Your body language is contagious
When you drop your head or throw your arms up at the umpire, you take yourself out of the play. And every one of your teammates sees it, too.
Your body language matters. It affects your own mental approach, and it affects every one of your teammates.
You disagree with the umpire’s call, so your eyes get big and your arms spread wide.
“WHAT??”
What did that accomplish? It’s disrespectful to the umpire, and it tells everyone that you were wronged and that it’s not your fault. And while you were busy reacting, the catcher missed strike three and it rolled to the backstop. You didn’t even notice.
Dropping your head. Putting your face in your hands. Throwing your helmet. Moping back to the dugout to sit by yourself. It’s all bad body language, and it takes you out of the play (it’s hard to see much when you’re looking at the ground). It also tells your teammates that if you’ve given up, they can too.
How you react to adversity has a direct impact on your teammates and on your own performance.
I’m not asking for a big smile when we’re down by 10. Keep your head up, nod at the call and move on. After a strikeout, hustle back to the dugout, then get to the fence and get loud. A silent dugout usually means things aren’t going to get better.
Coaches, this applies to us, too. If we’re stomping around the third base box, we can’t demand something different from our players. It’s something I’ve long worked on.
How do you deal with negative body language on your team?
Still have a question? Ask Coach Fungo.
“If your body language says you've given up, you probably have.”
I wrote the long version of this when I coached the Spiders: Your Body Language Matters on SpidersElite.
Did you make the umpire’s call easy?
Umpires will miss calls, and you can count on that. As a hitter, your job is to make every safe call so obvious that there's nothing left for him to judge.
“Anything that's close becomes a 50/50 proposition, and you're leaving it up to the umpire gods.”
Process vs. results: the 5 parts of process
Most players are conditioned to care only about results. If you consistently repeat the right process, the good results won't come every time, but they're more likely to come.
“I'm not suggesting you shout 'Bad approach, you got lucky!' But at some point, the player needs to hear it.”
The Count
Call balls and strikes and watch what the count does to the hitter. Five seasons of big-league numbers.
New cards land on Instagram and Threads first. Follow along there.
Be the first to comment