Are You Having Fun?

Are you having fun? Do you get excited every time you put on the glove? If not, put the glove away and do something you enjoy. These days we see far too many kids who are not having fun. Are you playing for the pure enjoyment of competing? If practice has become a chore, if you don’t get excited when you tie up the cleats, and if you dread the end of the game because you have to listen to your parents all of the way home telling you how you could have done better, go find something you enjoy more than softball.

We see far too many kids who have an unhealthy view of softball. Every move is scrutinized, every play is analyzed on video, and soon we have lost all perspective. I remember the good old days of sandlot baseball. We just went out and competed. I was going to do everything possible to beat my friends, but as soon as the game was over we all ran down to the creek and spent an hour or so splashing and having fun. If we did not agree if the runner was safe at first, the other team got that call and our team would get the next. Sport was something we did to relieve stress, not a cause of stress.

A couple of years ago I met a kid who just impressed me with her love of the game. She had this “presence” about her that said she would rather be out there, sweating and dirty, than anywhere else in the world. She always seemed to be relaxed and having fun and, I never thought much about her until I saw her again this year, racking up homes runs. She finished her college career as one of the most prolific home run hitters ever, but as I watched her between games, I saw the sparkle in her eyes of a little girl just having fun.

If you, your parents, or your coach, ever utter the word “stress”, re-consider whether you are in the right place. If you did not giggle at some point in your most recent game, re-consider your career. If you find yourself carefully playing “not to lose”, re-consider. Softball is a time to escape the pressures of real life, not a time to create more pressure.

When our older daughter was just finishing her high school career, she was invited to play against the U.S. Olympic team. (Many people remember the second time she faced them, but this was the first time when she was just 18 years old.) You want to talk about pressure!? She entered the game in the fifth inning and immediately faced the top homerun hitter in college softball history. Three pitches later she had a strikeout. Many kids would have wilted, but Angela just turned away and pulled her jersey up to hide a huge smile. Over and over in her career I saw that hidden smile. She was having a blast on the mound.

A few years later I noticed her little sister was feeling the pressure of trying to live up to big sister’s accomplishments. She lost the joy of putting on the cleats, so we encouraged her to find things that made her smile again, like music and photography. She left softball for well over a year. One day she asked to return. I was not convinced this was a good idea, but I soon saw her joy when tying up the cleats and the smile when she ran to the mound. She was in her element and having fun again.

Does that mean we should not work to get better? Of course it doesn’t. If you love something, you want to do it more and do it better. That is why you should work…because you want to do it more and do it better. When coaching, I always told my travel team, “We work hard during the week so we can have fun on game day.” However, we made sure practice was great fun, full of challenges, and filled with little victories. Why would a kid want to do something she didn’t have fun doing?

If you are not having fun, something is out of balance. In an age where we have private hitting coaches, private pitching coaches, strength trainers, high level camps, and huge college showcase tournaments, it is easy to lose perspective and forget why you are there in the first place. When grown men stand on the sidelines and try to steal signals or pick grips, so they can shout instructions to the hitter, it takes some of the fun out of the game. It steals the innocence. Today, that is just a part of the “business” and I resent that we ever let it become a business. But at some colleges it is just that. Win or look for another job. Fortunately most of the truly great coaches have learned that you can have fun, and that having fun in the right ways actually increases the wins.

Be careful not to get so focused on radar speed, speed of the spins, time from home to first, and ERA, that you forget the most important part. When you spend $300 on a bat, $200 on a glove, and $500-$1,000 each weekend to run to tournaments, it is easy to look at it as an investment, another business term, and a distortion of the real reason we should play.

Help your players rekindle the fun! As Pitching Instructors, we want our kids to have fun while learning. We are high-energy, we make a lot of jokes, and stop to laugh at the crazy things that can happen. We celebrate great accomplishments with great enthusiasm, and if I told you which t-shirt is our top seller, you would get a sense of just how much fun we have. It is okay to take the game seriously, but never take yourself too seriously. Are you having fun? Do you get excited every time you tie up the cleats? Do you smile when you pick up your glove?

A parent emailed me about a first lesson her little girl had with us recently.  It was so cute.  The girl told her mother it was “the greatest day of her life”. This year, our students played in the NCAA Regionals, won huge college conference awards, set high school records, and received great scholarships. The honor I will cherish most is being a part of “the greatest day” in a young kid’s life.

***Note: If you are a former college pitcher who would like to make a difference in the lives of kids, see our website for details on our Instructor Development Program. We have far more inquiries than we can handle and we are looking for people who are obsessed with doing it right.