Take the Swing

Ask a hitter about the worst at-bat of his season and he will not tell you about a strikeout on a nasty slider. He will tell you about the 3-1 fastball he watched go by.

Right down the middle. The pitch he had been sitting on all game. And he took it, because some voice in the back of his head said what if you miss it. Then the count is full, then he is defending, then he taps one to second and jogs back to the dugout wondering what happened.

Nothing happened. That is the problem. He got scared and he did nothing, and doing nothing felt safer than being wrong.

You see it everywhere on the field once you start looking for it. The outfielder who plays a single into a double because he let the ball play him instead of charging it. The runner who rounds second and stops, not because the coach held him, but because he did not want to be the guy who got thrown out. The pitcher who nibbles at 2-0 instead of trusting his fastball. None of those are talent problems. They are fear problems.

Not Fear. But Not Reckless Either.

Scripture is direct about this. “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Read it again slowly, because the last part is the part people skip. Not fear. But also not recklessness. Power and love and self-control. That describes a decisive man, not a wild one. The opposite of playing scared is not swinging at everything. It is knowing your plan and committing to it all the way through.

Which is exactly what a good approach is. You pick your pitch. You get your foot down on time. When it shows up, you go. If you are wrong, you are wrong on the front foot, and a wrong decision is something we can coach. What we cannot coach is a kid who has decided that the safest thing to do is nothing.

What To Actually Do About It

Players: decide before the pitch, not during it. Fear lives in the middle of the swing, in that half-second where you change your mind. Take that half-second off the table. Walk up there with a plan you could say out loud, then execute it. Failing on a committed swing is a rep you can learn from. Failing on a half-swing teaches you nothing except how to hesitate again next time.

Coaches and parents: watch how you react. If the only thing that gets a reaction out of you is the result, you are training a kid to protect himself. Praise the decision. “You were on time and you went for it” is a real compliment even when the ball lands in a glove. Kids play tentative because somewhere along the way, somebody made a mistake feel more expensive than a missed opportunity.

And this is where coaching gets personal, because fear does not look the same in every kid. One player needs you to slow him down and get his breathing right before he can commit to anything. Another needs you to look him in the eye and challenge him. A third one will not let it go until the guys around him are fired up. Same problem, three different keys. You do not find the right one off a clipboard. You find it by knowing the athlete in front of you, then testing it and retesting it to see whether it actually worked.

Eighth Day

It is Sunday. The week that just ended is closed. Whatever you protected yourself out of last week, the at-bat you did not take, the conversation you avoided, the work you put off because you were not sure you would be good at it, that is behind you now.

New week. New start. Go take the swing.

Heads up. Mind clear. Eyes forward.

Walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7

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