Fortress of Swagger

During the hour drive to the baseball complex my son had been quieter than usual. He’s been mired in a slump and not hitting the ball like he’s come to expect. It was obviously on his mind.

Being genetically similar, I asked if the thoughts he was exploring dwelt on what was wrong and whether it felt bad. It did and he shared that there may have been some negative self-talk in there as well.

Before leaving to warmup, we talked about his job today.

The job is to build his Fortress of Swagger. The pitcher’s job is to knock bricks down. The last thing we want to do is help that guy. Our negative self-talk is the same trash talk a pitcher would throw at us, so let’s put that on the shelf.

The job today is to lay brick.

One at a time. From the time you start warming up to the time you complete your at-bats.

Lay. Brick.

• Find words to remind yourself that you’re good at this game. Keep it tight and authentic. Even if you don’t believe it now, you will. Nolan Ryan told himself ‘you can do it’ before every pitch. He threw over 100,000 pitches in MLB and several times that in practice. Imagine the fortress he built.

• Remember the feeling of standing on third after tripling. Feel the nothingness in your hands as the barrel met the ball. Feel flood of dopamine as you watched the ball fly. The cleats digging into the clay as you rounded the bases. Relive your greatest hits.

• Create a physical movement that reminds you of who you are. (I used to tap the center of my chest with my knuckles and tell myself, "you got it, it’s in here.”)

Plenty of others will try to knock your fortress down. Your job is to, first, not let them and, second, to lay more bricks.

More to come…