Geoff Miller

Archive for December, 2009|Monthly archive page

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Babe Ruth: Sport Psychology Experiments in 1921

In Mental Game Info on December 17, 2009 at 8:04 pm

For my final post of the year, I am including the text, link, and citation to a great find for anyone who loves baseball…an article describing a psychology experiment with Babe Ruth as the subject.  In 1921 at Columbia University, Ruth took part in a battery of tests designed to understand why he was such a great hitter.  The tests included measures of the Babe’s coordination, dexterity, memory, cognitive processing, vision, reaction times, and intelligence.  There were a number of tests also done on his swing, his generation of power, whether or not he held his breath when making contact, and predictions of how far he could hit the ball.

The article’s original title was “Why Babe Ruth is Greatest Home Run Hitter” and was published by Hugh S. Fullerton in Popular Science Monthly in 1921.  The link itself will take you to the web site of Christopher D. Green, at York University in Toronto.  I’ve put a few excerpts on this post, but you have to click on the link to view the photos of Ruth participating in the experiments and read the original captions from Popular Science Monthly.  Beyond my amazement in reading such a treasure to baseball history and the history of sport psychology and sport science, I was amused by some of the language and descriptions of the time.  My brother and I always used to tease our Dad about how he would describe a good curveball by how much “English” the pitcher had put on it.  I see now that this was a common term in the 20’s and his own father must have taught him that phrase.  Same goes for the experimenter wanting to understand the likelihood of a player “pulling a boner”…which I’m sure might draw a laugh or two from my adolescent readers (regardless of your ages!) But anyone who knows their baseball history will recall that “Merkle’s Boner” cost the New York Giants a chance at the 1908 World Series and is still considered one of the worst mental mistakes in the history of the game.

Thank you for your continued interest in the blog. I won’t be posting anything new for the rest of the year, but will be ready in 2010 with more interviews, the rest of the mental skills manual, and more case studies that identify key mental factors and describe development approaches.  Wishing you and your families Happy Holidays.

Excerpts from “Why Babe Ruth is Greatest Home Run Hitter”

The game was over. Babe, who had made one of his famous drives that day, was tired and wanted to go home. “Not tonight, Babe,” I said. “Tonight you go to college with me. You’re going to take scientific tests which will reveal your secret.”

“Who wants to know it?” asked Babe.

“I want to know it,” I replied, “and so do several hundred thousand fans. We want to know why it is that one man has achieved a unique batting skill like yours — just why you can slam the ball as nobody else in the world can.”

So away we went. Babe in his baseball uniform, not home to his armchair, but out to Columbia University to take his first college examination.

Babe went at the test with the zeal of a schoolboy, and the tests revealed why his rise to fame followed suddenly after years of playing during which he was known as an erratic although a powerful hitter. How he abruptly gained his unparalleled skill has been one of baseball’s mysteries.

Albert Johanson, M.A., and Joseph Holmes, M.A., of the research laboratory of Columbia University’s psychological department, who, in all probability, never saw Ruth hit a baseball, and who neither know or care if his batting average is .007 or .450, are .500 hitters in the psychology game. They led Babe Ruth into the great laboratory of the university, figuratively took him apart, watched the wheels go round; analyzed his brain, his eye, his ear, his muscles; studied how these worked together; reassembled him, and announced the exact reasons for his supremacy as a batter and a ball-player.

Baseball employs scores of scouts to explore the country and discover baseball talent. These scouts are known as “Ivory hunters,” and if baseball-club owners take the hint from the Ruth experiments, they can organize a clinic, submit candidates to the comprehensive tests undergone by Ruth, and discover whether or not other Ruths exist. By these tests it would be possible for the club owners to discover — during the winter, perhaps — whether the ball-players are liable to be good, bad, or mediocre; and, to carry the [p. 20] practical results of the experiments to the limit, then may be able to eliminate the possibility, or probability, of some player “pulling a boner” in mid-season by discovering, before the season starts, how liable he is to do so.

The scientific ivory hunters of Columbia University discovered that the secret of Babe Ruth’s batting, reduced to non-scientific terms, is that his eyes and ears function more rapidly than those of other players; that his brain records sensations more quickly and transmits its orders to the muscles much faster than does that of the average man. The tests proved that the coordination of eye, brain, nerve system, and muscle is practically perfect, and that the reason he did not acquire his great batting power before the sudden burst at the beginning of the baseball season of 1920, was because, prior to that time, pitching and studying batters disturbed his almost perfect coordination.

Ruth the Superman

The tests revealed the fact that Ruth is 90 per cent efficient compared with a human average of 60 per cent.

That his eyes are about 12 per cent faster than those of the average human being.

That his ears function at least 10 per cent faster than those of the ordinary man. That his nerves are steadier than those of 499 out of 500 persons.

That in attention and quickness of perception he rated one and a half times above the human average.

That in intelligence, as demonstrated by the quickness and accuracy of understanding, he is approximately 10 per cent above normal.

The first test to discover the efficiency of his psychophysical organism was one designed to try his coordination; a simple little test. The scientists set up a triangular board, looking some thing like a ouija-board, with a small round hole at each angle. At the bottom of each hole was an electrified plate that registered every time it was touched. Ruth was presented with a little instrument that looked like a doll-sized curling iron, the end of which just fitted into the holes. Then he was told to take the instrument in his right hand and jab it into the holes successively, as often as he could in one minute, going around the board from left to right.

He grew interested at once. Here was something at which he could play. The professor “shushed” me, fearing that I would disturb Ruth or distract his attention as he started around the board, jabbing the curling-iron into the holes with great rapidity. He would put it into the holes twelve to sixteen times so perfectly that the instrument barely touched the sides. Then he would lose control and touch the sides, slowing down. Only twice did he pass the hole without getting the end of the iron into it. With his right hand he made a score of 122. Not unnaturally, his wrist was tired and Babe shook it and grinned ruefully.

Then he tried it with his left hand, scored 132 with it, proving himself a bit more left- than right-handed — at least in some activities. The significance of the experiment, however, lies in the fact that the average of hundreds of persons who have taken that test is 82 to the minute, which shows how much swifter in the coordination of hand, brain, and eye Ruth is than the average.

The scientific “ivory hunters” up at Columbia demonstrated that Babe Ruth would have been the “home-run king” in almost any line of activity he chose to follow; that his brain would have won equal success for him had he drilled it for as long a time on some line entirely foreign to the national game. They did it, just as they proved his speed and his steadiness — by simple laboratory tests.

For instance, they had an apparatus with a sort of a camera shutter arrangement that opened, winked, and closed at any desired speed. Cards with letters of the alphabet on them were placed behind this shutter and exposed to view for one fifty-thousandth of a second. Ruth read them as they flashed into view, calling almost instantly the units of groups of three, four, five, and six letters. With eight shown he got the first six, and was uncertain of the others. The average person can see four and one half letters on the same test.

When cards marked with black dots were used, Ruth was even faster. He called up the number of dots on every card up to twelve without one mistake, The average person can see eight.

To test him for quickness of perception and understanding, he was given a card showing five different symbols — a star, a cross, and three other shapes — many times repeated, and was told to select a number — one, two, three, four, or five — for each symbol, then to mark the selected number under each one as rapidly as he could go over the card. He scored 103 hits on that test, which his the average of all who have tried it. But when given a card covered with printed matter and told to cross out all the a’s, he made a score of sixty, which is one and a half times the average.

The secret of Babe Ruth’s ability to hit is clearly revealed in these tests, His eye, his ear, his brain, his nerves all function more rapidly than do those of the average person. Further the coordination between eye, ear, brain, and muscle is much nearer perfection than that of the normal healthy man.

Full Article:

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Fullerton/

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information on Winning Mind performance programs, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

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Mental Skills Manual Part VI: Dealing With Failure

In Tips for Improving Performance on December 10, 2009 at 9:22 pm

Dealing with Failure

Know what to do when you don’t get what you want

The first question players must ask themselves in this section is whether they are optimists or pessimists.  Dealing with failure is very different depending on whether your glass is half empty or half full.  And the way we perceive the presence of “luck” has something to do with dealing with failure, as well.  This section will mostly be about the concept of framing and strategies that you can use to develop a positive attitude, even in the worst of times.

Key ideas:

  1. Optimism vs. Pessimism
  2. Silver Lining and  “movie editing”
  3. Luck = Hard Work + Opportunity + Randomness

Optimism vs. Pessimism

The simplest way to find out how a person will deal with failure is to find out if he is an optimist or a pessimist.

The Optimist sees the glass as half full.  Optimists naturally have positive attitudes and they will notice the good things that happen in their lives.  They may notice when bad things happen, but they don’t dwell on them.

The Pessimist sees the glass as half empty.  Pessimists naturally notice the bad things that happen in their lives.  They may notice when good things happen, but they don’t generally attribute those good things to themselves, often referring to luck and wondering when it will run out when things are good.

It is easy to tell the difference between an optimist and a pessimist.  Ask a few simple questions about how someone’s day is going, how they are playing, how the season is faring and you can know all you need to know.

Building Optimism

Dealing with failure is important in baseball because there is so much of it.  There are tons of clichés about failing 70% of the time and going to the Hall of Fame and so on.  And anyone who has been around professional baseball for any amount of time can get a sense for how drastic the difference can be from the amateur game.  One of the biggest adjustments that professional players make is learning to deal with failing much more than they did in high school or college.  And the difference between the big leagues and the minor leagues can make you feel like you are completely starting over in what you know about the game.  Our first strategy for dealing with failure is to build as much optimism as possible.

  1. Get a notebook and start writing down three things you did well every single day, no matter how bad that day turned out.
  2. This might be extremely difficult at first, but keep doing it every day and it will get easier.
  3. As you continue writing things, you start looking for them all day long instead of just being able to remember them at the end of the day.
  4. Every few weeks, review your notebook to see how much progress you’ve made at noticing the good things and just how many of them happen to you on any given day.

Framing

In my classroom session on framing, I use two movie trailers from The Shining to demonstrate this point:

we decide how we remember our experiences in baseball and in life.

The first clip provides an accurate depiction of the movie, complete with haunting music, dark footage, bloody violence, and general horror.  The second clip is the complete opposite.  It’s a parody of the movie, challenging viewers to think about what it would be like if it had been made as a happy story about a foster father who takes his family up to the mountains to rediscover themselves.  The trailer is sunny, has upbeat music playing, smiles from all the characters, and Jack Nicholson pouring his heart out for his son.

EVERY bit of footage in the happy clip is an authentic clip from The Shining.  Someone pieced together enough bright, feel-good moments to turn the story into something else.

And that’s the challenge that we face in our daily lives…to find the good parts of every story we encounter.

Framing is nothing more than demonstrating a positive attitude.  The optimist has no trouble framing because he is already looking to find the best spin to his stories.  For the pessimist, framing is an exercise that needs to be undertaken so when we fail, we don’t keep playing the horror movie in our heads.  And making that feel-good movie isn’t as easy as just grabbing the good memories and tying a ribbon around them.

For the pessimist who naturally sees the glass half empty, he will need practice at slowly starting to see that there is plenty of water left in the glass and nothing he can do about the water that is gone.

The first instinct for the pessimist is going to be to notice everything that has gone wrong when he is unsuccessful.  So he is going to have to REFRAME in order to make progress until he gets better at building his optimism.

We Frame in the Style we Know

When I first presented this lesson, players were asked which of the two clips they liked better.  One player said he liked the original version, the horror plot, best.  When asked why, he said,

“Because that’s the version I know.”

This simple statement sums up the tough obstacle that we all have to overcome at some point in our lives…our experiences shape how we look at the world and how we deal with the future.  Your comfort zone isn’t always built around things that are good for you.  And venturing outside your comfort zone can prove to be difficult, even when you know that you would be better off if you did.

Movie Editing

“Movie editing” is another strategy that can be used for dealing with failure.  When a movie is being filmed and an actor fumbles a line or makes some other kind of mistake, the scene keeps rolling and the actors just start over where they messed up.  When they get the scene right, they move on to the next one.  And sometimes there are lots and lots of retakes of the same scene. But when you watch the finished product, you only see all the good scenes and the bad ones have been edited out.

Your brain has the ability to edit movies, too.  Here’s how:

  1. After you’ve had a bad day, allow yourself some time to think about the mistakes you’ve made. This first step shows what a tremendous learning opportunity players miss when they “just forget about today and move on to tomorrow” as they so often say they do when quoted in the papers.
  2. Decide what you would have done differently if the cameras had kept rolling and you could have had a do-over.
  3. Make a specific image of those plays done right in your head and really see them play out. If you hung a slider, then replay the pitch and see yourself executing it properly.  See it going to the right spot and getting the outcome you had hoped it would produce.
  4. Edit out the bad play in the sequence and then watch your edited movie from start to finish.
  5. When you’re done, you’ve just seen yourself execute successfully, and you’ve had a chance to fix the plays that didn’t go your way that day.  Now you’re ready to move on and think about the next day’s game.

In my next installment of the manual, I’ll discuss the role that luck plays in dealing with failure.

Click Here for Part I of the Manual, which offers an Introduction.

Click Here for Part II of the Manual, which begins the unit on self-knowledge.

Click Here for Part III of the Manual, which discusses Comfort Zones, Confidence, and Keeping it Simple.

Click Here for Part IV, introduction to goal setting.

Click Here for Part V, goal setting continued.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

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Case Study: Perfectionist

In Case Studies using TAIS on December 7, 2009 at 11:34 pm

From time to time, I will be posting case studies that include sample data from our TAIS inventory.  TAIS stands for The Attentional and Interpersonal Style inventory and we use it with all of our coaching clients in corporate, sport, and military settings.  In my work with professional baseball players and teams, I use TAIS to help players in the majors and minors identify their mental game strengths and weaknesses, then use TAIS data to help them shape performance improvement plans.  On the scouting side, I use TAIS to evaluate potential draft picks, which are not used in a “thumbs up, thumbs down” fashion, but more to help provide another level of detail on who the player is on and off the field, how he will handle failure and pressure, and the best ways to help each player develop skills and learn the game.  This case study is on an infielder who is too mechanical with his actions, is overly perfectionistic in his self-evaluation, and carries too much stress with him while playing the game.  I’m including only a sampling of TAIS scales (there are twenty factors that are measured when someone takes TAIS and a brief description on each so you can understand the context of the case.  Learning a bit about this player may help you if you have players like the one I’m profiling here.

For more information on TAIS, please visit www.taisinventory.com.

Case Study:  A

Position:  Infield

Biggest Derailer:  Perfectionism

Comparison Group: World Champions

Favorite Channel

The first factors I look at when reviewing a TAIS profile are the attentional factors.  I want to know what the player’s “favorite channel” is so I can know how he will pay attention under pressure.  Player A’s favorite channel between Awareness, Analysis, and Narrow Focus (which we call Action) is Narrow Focus, dominating the other two factors in comparison.  This tells me that Player A is detail-oriented and works on the little things when he feels pressure. The 31% on Awareness in contrast tells me that he doesn’t use his instincts enough when he’s playing and relies more on repetition and refining his skills than trusting his ability.

Learning Style

Next, I’m going to look at a combination of scores to get an understanding of the best way for this player to learn.  He doesn’t like to multitask and wants information in small bits, rather than trying to take on a lot at once.  I can tell this from his lower information processing score.  This doesn’t tell me whether a person is smart or not, it tells me how that person approaches a new problem. I’m also going to consider his analysis score and his decision-making style to see how quickly he makes up his mind and how much he enjoys thinking in big picture terms. Both scores confirm the “one thing at a time” approach, so I know that Player A prefers to master skills in a slow, methodical fashion.

Competitiveness

Our measure of physical competitiveness tells us how much a player is willing to sacrifice his body to win.  In simple terms, this is our measure of “no pain, no gain.”  Player A is willing to do whatever it takes to be a winner.

Decision Making Style

This is the signature sign of a perfectionist.  Decision Making Style tells me how quickly a person commits to a decision.  You can think of the score as the amount of time it takes to make up your mind.  So a low score means you are a fast decision-maker and a high score means you are a slow one.  The higher the score, the more a person will second-guess him or herself and/or continue thinking about whether they made the right decision.  The extremes on this factor point out well that there are no “good” scores on TAIS, only preferences that carry strengths and consequences to them depending on when they are used.  Low scorers on decision-making style are more interested in speed than accuracy.  High scorers want to know that they made the right decision, even if it takes a little longer…which is why strong perfectionists typically have high scores on this factor.  Player A scores 85% on Decision Making Style, which is still in the normal range for a world class athlete, but most world class athletes are too perfectionistic.

Summary

Player A has a classic grinding, hard-nosed style that includes a bit too much perfectionism.  He is extremely focused and detail-oriented, needing to develop more feel for the game and trust his gut more instead of playing by numbers.  He would benefit from setting goals that are based on process rather than outcome and he will need help letting go of mistakes and staying positive.  His best performances will come when he gets comfortable in his environment and starts giving himself a break.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information on using TAIS with your players, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

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Interview: Freddy Sanchez, 2006 NL Batting Champion

In Interviews on December 3, 2009 at 7:50 pm

Freddy Sanchez, 2B, SF Giants, 2006 NL Batting Champion, NL All-Star 2006, 2007

Freddy Sanchez was drafted in the 11th Round of the 2000 Draft by the Boston Red Sox.  He grew up in Burbank, CA and attended Glendale Community College, Dallas Baptist University, and was drafted as a senior at Oklahoma City University.  He made his major league debut with Boston in 2002 and was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2003.  He spent 2005, his first full season in the majors, in a utility role and didn’t earn an every day starting job until May of 2006, when starting 3B, Joe Randa, was injured.  2006 was a storybook season for Freddy, who went from a back-up to a batting champion.  He had 200 hits, led the National League with a .344 average and also led the league with 53 doubles.  He was an All-Star in 2006 and 2007 and has a career batting average of .299.  In 2009, Freddy was traded to the San Francisco Giants and he signed a two-year extension with the Giants on Oct. 31.  Freddy’s 2006 season demonstrates his strengths as a hitter, lots of contact, line-drives, and gap power.  He shares his thoughts on winning the batting title, ideas on hitting, and the importance of confidence.

Geoff Miller: What memories stand out most from the year you won the batting title?  What was the last week of the season like for you knowing that you were close?

Freddy Sanchez: The thing that stands out the most was how the fans came together.  Obviously, we weren’t having a great year, but the fans really got behind me and the support they gave me was great.  I started out as a utility guy that year.  Joe Randa, unfortunately got hurt and you don’t want anyone on your team to get hurt, but I remember how supportive he was, even after he got healthy.  He really helped me out a lot and was a great teammate and is a great person.

The last week was a bit tougher because it didn’t really matter what I was hitting until that last week and that’s when I started to realize that this is something that could be possible.  I hadn’t thought about it the whole season until then and I started to feel the race at that point.  I had a lot of nerves going, especially the last day of the season.  But that day, I talked to Jack Wilson and he helped me relax.  I felt like moving around a lot and was anxious, but I decided that I was just going to play ping pong in the clubhouse and treat it like any other day.  Jack and I just played ping pong for hours and that was the most relaxed I’d been all week.

GM: Which is more important for you as a hitter, seeing the ball well or your timing?

FS: For me, it’s seeing the ball well.  You need both of those things to succeed in baseball and early on in the season, I would say that it’s timing.  But as the season goes on, you get your timing down and once you get comfortable in the daily routine of the season, seeing the ball well is more important.

GM: What do you do to maintain confidence throughout the season?

FS: There are so many ups and downs in baseball and one day you can have a great game and the next you can go 0-5 with 4 strikeouts.  You have to know that you’re going to keep your confidence up every day.  I pray every night and that keeps me believing in myself and giving me the strength to play hard.  I just focus on staying healthy and staying strong.  There are times when you aren’t 100% physically and it gets harder to stay confident. But keeping my routine and getting into the cage really help me maintain that.

GM: When you were a young player in the big leagues, who would you say taught you the things you needed to know about being a good teammate, being a leader, being a good big leaguer?

FS: The person that took me under his wing, even though we are the same age, is Jack.  He had been in the big leagues for a while when I got there.  He let me live with him, he took ground balls with me, he was the biggest influence in my baseball career.

GM: How do preparation and routine work for you and have you changed any of your preparation or routines as you have established yourself as a veteran in the big leagues?

FS: Your success as a player is going to come from your preparation and routine.  I like to have a routine that I do every day and I know that if I have prepared, then I can go out and play and know that I did the best I could do that day.   There have been some changes to my routine, as I have gotten older.  When I was younger I might go in the cage and take 500 swings, but now I know that I have to do what’s best for me so I don’t tire myself out.  The preparation doesn’t change on a daily basis, but it does change over time.

GM: What is the most important mental game lesson you have learned in your career?

FS: There are so many things that I’ve learned, but I think the most important is not to get too down mentally and emotionally when things aren’t going well.   You have to try to stay positive and confident no matter what is happening.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

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More Goal Setting: Mental Skills Manual, Part V

In Tips for Improving Performance on December 2, 2009 at 8:07 pm

Letting Go

A big obstacle that gets in the way of people getting what they want is the tremendous need to be in control of our destinies.  It is difficult for an intelligent, ambitious person (the kind of person who sets lofty goals and expects them to be attained) to be okay not knowing how every step along the way toward that goal will be taken.  This is an unrealistic burden and it is compounded by another obstacle:

we have a hard time saying “I Don’t Know”!

It’s not good enough to tell yourself that you’re going to get to the big leagues…you want to map out every promotion, know how you’re going to adjust your swing, develop your change up, learn to anticipate hitters’ tendencies, etc. and you want to know when these things will happen consistently.  Traditional goal-setting encourages the micro-managing of the how and when of accomplishing a task.  My approach for setting goals follows a formula that does not ask you to know how or when you will get what you want.  And this should relieve a tremendous burden that keeps many people from realizing their full potential.

Set the Bar as High as You Can

Follow this formula to achieve your goal:

  1. Make a Declaration (Formally State What You Want.)
  2. Acknowledge that you don’t know HOW and WHEN you are going to get what you want.
  3. Decide on the FIRST simple thing you need to do to get you closer to achieving this goal.
  4. Start working hard on this ONE THING until you feel like you’ve mastered it.
  5. Decide on the NEXT simple thing you need to do.
  6. As you continue this process, the next step will make itself clear.

This formula has elements used in The Secret and in a concept created by Jim Collins (author of Good to Great), called a BHAG.

BHAG:          Big Hairy Audacious Goal

Sample BHAG:  John F. Kennedy declares to the people of the United States that we will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

You might not have any idea how you are going to achieve your goal at step one.  You may not even know what step three will be when you’re at step one, but by the time you finish step two, your next step will emerge.  Allowing yourself the freedom to work on mastering the simple goal that you find yourself on in the present is the letting go you need to find the answers along the way.

Sample Goal Script

Goal:  Make it to the big leagues

  1. I have no idea HOW or WHEN I will make it to the big leagues. But I KNOW that I will.
  2. I know that the first thing I need to do is to develop better fastball command.
  3. I am going to work on throwing my fastball to both sides of the plate in my bullpens.

Click Here for Part I of the Manual, which offers an Introduction.

Click Here for Part II of the Manual, which begins the unit on self-knowledge.

Click Here for Part III of the Manual, which discusses Comfort Zones, Confidence, and Keeping it Simple.

Click Here for Part IV, introduction to goal setting.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

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