EMULATE – FORM OVER SUBSTANCE? I just attended a work out conducted by a scout with the Colorado Rookies for a group of High School players that were just selected to play in the Key Stone Games Competition held in Pennslyvania each year. Standing next to the scout and his assistent, watching each player take his turn hitting against live pitching, each of us would make comments about the batter. The Colorado Assistant had a habit of pointing out how each batter emulated a particular pro player – they way they stood in the batters box or the way they swung. At one point, as one player was half way through his turn, the assistant stated; “Look, he stands just like Albert Puljois “. Which at that point the scout quickly shot back; “Yeah but he sure don’t hit like Albert Puljois.” Of course we all laughed but as I was driving home after the work out that whole sequence of events ran in my head. One thought kept popping up - kids are quick to emulate their favorite pro player. They work hard on getting their stance or swing or mannerisms to look exactly like the pro. Now I know why they do this. First, there is the ‘if it works for him it should work for me’ mentality. Second, it’s a ‘quick fix’. We live in a ‘microwave society’ – we expect every thing right away. However the problem is that what they are seeing from their favorite player is the end result of his countless hours of hard work. As an example of what I’m stating, read the following article about the Philadelphia Philles Chase Utley which appeared in the Harrisburg Patriot Newspaper on 5/15/08 and was written by Rob Maddi of the Associated Press. Chase Utley “A young Chase Utley would take swings at a batting cage until he ran out of quarters. Then he'd earn a few bucks picking up balls or trash and take more hacks. The strong work ethic Utley possessed during his childhood in Southern California has only intensified now that he's in the major leagues. A two-time All-Star second baseman for, the Philadelphia Phillies, Utley is never satisfied. He wants to keep improving, so he's always working to get better. Need a minute to chat with Utley? "Better catch him on the run. He's polite and mild-mannered, but he's usually too busy to talk and doesn't care about self-promotion. The countless hours Utley spends working on his swing and studying pitchers have made him an elite player. He was batting .323 with 14 homers and 30 RBIs, entering Thursday night's game against Atlanta. A few prominent people consider Utley the best player in baseball, even better than Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols. Hall of Fame third baseman Mike Schmidt, who spent his entire career with the Phillies, puts Utley first on his list. President Bush, the former owner of the Texas Rangers, recently said he'd take Utley if he had his choice of anyone in the majors. "Its great praise," Utley said. Manuel has been in baseball for more than 40 years and has coached many great players, including Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett, Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome. If he had to choose one player to start his team, he'd take Utley. "Puckett for me was the ideal baseball player until I met Chase," Manuel said. "Whatever Chase does, it doesn't surprise me." Utley's sweet left-handed swing is close to perfect. It's short, compact and generates a lot of power, even though Utley (6-foot-1, 200 pounds) isn't as big as most long-ball hitters. All that extra work in the cages and the rigorous off-season training program has certainly paid off for Utley, a first-round pick in 2000. Kevin Tyler, owner of Lakewood Batting Cages in Lakewood, Calif., witnessed Utley's dedication early. "His father, Dave, had an office nearby, and he'd drop Chase off on his way to work," Tyler said. "He was a really nice kid. We'd frequently let him keep hitting after he spent all his money. Sometimes we'd let him kick the balls back that had gathered, or we'd get him a broom and let him sweep." In an era when players put so much emphasis on style, Utley is downright boring. He would rather win a game than watch himself on a highlight reel. Whether he hits a routine grounder to first base or, goes deep, Utley puts his head down and runs hard. There's no showboating, no flashy handshakes, no exaggerated celebration. "That's not me," Utley said. "I don't think that's a good way to represent yourself." Utley’s hard-nosed attitude made him an instant fan favorite in Philadelphia. He always has a dirty uniform and he’ll do anything to win, including taking pitches off his body. Utley was hit 25 times last season. One fastball broke his hand, forcing him to miss 28 games. The Phillies overcame Utley’s absence and won the NL East after he returned. The month off probably cost Utley the MVP award, which went to teammate Jimmy Rollins. Utley finished with a career-best .332 average, 22 homers and 103, and his RBIs. If he keeps his current pace, Utley could give the Phillies an MVP three-peat following Ryan Howard Utley Rollins. The Question The Question you need to ask yourself, and you need to answer honestly is; “Does this article describe me? But before you answer, if you noticed, I put into bold the positive descriptive statements about Chase Utley’s work ethic. They were:
To help you answer the question, write the word yes next to each statement that you feel accurately describes you. Again being completely honest with yourself. Then for each one that you feel describes you, write a sentence that defends or proves your answer. Now let’s think this through. Notice that a lot of the positives are time related. Let’s take ‘countless hours’ as an example. Logically you would use your high school practices to prove or defend your ‘yes’ answer. So logically you need to consider ‘individual’ time. What do I mean by that? Lets look at the key components of practice. One of which is batting practice. I would guess that due to time constraints, the average amount of time a High School team spends on hitting is about an hour. Keeping in mind that’s for the whole team. So lets assume that the average number of players on a varsity high school team is 15 and that there are 5 stations – batting cage, tee, soft toss, dry swings and bunting. That leaves 12 minutes per station or 4 minutes per player at each station. But by the time you move between stations, pick up the balls, decide who’s going first, fix your gloves, get ready, talk to each other, etc. your actual individual time at each station is probably more like 3 minutes. Now lets go back to my statement about being honest and add the word quality to the time spent at each ‘station’. I don’t know any player that doesn’t enjoy, stay focused and concentrate in the batting cage or when taking live pitching on the field. Everybody likes live hitting. So usually that time spent is probably quality time. Everyday!! Now lets look at the other stations. And again, let’s be honest. How much quality time is spent on soft toss, hitting off the tee, etc.? Maybe the first week but what about by the end of the third week? Same intensity?? Same amount of quality time?? I doubt it. It’s not so much hard work but it’s monotonous, boring work… just swinging continuously into a net. Then there is the reality that not too many High School programs have enough coaches on their staff that would make it possible to have a coach at each station giving individual instruction. And not just give instruction but to make sure everyone is focused, putting in quality time. But for the benefit of those players that insist every minute they spend at all of the stations, every day, is quality time, the total amount of ‘individual’ time they get is about 15 minutes. So if you practice 5 days a week, your total weekly time working on your hitting – individual time - is around one hour and 15 minutes. And your total ‘individual’ time, seeing live pitching, is 15 minutes! Get my point? Yes, you do spend a lot of ‘practice’ time but that’s with the team. What about your time? Every one participating in sports, and in your case baseball, has aspirations to reach a specific goal. They have expectations. It could be to make the State Playoffs or make a college team, to be picked for an elite travel team, become a Professional Player or simply be the best High School player. While these dreams are worth pursuing, the reality is that what is overlooked is the tremendous amount of time, preparation, sacrifice and hard work you need to invest. As stated by Ken Mannie, Michigan State’s Head Strength and Conditioning Coach in an article for Scholastic Coach Magazine; “A good portion of the players that do not make it did not prepare well enough to do so. They let everything ride on the fact that they were good players and ignored all the other variables”. Your god given talent is only going to get you so far. Eventually you reach a level that everyone is on the same talent plane. And in order to reach your potential, set yourself apart from others and achieve what ever your goal, you need to accept the reality of the ‘other variables’. One of which is hard work - focused hard work. My intent is to get you to evaluate your work ethic. To get you to think about just how much time, and honestly consider the quality of that time, you put into your effort to reach your expectation. Because if you do and you have higher aspirations then I think you will realize there is more you can do. You need to change – be different than everyone else. Because the truth is that to reach your goal, whatever it is, you can not continually do the same thing, the same way. As an example of what I mean, if you are a High School pitcher, think about what you do in practice to prepare to pitch a complete game. Which in High School is about 100 pitches. Keeping in mind that they should be 100 competitive pitches. But how can you do that if you don’t prepare to do it? Simple logic says you can’t expect a pitcher to stress his body on the day he is pitching by throwing 100 pitches without first preparing it to do so. For every 100 pitches he throws in a game he should have thrown 300 practice pitches to prepare. Maybe it’s one third working on velocity, one third working on command and control and one third on velocity with command. It’s throwing the baseball hard 3 days a week and throwing at about 50-70 % another 2-3 days a week. It’s the process. It’s how often, how intense, the quality of time. Yes it’s monotonous, it’s boring but if you view it as “necessary” for improvement and you see incremental success, it takes on a whole new level of importance. It doesn’t happen over night. There’s no ‘magic bullet”, one little detail that will put you ‘over the top’. It’s called “hard work.” It’s the old 80% – 20% rule. You can achieve 80% of your potential by putting forth 20% of your effort. But the last 20% of your potential will require the other 80% of your effort. It’s not for the faint of heart. This is how top D1 college players and pro players are developed…they work their butt off for that last 20%. Let’s go back to the question I asked you to pose to yourself; “Does this article describe me?” The more I think about it, maybe the question that I should have asked you is; ‘If Chas Utley emulated your current work ethic would he be as successful as he is?” You see, what you watch on TV is the residue of hard work. Chas Utley is successful, made it to the pros, because he worked on his skill development. |