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This is a free chapter from Dan Blewett’s book, Clean Your Cleats: Advice on Baseball & Life for Ballplayers.
This chapter is on mindset. In it, Dan shares stories and discusses ways for players to slow the game down, mentally.
Listen to the Audiobook Version Below, or Keep Scrolling to Read
Check out my other free chapter: Chapter 2 – Baseball is a Trap.
Clean Your Cleats by Dan Blewett [Chapter 21: Slowing the Game Down]
‘Compete’ means giving your best, not trying your hardest. Trying hard adds tension that interferes with performance.
– Dr. Ken Ravizza
Despite being a relatively smart baseball player, I have lots of memories of being a dumb one. Back when I was 19, I was on the mound in our annual “Black and Gold World Series,” which was my college team’s three-game intrasquad series. I was on the gold team, squaring off against the other half of our squad, the black team. I don’t remember which game of the three it was, the inning or the score.
But I remember the situation: there was a runner on second base while I was pitching, and our coach put on a pick-off play. Why did he put on a pick-off play? I’m quite sure it was so that I, a scared freshman, would get better at pick-off plays. Well, it worked.
My catcher called for the “inside move,” which is the one where the pitcher lifts his leg up, then turns to his arm side when his leg kick reaches its apex.
Typically, pitchers do this just to check and see if the hitter is bunting; he will typically square around as the pitcher lifts his leg. Because, though, the move isn’t overly deceptive or convincing (at least most of the time), runners don’t often fall for it.
I was aware of this, and when I started the move, I expected nothing to happen—it would waste everyone’s time and I could get back to pitching the ball. Quite to my surprise, when I planted my leg back down after spinning, there was the runner staring back at me, caught. He was way off the bag, his eyes wide.
Oh crap.
What do I do now?
I had to make a split-second decision:
Do I throw to the second baseman?
Shortstop?
Third?
Pump fake at the runner?
Run at him?
Deep down, I did know what to do (throw to second if he goes back immediately, otherwise run at him and then throw it where it needs to be thrown), in the moment my brain broke.
So, naturally, I did what any flustered freshman would do: I got all twitchy and chucked it over my shortstop’s head, into center field. There we go—perfect! Lizard brain for the win.
The ball now deep in the outfield, the runner bolted for third. My cheeks flushed with the ruby-red color of embarrassment, and I’m sure my coach just shook his head in that, he just doesn’t get it yet kind of way.
I think the problem—besides being nervous and summoning my inner spaz—was one of bandwidth. I’ll give you two analogies here.
The first is a saying called putting the octopus to bed. If you lived in some bizarro world where octopi slept in beds, and you tried to tuck your little octopus brother in at night, what would happen?
As soon as you got the covers pulled over the left side of him, all of his tentacles neatly under the sheets, they’d be spilling out the right side.
Then, as you adjust the right side, finally getting the sheet tucked in, tentacles would be pouring out the bottom of the bed. By the time you’ve adjusted the bottom, he’s wriggled out the left side again.
It would go on and on, a fool’s errand attempting to get all eight, independently moving arms into their proper place. Frustrated, you’d contemplate the legal implications of octopus murder. Would smothering him with a pillow even work? In prison, do they use wood bats, or aluminum?
I think this a good analogy, though I do not condone octoslaughter. Every player on the field has multiple tasks he has to account for before every single pitch. A pitcher has to choose the right pitch to throw, which involves considering lots of different factors.
At the same time, he has to remember to hold the baserunners on, not forget which bases he’ll have to back up if a ball is hit into the gap, which side of the field belongs to him if the hitter bunts, and more.
A base runner has to know what he’s doing on a line drive, ground ball, fly balls of all different distances and directions, and more. Baseball really is a complex game, with lots of variables to think about.
The problem is, as soon as you think too deeply about one, or are perhaps clouded by nerves, fear or adrenaline, you forget about a different task on your list.
In my case, I was locked-in to the hitter, trying so hard to not give up a hit that would score the runner from second. I was also nervous about looking bad in front of my new teammates.
With my brain completely maxed-out, the tentacle that slipped out was what to do if I actually picked off the runner on second base. I had no bandwidth left, and so when I stared that runner in the face, dancing between second and third, I couldn’t process what to do fast enough.
This word process is useful in explaining a second way to think about why you still make dumb plays in games, even when you know better.
Human brains are like big, mushy computers. What happens to your computer when you have 10 windows open and are trying to watch a YouTube video? It slows down, pinwheels, freezes or completely crashes. If you want your computer to not crash, then you give it fewer tasks to complete by closing applications, install more memory, or buy a computer with a faster processor and more memory.
Being a young player is like having a cheap laptop—you can only process so much information before you pinwheel, freeze and crash.
Yet, the human brain gets smarter and faster the more you challenge it, so that cheap laptop becomes a fancy, expensive laptop the more you play the game. 10-year-olds make more mistakes in a much slower version of baseball than a 20-year-old does in a vastly faster version.
The experience of playing the game and learning from so many complex situations is what makes you better at making lightning-fast decisions as you age.
But, that’s still not enough, especially when the pressure is on. If you still find yourself making too many dumb plays for your liking—even if it’s just a handful here and there—then the following few steps will help.
When you’re sped up
The slang term for what happened to me on that pick-off play was being sped up. When you’re in a pressure situation and your brain starts racing, panicking, searching desperately for the right answer, your mind has sped up; this is bad. The solution is finding ways to slow the game down.
Imagine a special forces team who is about to raid a facility full of bad guys. They don’t plan for one possible scenario, do they?
No.
They try to plan for as many possible outcomes as they can. The squad leader might say,
If the enemy attacks from the front, we’ll move left and split up. If they attack from the side, we’ll stay together and find cover to the right. If they have a sniper, we’ll fall back and regroup.
Even without knowing what will happen—since no one can see the future—they know what they will do in almost any conceivable scenario. Because they’ve rehearsed so much, when it happens in real life, they’ll be prepared to act quickly, calmly, without too much thought. Fortunately, in baseball there are a lot fewer unexpected outcomes than in battle. There’s still a lot of them, but they’re manageable if you get in the routine of going through your pre-pitch checklist.
Your pre-pitch checklist is your battle plan
One day, as I was watching an MLB game, I listened in as a former pitcher in the broadcast booth shared some of his process as a player. He explained that he’d think about different things depending on where he was relative to the mound. If he was standing in the grass, he’d be considering the big items—inning, score, where the baserunners are, how many outs, what bases he’d have to cover, etc.
Then, with that stuff figured out, he’d step onto the dirt of the mound. This is where he’d think about who was coming up to bat, who was on deck, and what these hitters had done against him, and how his stuff matched up against theirs.
He’d begin planning his approach of how to pitch the hitter and review his game plan for holding the baserunners on. Stepping onto the rubber to get his sign, he pushed aside all the other game stuff and focused solely on what pitch he and his catcher were going to choose.
He had already planned out what he would do in almost any possible scenario—bunt, hit or otherwise—and so his total focus, all of his computer’s processing power, could now focus on executing the pitch he had chosen.
As he came set, his mind was clear because everything else had already been thought of. It was time for battle.
This same process applies to every player on the field. A hitter would have different things to think about in the dugout, in the on-deck circle and as he steps into the box.
When do you swing away, and when do you try harder to work a walk?
What does the pitcher throw that you should be looking to hit?
What should you “X-out,” or look to lay off?
Think hard for yourself about what’s important and make your own routine, so when you step into the box, the only thing left to say to yourself is, see ball, hit ball.
An infielder or outfielder might think about his tasks depending on where the pitcher is, getting locked-in and focused on reading the ball off the bat by the time the pitcher steps onto the rubber.
Catchers also have their quick bit of downtime between pitches, so it’s safe to say that fielders can create their own routines centered around the timing of the pitcher, since he controls when the game starts and stops. Baserunners: when are good times to steal and good times to go base-to-base? When should you freeze and when should you bolt on contact?
No matter what position you play, the following are four categories of tasks, just like the pitchers’ process, to think about when you’re out in the field:
- Game situation: inning, outs, score, baserunners – general things that influence your tasks
- Movement: what bases do you have to back up, or which parts of the field do you have to cover? Where will you go on different types of batted balls? What bases will you throw to? Will the runners potentially steal?
- Hitter tendencies: what do you see in the hitter that might influence where you’ll set up? What tendencies does he have? Power hitter? Fly ball hitter? Pull hitter? Will the guy bunt?
- Focus item: what will you lock-in on? Is it the hitter’s bat? The strike zone in general? Where are you focusing to be as clear-minded as possible to react when the hitter puts the ball in play?
If you go through the above items—and you’ll have to think hard at times to make sure you’ve thought of everything—then most of the hard work will be done. Check all the boxes. This frees you up to make sound decisions at lightning speed, slowing the game down.
When unpredictable things happen, you get sped up. But when you plan for as many possible scenarios as you can, it becomes easy to put the octopus to bed. Your brain, that mushy processor, becomes fast and powerful, and you can play the game to the best of your ability.
Breathe and collect yourself
Now, if it was as easy as running through your list of to-dos before each pitch, then no one would make many mistakes. We humans are emotional beasts. When we get in the heat of the moment, fear, doubt, adrenaline and excitement flood our brains, clouding much of what we’ve worked out ahead of time.
This is why public speaking is so hard. You can rehearse your speech as much as you want, but when you step out on stage and see all those eyes on you, it’s just not that easy to run through it. The human element makes otherwise straightforward tasks, well, tough. Your heart might pound and your breathing might become rapid and short. It sounds simplistic, but one of the best things you can do when the game feels too fast is the following:
- Step out of the box or off the mound
- Take a deep breath
- Look the field over while you take a few more deep, slow breaths
There is no shot clock and no time limit. If you’re a pitcher, the game literally starts and stops with you. Feel like things are a bit out of control? Step off the rubber. Walk down the mound into the grass if you need even more time. Put the pace of the game back in your hands, take a deep breath or two and regain your composure by slowing your heart rate and getting some air.
Then, look around the field as your brain’s fog begins to clear.
What’s the most important single thing you need to do besides just seeing the ball and putting a good swing on it?
What’s the most critical thing on your list besides executing this next slider down and away?
What other little reminders do you need?
What can you do to bump your confidence up?
Use this moment to collect yourself and get back on track.
Playing to the atoms and staying present
Your beloved Snickers bar, that you reach for when you’re hangry, is made up of chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and a few other ingredients. What though, is each of those ingredients made of? Chocolate is made of cocoa butter, cocoa beans, sugar and milk powder. What, though, is a cocoa bean made of? Um, okay, I guess I don’t know either. Carbon, or something?
If we kept reducing it further and further we’d eventually get to its atomic structure. These tiny atoms make up our Snickers bar and everything else in the world around us.
Baseball has its own smallest particle, its own atoms, and these we call pitches. The best players in the world are exceptionally good at reducing the job they have to do—and the things they have to control—to the atomic level.
Rather than worry about the score, getting the big hit, the scout who’s watching or the bad last pitch they made, they simplify things to the smallest and thus most easily managed level.
Ultimately, everything you want in baseball can be reduced to the single action you can take on this next pitch. Once you’ve run through your pre-pitch items, it’s time to actually do the thing. But you can’t throw a shutout or go 3-for-3 all at once.
Early in my rookie season, I felt I was at a crossroads just a few starts in, because I knew that players didn’t get a very long leash to struggle. The independent leagues are rough like this. If a position player hit .200 for a few weeks, he was gone. If a pitcher had three or four bad starts? See ya later.
After a handful of mediocre starts myself, I was worried that I needed a string of great games to really show my worth and cement my place on the roster. If I pitched poorly, I might be gone.
I was terrified of losing the very thing I had worked so hard for. This thought consumed me at times and it was hard to clear out of my head.
I took the mound and got off to an ugly start, giving up five runs in the first two innings. It was messy and though I figured I was going to get the hook right then and there, I didn’t.
“Keep pitching! We need you to keep us in this game!” said my pitching coach.
I silently calculated that my ERA was going up no matter what, but to keep it respectable, I’d need to throw six more shutout innings.
Great.
Now I just have to go out and be perfect for the rest of the game.
Easy enough, right?
Don’t put any pressure on yourself, Dan.
I was now asking myself to do something that felt impossible, especially given how bad I was already pitching. My arm was also hurting, throbbing in the area between my biceps and triceps. A lot of things were going wrong, and I don’t think I had six zeros to pull out of my rear end.
In my despair, waiting to go out for the third inning, I began bargaining with myself. A voice in my head began trying to reduce my task to a more manageable level.
Just go out there and give them one good inning; that’s all.
You can do that, can’t you?
One inning.
Three outs.
Then, we’ll worry about the next one.
I took a deep breath and felt a little better. I nodded my head slightly, a silent yes, agreeing to the terms of just one good inning. But I wasn’t done bargaining with myself. As I warmed up, throwing my six pitches before the start of the inning, I felt even more dread about the state of my arm. Each warm up pitch more or less flopped out of it, no life or zip whatsoever. I had nothing left at all and it was still early. The voice came back:
Let’s just get this first guy out. We can do that.
Start by getting ahead with a fastball; if he swings, all the better.
Throw this first pitch hard, then we’ll worry about the next one.
I was 24 years old at the time, but it was the first instance I can remember where I truly paced out the game one pitch at a time. Lots of times in life, someone will give you good advice that doesn’t sink in until you experience it yourself.
I had been told to just take the game one start, one inning, one batter at a time—smart advice that didn’t stick until I was in this situation, where I felt so broken down and nervous that I came to the same conclusion.
My desperation turned out to be a blessing, because it took away all my weapons and forced me to stop looking into the near future. I was like a child learning to walk. One foot in front of the other.
One inning.
One batter.
One pitch.
Throw this pitch right now, then worry about the next one.
One pitch and a single swing
If you can learn this same mindset at a younger age, your career will take off. A fielder makes an error then starts worrying about making more, instead of focusing on the next ball that bounces his way. Hitters try to get hits and win games with doubles and home runs, rather than just seeing the next pitch and putting a good swing on it. And pitchers try to throw complete game shutouts all at once, when what they really need to do is throw one pitch at a time.
Each pitch, each ground ball, each fly ball: these are the atoms of the game to hitters, pitchers and the defensive players in the field.
Just put a good swing on this next pitch.
See the ball and react.
One inning, one hitter, one pitch at a time.
Find your own mantra to repeat in your head whenever you feel yourself worrying about outcomes, the future, your stats, or anything else. Bring yourself back to the present moment and focus on the smallest fraction of the game: the atoms.
A mindset for life
Think back to the last time you were so angry that you could barely see straight. Did someone do something to push your buttons? Was it something beyond your control that happened that ruined your plans? Did your idiot friend Rick fart on your last cupcake? Who even thinks to do that? God, what is wrong with Rick?
Anyway, this formula is pretty much applicable to any situation when your emotions run high. If you’re furious with someone, you could leave the room for a moment to gather yourself. There, you could take a few deep, slow breaths to calm yourself down. Once a bit more calm, you could assess the situation more clearly.
Was the person really trying to hurt you or make you mad? Did they really mean what they did or said? Did you really mean the fighting words you just spit out?
In most aspects of life, the simplest explanations and solutions turn out to be the best. If you did nothing else but mastered the sequence of:
Step off.
Breathe deep.
Re-assess.
You’d have a lifelong tool for building harmony.
Keeping your cool in relationships is hard. Staying calm after someone wrongs you is tough. Regaining emotional control in a pressure-packed baseball game is something even Major Leaguers sometimes fail to do.
Fortunately, the solution is not complicated, and the carryover to your personal life is a major added bonus.
Slow it all down.
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Copyright 2022, Dan Blewett. All Rights Reserved. This work may not be copied or distributed in any form.