baseball is so important. I was reading an article the other day about sports psychology and learned something I didn't know. A-Rod, Roy Halladay, Greg Maddux, Jason Varitek and many other have used a sports psychologist. The guy they used was the guy on my tape. Pretty neat.
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