On the day that Yankee Stadium opened, Babe Ruth summed up his style with one sentence. “I’d give a year of my life,” he said, “if I could hit a home run on Opening Day of this great new park.” He did. No one knows if that one home run cost him a year of […]
No team is forecast to lose more games than the Houston Astros this season. Experts struggle to find ways to describe exactly how bad this team can be. Yet on one night, the Astros gave an example to anyone in the business of performance. The best team doesn’t win. The team that plays best will […]
To hear some people react to the Hall of Fame voting, you would think that the writers had attacked all that is pure and good. Not so, said my friend and mentor, Fred Down. Fred saw lots of baseball in his time, including Babe Ruth in the flesh, and survived long enough to regale young […]
What does the first day of winter mean to you? Some people think of the long, difficult slog until spring. Others rejoice that the days begin getting longer. For some, winter means ski season. For others, a countdown to baseball’s Opening Day. In other words, it’s up to you. Peak performance coach Dave Cross of […]
What comes first, winning or team chemistry? There will likely never be an answer to that, but baseball writer Joe Strauss takes a close look at the issue of clubhouse dynamics in today’s St. Louis Post Dispatch. On baseball’s Opening Day, Strauss discusses some of the St. Louis Cardinals’ off-season moves through the prism of […]
Today posting resumes after a hiatus to finish a book I wrote with Gary Pritchard, called “10 Things Great Coaches Know.” It turns out that Opening Day of the baseball season, the final game of the NCAA basketball tourney and an episode of “Dancing With the Stars” all intersected. And what unites these three apparently […]
Here comes the next frontier in training. It’s the brain. Evidence suggests that an athlete’s gray matter is fundamentally different from another person’s. And if this is the case, then the brain — more than ever — controls all three aspects of performance: physical, mental and emotional. In the April issue of Discover magazine, author […]
“The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.”— Anon The first game of the big-league baseball season has come and gone, with more Opening Day games scheduled for today. Last night Atlanta beat Philadelphia 4-1, in a result will stand forever. It’s a record of exactly what happened. It is NOT a record of: […]
“Success is due less to ability than to zeal.” — Charles Buxton As Opening Day of baseball season draws near, Mike Piazza enters his second year of retirement, bringing him one year closer to induction into the Hall of Fame. (According to Hall of Fame rules, a player must be retired for five years to […]