(Not) Instilling Confidence

A recent observation at a baseball game of 13 and 14 year old players. Late in the game, close score. The team that's losing is batting. Soundtrack would be Billy Joel "Pressure" if it were the 1980s. Point is, kid at the plate is already feeling the pressure of the situation. Kid is way down in their lineup, so apparently not one of their stronger hitters. He swings and misses. Coach (positioned at third base) hollers "You're not gonna hit anything looking at me!" A way of saying he pulled his head and wasn't in a good hitting position. Fair point BUT that struck me as a very unhelpful thing to say. As a not super strong hitter in a pressure situation, making him feel like he did something wrong isn't likely to boost his confidence.

I sound judgy, I acknowledge that. I'm certain I've said many unhelpful and unproductive things while coaching kids for the past 5 years. Just recently I saw a video of someone suggesting coaches avoid saying "You're due!" to a kid who's been struggling at the plate. It sounds supportive...suppose a player is in a mini slump and hasn't been hitting. You say "You're due" which might sound encouraging BUT the person in the video points out saying "You're due" reminds the kid he hasn't been hitting!!! I know I've used this phrase before and almost used it *this week* until I caught myself. 

I like when coaches keep it simple and stick to phrases like "You got this." A guy I coached with for a long time made a great change to his approach last year when a kid would be at the plate down in the count with 2 strikes. Usually coaches say things like "shorten up" when a kid has 2 strikes. It's not an aggressive mentality. Last year the coach changed his chatter in those situations to instead say "Stay aggressive" or "Attack" and I love that. I've since borrowed that and holler that when a kid is in that tough situation. "Stay on the attack" is a waaay different message than saying something that will make a kid feel like he's doing something wrong. Kids are already their own harshest critics. This is a reminder to myself and fellow coaches and parents to not make them feel worse about their performance. 

Keeping Score

As a baseball obsessed person, one of my favorite things to do is keep score during games my kid plays. I've helped coach his teams since he was 8. He's now 13 and I'm still around helping a bit. One way I contribute is keeping score, the old school way. It's funny, a few kids this year on his school team looked at my scorebook and asked "What's that?" They had no idea. They had only seen GameChanger which is the new school way of keeping score using a phone. I need a physical book on which I can see everything all at once. GameChanger is cool and a great new tool. I just prefer the tried and true way of keeping score. The only problem with the classic book is that rain will present a major challenge of maintaining a dry book. Pencil and paper hates rain, you dig. Other than that, it's a joy for me to sit on a bucket and score all aspects of the game and instantly be able to answer questions like "What's the score? What inning is it? Where are they [batter on the other team] in the lineup? What did he [batter on the other team] do last time?" I'm not always on point, occasionally I miss something, and sometimes I'm not sure whether I should score something an error or hit. But whether something is an error is a judgment call that has nothing to do with the way one keeps score. For the school baseball team, there's another dad using GameChanger and so we help each other out and in a way it provides a form of inter-rater reliability! It's a good mix of old school scorekeeping (relatively non-McDonaldized) and new school (relatively McDonaldized). 

On Hitting (and Missing)

What's the difference between being a hot hitter and being in a slump? Sometimes it seems small and a matter of luck. When you're going good teammates and coaches say "stay hot" and your confidence builds. The ball finds open space. A player loses their footing or makes an error. You just keep getting on base and feel like you can do no wrong.

It's kinda like teaching. I say this after a "mid" year in the classroom. I was okay. Fine. Sometimes pretty good. Other times I just couldn't find it. In batting terms I probably hit around .250. I've made up this rule that a good day of teaching is when 2/3 of my classes go well. 3/3 is a great day. I can live with 1/3. 0 for 3 is a horrible day and stays with me for a while. The semester average was probably that I got a hit once every four classes. I didn't always strike out the other times. Maybe I grounded out or a kid made a good play on me. There's a lot of factors in performance be it in a classroom or between the lines of a playing field.

I'm helping out the coach of a school baseball team this season. Some of the kids are going great at the plate, a lot of them are not. It makes sense. They haven't had a lot of reps. They spend all offseason inside doing tee work and hitting off machines. You can't replicate the ball coming off a kid's hand or how a pitcher effectively moves the ball around the plate and switches up speeds and pitches. You have to stand in the batter's box, be judicious with pitch selection, get your timing right, swing hard, connect, and even with good pitch selection, good balance, good timing and a sweet swing the ball might still find a kid's glove. 

In hitting, as with teaching, sometimes only a minor correction is required. In batting your timing might be slightly off. Your head movement might be off. Your pitch selection might need improvement. Confidence usually requires a boost. Be careful not to overcorrect. Same as in teaching. After a bad class (or classes), confidence needs a boost. You need a good class. Participation helps. Good content helps. As with hitting, be careful not to overcorrect. Expect the ups and downs. Keep your head up when you're in a slump. Keep grinding. It'll come your way soon. 

Joe Maddon - Use Everything at Your Disposal

Joe Maddon is interesting to listen to in this press conference. Now the manager of the Chicago Cubs, Maddon talks about using analytics while maintaining a human touch. "You have to be able to utilize all that's at your disposal...It's not just necessarily about a number. But the numbers are really good. And they really point you in the right direction. But then again there's human beings involved too...I think you need to balance it between a human being and the number." I like his very reasonable approach: using information to make decisions without losing sight of people.

Two Sociologists Talkin' Baseball

It's finally baseball season! Matt Loveland, a sociologist at Le Moyne College, is passionate about baseball. If you follow him on Twitter, you'll see him occasionally tweeting about baseball. I wanted to get his take on a few baseball matters. He generously agreed to an interview.

I'm making a prediction: instant replay in MLB is going to make little or no difference beyond slowing down game.
— Matt Loveland (@mtloveland) March 30, 2014

So, you get to slow down the game to decide if you're going to challenge? And then not do the replay? Nothing is certain! #modernity #mlb
— Matt Loveland (@mtloveland) March 31, 2014

Todd Schoepflin: So, Matt, I gather from some of your tweets that you’re not in love with instant replay in MLB. Why not?

Matt Loveland: I'm actually a little bit conflicted. Mostly I think it's unnecessary and going to do little more than lengthen games by bringing managers out to question calls they'd previously just have been upset about and fumed in the dugout. I know umpires get calls wrong, but do they get enough wrong to justify these stoppages? Mostly what I've seen so far is managers coming out just to give his assistant enough time to see the replay, and then when it's clear the call was right, going back to the dugout. I know there have been successful challenges, but will replay guarantee they get all the calls right? I'd guess it'll mean less than perfect improvement of a percentage of correct calls that was already high to begin with (I also imagine these data are available or have been written about). I really liked the NY Times piece by Brayden King and Jerry Kim. I don't think fans really appreciate the warts like they ask, but I don't think getting rid of the warts will make the game appreciably better, at least in terms of casual enjoyment as a fan.

How am I conflicted, you ask? As a fan of the Brewers, if replay helps Milwaukee by correcting bad calls that's great (it already has), but as a fan who also just likes to watch random games, I really don't care for the added delays and confusion. Maybe that'll get worked out. More as a sociologist, I guess, I just get annoyed that we sometimes sacrifice what can be a fun pastime for the sake of legalistic certainty. It's the downside of rationalization - it kills the opportunities for spontaneous emotion. At the same time, maybe it'll cut down on managers yelling and screaming and getting ejected which seems like a good thing. But, we all know that's fun to watch...

TS: Speaking of conflicted, I’d like to get your thoughts about watching baseball in the performance enhancing substance era. When you watch games, does it enter your mind that some of the players are cheating, that the playing field isn’t level? Is this something you care a lot about? If so, what do you do with those concerns—do you just put them away when you consume the game?

ML: This is something that I feel like I should care about. I really don’t. In particular, I’m a Brewers fan and the team’s star player Ryan Braun got caught with elevated testosterone levels. It was a lot of drama because he said he was innocent, he won an appeal of suspension with MLB, and then his name showed up on paperwork indicating he’d used the services of Biogenesis – a PED clinic. I don’t care that he used the PEDs, at least not that much, but I do care that I got duped because I believed him. And then I care because why should I care about that, and it just makes it harder to justify being a sports fan, and that makes me sad because I want to have fun enjoying sports. And, why can’t I just enjoy it!?

TS: Do you agree that baseball has been eclipsed by football as America's national pastime?  Is it too obvious to say that baseball is just too slow moving for our culture whereas football is fast, hypermasculine, and hyperviolent, therefore more reflective of American culture and more entertaining for consumers? As an aside, we know most of an NFL or college football telecast is commercials and pauses in between plays. In a three hour telecast you mostly get commercials and announcer blabber, but the plays happen fast and in violent bursts.

ML: I really don’t know about that question. I think the answer depends a lot on the data, and I don’t know which data are right. I know national TV ratings and average attendance overwhelmingly go to football all the time, and it does appear to have the more wildly committed fans. That being said, I also think that baseball is able to put on a lot more games every year. There are only 8 home games a year in the NFL and for several of the teams by the end of the season it’s hard to find fans in the stands. MLB teams have 81 home games a year, and sure there are places like Miami that seem to have real trouble filling the stands all year, but I think that’s the exception. And then you’ve got to consider all the other levels of professional and semi-professional baseball that go on every year. Put on a baseball game and people will come, Todd. People will most definitely come. Other football leagues have never really been as successful as the other baseball leagues. Mostly this question just makes me think of Carlin.

TS: I know you're a fan of minor league baseball and enjoy going to AAA games. What do you like and appreciate about the minor league baseball experience?

ML: I prefer the experience of minor league games over the big league games. Don’t get me wrong, big league play is better, and I love the feeling of a big crowd at an MLB game. It’s nice to be a part of that many people all focused on the same thing and reacting to the exciting plays. Then again, there is something special about being committed to a minor league team. I was at a Syracuse Chiefs game once, it was early in the year and it was cold and rainy. I got talking to an usher who’d worked at the stadium for many years, and still does, and he commented about liking the small crowds because it felt like they were playing the game ‘just for us.’ There is something to that. I think it’s an identity issue as much as about liking baseball. I do like the game, but I like being a fan too, and when you are a fan of something most folks aren’t, I think that’s a nice feeling. You also get the opportunity to say ‘I saw him when…’ once a player makes it up to ‘the show,’ and that’s fun. As a result of following teams like the South Bend Silverhawks and Syracuse Chiefs as closely as I have for the last 15 years or so, there’s a good number of big league players I saw ‘back in the day.’

There is also the fact that I just like having access to a game. That’s three hours that I don’t really think or worry about much else. You don’t even really have to pay total attention. Just sit there, enjoy a beverage or two, and hang out with friends. It’s a great venue for that, and in a way I don’t think football can match. Downtime in a football game really feels like downtime, and when you are in the stands for a televised game you really notice it. Football games have terrible flow, and the TV timeout has to be the worst fan experience there is. This sort of returns to the issue of replay, because what it’s doing is creating new downtime, an artificial disruption, that doesn’t fit the flow of the game.

The End (or perhaps to be continued, after Matt and I get together this summer to watch a minor league baseball game in Buffalo!)