I'm a firm believer that a mental edge helps in life and in sports. This fact was made abundantly clear in a golf game I was playing two years ago.
I'm not a very good golfer but had spent a lot of time improving my game. I registered for a tee time and got a doctor and his son in my group and we headed off as a threesome. I had golfed a lot that season, but always by myself during low-usage times on the course because I was self-conscious about my game. This was the first time I could compare myself to other actual living golfers who were golfing next to me.
The work was paying off and I was slaying these guys. It wasn't exactly the Masters, but I was getting pars and bogeys on pretty much every hole and either tying or beating these guys on every hole.
We weren't competing, per se. I just wanted to know if I was good enough to go out on a course with decent golfers without embarassing myself.
After 11 holes, we all teed up. I out-drove both of them by 15 yards. On his second shot, the son swings, hits the ball, it bounces once and goes right in the cup.
Something about that freaked me out and I didn't win another hole the entire day. I think they both actually beat me on my final score, too!
What a turnaround!!! I'm a grown man and I let something like that get in my head and my golf game went entirely out the window.
Baseball is largely mental, too. So, I have to be careful what I say to my son. For instance, right now, he's obsessed with playing catcher. Why? Because I said that pitching and catching is your best shot at the major leagues.
I am not trying to pump him up that he'll play in the major leagues. Personally, I think that's right there wth thinking you'll be elected president or knock George Clooney out as Hollywood's leading pretty boy. I also would actually rather he didn't play catcher, for a lot of reasons too diffuse and involved to go into here.
However, one off-the-cuff comment and he was hooked.
Later, when he was playing a lot of outfield, I debated whether to tell him that most of the great hitters throughout time were outfielders. Why? Because he also plays a lot of infield and I didn't want him to be disappointed when the coach put him in the infield for a few innings.
Little comments here and there have a tremendous impact on him.
I bought him a new bat the other day. It wasn't exactly the bat I wanted. It was two ounces heavier than I would have liked. However, it was balanced differently, which meant that there was some small chance that he could have handled it well. It was a big barrel composite bat and those are different enough that they should make a noticeable difference.
However, it still has to be the right bat. It's more about the swing than the bat and the world's greatest bat is no good if it hurts your swing because it's too heavy.
I don't want to monkey all that much with his hitting because he's hitting .625 and is up there with the team leaders in both average and slugging percentage. I just felt that it was time to upgrade him to a big barrel bat. The one he's been using so far is quite possibly the lowest-end bat on the market. I have nicer bats for him and I thought he'd outgrow this bat by now. Instead, he's hitting very well with it, is comfortable with it.
The comfort is probably the biggest thing. Hitting a baseball is very mental, especially against some of the better pitchers.
He hit the new bat pretty well in the basement off the pitching machine, but that's not exactly game conditions. I took him to a local park and he seemed to be hitting pretty well, but I pitch a lot slower than the pitchers in his league.
No, I'm not kidding. 9 year old pitchers throw harder than I do.
I wanted to see how he hit with the bat in practice and he hit his coaches batting practice pretty well with it, but I could have sworn he was slowing down his swing.
At the end of practice, he faced one of his team-mates with it and struck out. The strikeout doesn't bother me. But he looked like he was swinging in slow motion.
The bat is just too heavy for this year. It goes into the pile for next year or later.
Now, how do I handle this?
I'm a firm believer in hypnosis and suggestion. You can put an idea in a kid's head that will stay there for years, accidentally "hypnotizing" them. Sometimes you can do it positively.
For instance, I have always tried to catch Logan being good and comment on it. "That was very nice for you to share with Bobby", etc. The idea being that if I plant enough good ideas in his head, he'll grow up believing he's a good person who does good things.
If the only time he ever heard from me is when he's being bad, he'd form the opposite opinion: that he's a screw up who can't get things right.
You have to be careful here because as an adult you have so much power over a child, you can shade into manipulation. Some manipulation is good when, for instance, you're manipulating your child to brush their teeth and do their homework.
On the other hand, these are still human beings and although he's my son, I want him to live a life that's his, not one that's just a reflection of my wants and desires. So, for me to try and influence him, I have to know in my heart of hearts that it is truly, 100% for his benefit.
The other thing is, I will never try to influence my son with anything that isn't 100% the truth. Deception may get results, but it's ultimately dishonest.
So, what to say about the bat. The wrong comment could crush his confidence. Kids equate strength and size with ability. So, saying he was too weak to swing the bat could have been disastrous.
What I told him was this: the bat is too heavy for right now, but that's good. The team he's facing today is a tough team that the Mavs can beat. But, they're going to have fast pitchers. This means that a quick bat is very important today.
Because Logan has been swinging this heavy bat the past two days, I told him that when he goes back to his old bat (the one he hits .625 with so far) that it'll be extra quick against this team.
I told him that getting used to a heavy bat makes lighter bats faster. Sort of like warming up with a "donut" on your bat.
The goal?
1. To keep him from feeling bad about using the old bat. Didn't want to make him feel like he failed to swing the new bat.
2. To make him believe that using the old bat wasn't just a test he didn't pass (that he wasn't capable enough with the old bat), but was, instead, a training process that would give him an extra advantage today. This, by the way, is all probably 100% true. Just that it wasn't quite that premeditated.
3. To get him to where he feels good about returning to his old bat.
I think it worked. Logan was so impressed by the logic that he asked if he could do all his pre-game warmup with the new bat to keep up the "heavy bat" effect. I told him he needed to use his old bat today to re-establish his timing. He'll have an imperceptibly quicker swing, but he needs to return to some familiarity.
So, what's the point of the whole Jedi mind trick if the swing is only imperceptibly quicker? Twofold.
The first is that he needs to return to a lighter bat today. The heavier one won't work and I can't find an appropriate one in the right weight in time for the game. That's reality. It's a limitation and we'll have to work with it, but I want him to feel good about it.
The second is that he will actually face some faster pitchers today, I believe. If he THINKS he's a little quicker with the bat, he's that much less likely to feel intimidated.
One of the biggest advantages a pitcher can have over a batter is if he can make the batter feel intimidated.
The bottom line: they don't have any of the specific bat I want for Logan anywhere locally and the major outlets are on 6 week backorder. I found one the other day and ordered it, but it won't be here in time for the game tonight and probably not in time for the tournament this weekend.
Let's hope the suggestion works and he believes he's got the quickest bat on the planet, and it shows in his at-bats tonight. We face a tough team and need all the hits we can get.
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