Hitting a baseball purely is an amazing feeling, but hard to do consistently. One difficult thing about hitting is that your swing can change. Just like that. Maybe you are pulling off the ball a touch (meaning: leading too much with your shoulder), maybe your swing is too long. This can happen in a blink of an eye. You could be 20 for your last 25 and boom - your swing goes away. Reading a post by Steve Rubel reminded me how important it was playing baseball (and in business) having "perfect practice" so you could minimize the times your swing went bad & have the solid daily habits to quickly correct. Having a mentor teach you how to do this makes all the difference.
Become An Expert With The Power Of Deliberate Practice
During my time with the Phillies organization, my mentor was Billy DeMars. Aside from Bill Robinson, my coach while I was in Reading, Billy was the only guy who could help me improve my swing. The rest of the coaches were "cosmetic" coaches that could point out the obvious in what you were doing wrong without telling you ANYTHING on how to correct it. Billy's routine was having you hit off the tee OR throwing soft-toss. Every swing you would take, Billy would make a comment either telling you what you did wrong, or that you were perfect. More times than not (especially the first few years) he would find something wrong in your swing. Billy preached the importance of being a perfectionist both when you stepped up to the plate and while you were practicing in the cage. While I was living in Clearwater, Florida during one off season, Billy would meet me at the Spring Training Complex and have me hit hundreds of baseballs until my hands bled. (So that Office episode was especially funny to me.) He literally broke down each aspect of the "perfect swing" so that I developed consistency. Changing my swing to be more consistent must have taken over a ten thousand swings. Here are five things I learned:
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