Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time

"Dr Ken Ravizza is who I did my first Masters under at Cal State, Fullerton. He would perhaps be considered the father of the psychology of baseball. This is a very accessible book. It’s very readable, very practical, with a lot of good advice. It’s easy to understand at every level and valuable for every level. Ken has some really good, deep insights. I think one of his best ones is: in order to have some degree of control over your outer world, you first have to get your inner world under control. Now that sounds very simple, but it’s not easy to do. That statement guides all the work I do, that’s for sure. But I think that Ken put it very, very well. Ken also talks about the fact that confidence is overrated, which I think is a great idea. When people hear that, they say, ‘Wait a minute, I thought sports psychology was all about confidence. Isn’t that what people come to you for?’ And it is, we do help them with confidence. But what if you’re out there one day, and things are not going well—you’re playing a superior opponent, you’re having some bad luck, you’re sick, you’re tired, you’re injured, whatever—well, you’re not going to be at your peak. So this concept of needing supreme confidence doesn’t exactly work. “Confidence is not required to win. You can win without it.” Here’s the new concept. You can still succeed. I tell people: ‘Think back to a time when you were in a match and you did not play well. You might even have been nervous, sick, tired, or whatever. However, you still figured out a way to win.’ And they think for a moment, and they start to nod their heads: ‘I’ve had many of those.’ That’s a perfect example of winning without supreme confidence. And there’s another author—the tennis guy Brad Gilbert has a book called Winning Ugly . That phrase I use all the time to encapsulate the idea that confidence is not required to play well. Confidence is not required to win. You can win without it. Is it nice to have? Yes, we’d all like to have it, but we also have all had plenty of times where, no, we didn’t have it that day and it turned out fine. Yes. I think that is the case. Like I said, I think some books in the sports psychology field would not fall under that. They’re full of research, they’re full of theory and maybe they have technique and they don’t talk much about life. However, Ken’s book does talk about that. Also, the Zen Golf series definitely talks about life, which is I think a really nice angle. Ken talks about some other major things: about being present, focused, avoiding going through the motions. He has a number of techniques that help people be calm, present, focused. You’ve got to be in control of yourself before you can control your performance. And he has a really clever but simple concept: the traffic light idea. So: green, you keep going; amber or yellow, you’re cautious or wary, you might even get ready to stop; if the light is red, you definitely don’t go through the intersection. That can be applied to all sports. Let’s say a soccer player has a free kick, or a basketball player has a free throw. Before that’s executed, that athlete needs to achieve a green light within themselves, which is that they’re physically ready, mentally ready, emotionally ready. They’re all locked in, everything is ready to rock and roll. Then they know when they have the green light, and they take the shot. But let’s use a golfer. They’re over the ball, but something doesn’t feel right. Well, okay, they’re not going to swing, they’re going to back away, start their entire routine or ritual from the beginning. Hopefully, the next time they get the green light and then off they go."