If you’ve played baseball, you know how frustrating it can be. I don’t care if it’s little league, club ball, high school, or college – which is where my career ended. It is a game of constant failure, and it can beat you up. I’m sure professional ballplayers would say the same.

 

It can also be incredibly fun and rewarding. It can introduce you to some of your best friends, and it can challenge you to grow in ways that can only come from playing competitive sports. Baseball is a game of constant failure but also constant growth and immense joy.

 

What does this sound like? To me, it sounds like a wave. At the beach, the water will be calm. Then, it will gather until it forms the tall face of a wave. And then, it will crash, and the water will be calm again.

 

For most of my career, I spent my time in two parts of the wave: the gathering and the crashing. If I got three hits? Happy for the rest of the night. If I hit a homer or threw a runner out stealing? Even better. But if I struck out a few times, or if I didn’t block a ball that allowed a key baserunner to advance? That was the crash. Poor mood for the rest of the evening, questioning my ability, using a microscope to scrutinize a couple of moments of failure while ignoring the bigger picture.

 

This explains why I never felt like I performed my best until college. It is why I always felt like I had more to give, but rather than the other team preventing me from getting there, it was me who was getting in my own way. The highs and the lows, the feelings of greatness at times, and the feelings of negativity at others - those dictated my career. It was when I got to Pepperdine University – where, go figure, the mascot was “The Waves” – that I became conscious of these mental pitfalls and began taking action to steer clear of them.

 

My freshman year at Pepperdine, I sought out advice from the older players as much as I could. One player, in particular, Austin Davidson, became a mentor for me. Austin was our best hitter and a nationally known talent, who would soon go on to sign with the Washington Nationals and play several years of professional baseball.

 

Anybody who spent time around Austin quickly realized that he was one of the most mentally steady ballplayers on the field. If he didn’t get a hit or made an error, his mood was exactly the same as when he hit a home run. Everything he did had a purpose, and he wore nothing on his sleeve. In other words, his emotions never once got the best of him.

 

Austin taught me more things than I can possibly include here about the physical and mental parts of the game, but the lesson that stuck with me the most was to “ride the wave.” He would always tell me that the game will be up and down, but it is our job to stay steady and stay even. We had to ride the wave.

 

This was a powerful lesson and one that took a surprising amount of focus and effort. I don’t think that I ever truly mastered it the way he did, but it became a conscious part of my game at all times. If you get a hit, stay neutral. There’s more game to be played. If you make a mistake, stay neutral. There’s more game to be played. And the game is too damn hard to play at the mercy of your emotions.

 

Riding the wave and staying level was tough to force myself to do during the game, and I found that, especially when things weren’t going well, it was an uphill battle. I consulted with Austin and other players on the team and also read books (i.e., The Mental Game of Baseball by Harvey Dorfman) to help manage negativity and achieve a state of “flow” as much as possible. This made me realize three things:

 

1) I had racing thoughts prior to competition.

2) My intelligence worked against me as often as it worked for me.

3) I wasn’t documenting the thoughts that helped me perform at my best.

 

Throughout my freshman year of college and beyond, I felt it vital that I change these three things, lest I continue not playing to the level I felt I was capable.

 

The racing thoughts I had prior to competition seemed to stem from a few reasons. First, I was just excited to play. I couldn’t wait to get on the field, and this made me feel antsy. Second, I probably paid too much attention to what others thought of my performance. How the coaches, fans, and other players thought of my upcoming performance occupied too much space in my mind. Third, I doubted my ability, asking all sorts of “what if” questions.

 

Everyone’s manner of dealing with these pitfalls may be different, but the solutions that worked for me involved a combination of breathing techniques, attention to my pregame habits, and mindset changes. “Breathing techniques” consisted of controlled breathing during the downtime between batting practice and the game. I’d turn my chair toward my locker, put on some soothing music, and spend five minutes taking even deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth. Whenever my mind wandered, I’d bring it back to the breathing.

 

These techniques were only as good as my pregame habits, though. For years, I’d be on my phone before games, along with the rest of my teammates. We’d respond to text messages, check social media, and so on. If you’ve ever seen The Social Dilemma, you know the lengths technology companies will go to in order to control our attention. Social media, texting, news article notifications, and everything else my phone had to offer kept my attention jumping from one thing to the next. This bled into the game, where I had a tough time staying focused in the batter’s box. It makes sense, though – what better way to ruin your attention span than use a device that is designed to steal it? So, I changed this habit by putting my phone on “Do Not Disturb” before the game.

 

Finally, I needed a mindset change. My perceptions of others’ thoughts (Note: it was my perception of their thoughts because who knows how they actually felt) had no business influencing how I played. Once it came time to perform, I reminded myself over and over that what matters is competing and winning. Competing and winning. Everything and everyone else could take a hike.

Point number two about intelligence is something I know that many athletes go through. Intelligence is a double-edged sword in sports. On the one hand, it allows you to learn from mistakes, apply new concepts, and relentlessly seek improvement. On the other hand, it can interrupt your “flow state” and take away from the natural, athletic movement.

External thinking was helpful for combatting these pitfalls. Those of us who think a lot know that we can sometimes think our way through the movement, so much that the movement feels awkward and unathletic. This can often happen in baseball if you don’t catch yourself making this mistake. To deal with this, I’d take some swings in the batting cage the night before a weekend series without a thought in the world. Maybe it was off the tee, front toss, or the machine. I reminded myself that the only thing that mattered was squaring the ball up, and I took the same mindset into batting practice the following day. See the pitcher, see the ball, and whack it. External over internal.

 

Lastly, documentation was key. For a lot of my career, the best mental cues I had to draw on were from the previous game. If I tried something and it felt good, I’d remember it for the next game and do it again. If a certain mindset helped me, I’d carry it over. This worked very well when I played well in the previous game.

 

Unfortunately, there are good games, and there are bad games. Furthermore, at times there are stretches of many bad games in a row. It becomes very tough to find useful mental cues when the ones you’re using aren’t working. For years, my headspace was at the mercy of the previous game. What I learned in college baseball, though, was to document what worked and what didn’t work after each game. That way, when things went south, I had notes to look back on to get myself to my best again.

 

Riding the wave is a choice. For me, it wasn’t easy, but few things that are worthwhile are. These methods helped me combat some of the mental pitfalls I found myself succumbing to as a younger player and allowed me to be at, or close to, my best on a consistent basis. The combination of these techniques and the “ride the wave” mindset is what I attribute my success to as a collegiate baseball player, where for the first time in my life, I felt I was truly performing to the best of my ability. Perhaps more importantly, I was finally competing against the opponent rather than myself.