Reflexes dictate a sportsman’s career. The natural human reflex is something that all athletes depend on in order to be professionals in their respective sports. Recently, baseball player Jackson Rodgers’ reflexes have been failing him. Rodgers, being a hall-of-famer, had an exceptional season last year. With his batting average at record high, he recalled in an interview that he could see the ball with such clarity as it whirred towards him, that he could see each individual stitch on the ball. However, in our current baseball season this doesn’t seem to be true. You see, Rodgers is in a huge slump in his batting career right now, and it is taking a gigantic toll on him and his team. In our most recent interview with him, he explained that
... pitcher in the league. Baseball is one of the best sports to play to keep you active and sharpen your reflexes. Everyone should try playing baseball at least once in their life. Or maybe even learn to just throw a few different kinds of pitches like curveball and knuckleball, incase their children grow up playing baseball.
Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more specific, objective forms of statistical analysis, the idea of Sabermetrics was born. Bill James, a man who never played or coached professional baseball, is often credited as a pioneer in the field and for coining the name as homage to the Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR. Eventually, the use of Sabermetrics became widespread in the Major Leagues, the first team being the Oakland Athletics, as depicted in Moneyball. Bill James and other baseball statisticians have developed various methods of evaluating a player performance that allow for a more objective view of the game, broadly defined as Sabermetrics.
Mental preparedness separates the average baseball players from the elite ones. A dedicated baseball player shows up ready to play and succeed in whatever situation may arise. Baseball is a mental game, and concentration is key to keeping a player mentally prepared. Baseball is both a fast and slow sport, for it is slow between pitches, but very intense during them. During pitches, it is a players time to regroup himself and think of all the situations that could arise during the next pitch. During the play, everything happens fast, and there is no time to think about what to do, it is all instinct, so the ability to avoid mental errors is crucial. Mental mistakes often lead to physical mistakes, which is when everything goes sour. Mental confidence plays such a critical role in how a person physically plays. When a player is mentally down on himself, it is extremely hard to raise his confidence back up, and most of the time he cannot. A determined baseball player’s mind is totally different, an error is a learning experience,
Through college Eric Davis was a baseball player who was forever looking for a way to improve his pitch, or how he could train better for longer without consequences to his body. “I was constantly looking for new ways to improve my body, or the way I did things. I was always interested in finding how much I could do without causing injury.” (Davis)
At the snap of the ball a whole players world could come crashing down. The game of football holds a whooping 47% of all concussions reported in the world, while ice hockey and soccer trail behind. Football is America’s sport and its athletes become the world’s pride and joy, but what happens when an athlete is injured and is struggling to mentally get better. This topic hits close to home for me because it was the one sport my family praised and adored. My older brother who is now twenty five, played highschool football for the Laconia Sachems. Just the name Sachems is enough to make me get the chills. In 2007 the Laconia Sachems the only undefeated team to go on to win the New Hampshire state championship saw success, but my brother went
Baseball is considered America’s past time. Legends like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and many more have come and gone. Throughout baseball’s history certain players have excelled more than others, and like any sport they were successful by exploiting their strengths. It isn’t the rules, uniforms, stadiums, and fan base that make baseball a beautiful sport; it’s the players. Anyone competing, whether it is at a professional level or not, has their own unique mechanics that allows them to perform the best they can. No pitcher throws the ball the same way as another and no batter hits the ball the same way as another. Every baseball player has a routine in everything they do that makes them special. It has been said that hitting a baseball is the hardest task in all of sports. To accomplish that task, all factors come in to play; the type of pitch being thrown, the release point of the pitch, the break of the ball, etc. All those factors occur before the batter’s swing is fully initiated. As mentioned earlier, no batter swings the same way as another however, the mechanics of a swing is a different thing entirely. The mechanics of one’s swing begins when a batter enters the box and ends when a batter exits, what happens in between is up to the batter. By perfecting a batter’s mechanics while in the box, their chances of making contact increase greatly.
Think of all the times you’ve bumped your head, hit your head or got hit during a sport. Now think, was I hit too hard? Did I do anything about it or did I just continue on with my life? Maybe you had a headache, maybe you felt fine. Maybe you felt a little out of it, maybe you didn’t. Now, imagine that you kept a tally of every time you got hit on the head for your whole life until
When it comes to athletes and their sport, drugs and genetic fixes diminish achievement. The more an athlete relies on drugs and genetic engineering, the more difficult it is to respect his/her achievements. Sandel presents a scenario. Imagine a robotic baseb...
Sports specialization among young people is when a child or teenager trains for and competes in only one sport. They work extremely hard year-round in order to become well-rounded in every aspect of the game. They make sacrifices and put their health in jeopardy in order to become the ultimate participant in their sport. One of the many young athletes who is only participating in and focusing on one sport is fifteen-year-old OJ Mayo from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the young talented athlete who is predicted to be the next LeBron James in the National Basketball Association (NBA). This young athlete provides evidence of striving for perfection in this single sport when reviewing his daily schedule versus that of his siblings. He says, “The other kids go home and sleep. I come back to the gym” (Thompson, 2004). He is obviously putting forth a lot of effort in his sport to become successful at an early age.
Athletes train for weeks, months, or even years for one single event in their sport. They are relentless in their workouts and strength training. They go out and show what they can do for everyone to see. But is there more to it than what the eye can see? Mindfulness is a word used to describe one’s mental strength and concentration. Mindfulness is defined as “state of active, open attention on the present. When you're mindful, you carefully observe your thoughts and feelings without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to your current experience, rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future.” (Mindfulness). This is becoming a highly discussed practice used by many successful athletes. Lebron James has sworn by meditation before games or high pressure situations, along with Derek Jeter, and Olympic beach volleyball partners Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings. They are only a few of
athletes negatively present off of the playing field. As athletes train to become more aggressive,
Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M., Smith, A. M., Shaffer, S. M., & Morrey, M. A. (1998). An intergrated model of resonse to athletic injury and rehabilitation. Journal of Applied Sports Psychology, 10, 46-69.
It’s fair to say that a good baseball game can lie in the hands of the pitcher. According to an article by the American Journal of Sports Medicine, 50 percent of professional baseball pitchers experience elbow or shoulder pain due to the way they throw the ball. Because not much research has been done on professional baseball athletes, the purpose of this publication was to find at what point in the pitcher’s technique does most of the damage occur. The study began by taking 40 pro-baseball pitchers, all ranging from the age of 23-33 years old with relatively the same height and weight. Also, thirty-two of the 40 selected are right-hand dominant. Then they placed 3 cameras in different parts of the field. These cameras would take still frames of the pitchers and their technique when throwing the ball. They found that at the point where there is maximum rotation (aka the cocking phase) the distraction force was low.
Sport quotes. (2013, April 30). Retrieved April 30, 2013, from UNT: University of North Texas website: http://sportpsych.unt.edu/resources/athletes/31
In my final season of baseball, the coaches had hired a sports psychologist to help with the mental aspect of the game. The psychologist had us work on imagery and envisioning success, and naturally I doubted that it would help. About half way through the season I finally attempted this imagery practice before I pitched. I held a baseball and closed my eyes. While holding the correct grip for each of my pitches, I envisioned myself successfully throwing all of my pitches to every location of the plate. When finally stepped on the rubber, I found that I had a lot more confidence in commanding each of my pitches because I had already seen them. I felt that this had a significant impact on my performance, so I continued this practice for the remainder of my career. This was an example of personal mastery for me, because it helped me envision what I needed to do in order to achieve my