Baseball

[ong45]

When shooting a speed shoot like el prez, do you ever start to reload BEFORE the last shot of the first pass? i sure know how this feels.

In a recent baseball game ( i think Yanks and Mets), the shortstop flubbed a play on 2nd base. He bobbled the ball and i think he might not have even gotten his foot on 2nd base to make the out.

Why did he do this? he was alredy turning to make the double play to 1st BEFORE he even caught the ball on 2nd base to get the runner out.

He failed to pay attention to what he was doing at the time and was thinking ahead of himself. a possible double play turned into 2 runners on base.

This really illustrates why it is important to pay attention to what is in front of us, a lot like shooting in the moment.

James

[Flexmoney]

Nice.

The comparison that I like is in football.

Where the reciever is ready to catch the ball, but starts to turn to run up field. In his haste to turn (likely caused by an Ohio State linebacker getting ready to break him in half), he fails to first catch the ball.

[ErikW]

I think about shooting a lot when I watch baseball. Fielders not watching the ball into their glove reminds me of rushing. I always wonder what the batters are seeing to pick up a pitch, judge its path and eventual location, and hit it solidly. That kind of vision would serve you well in speed shooting.

[cautery]

I think Brian might call this "habit shooting" vs. awareness/focus... The SS has "shot this stage" thousands of times. In this case, he didn't "see the sight lift" prior to changing his focus to "acquire the next target".

Am I close?

OK, so I just read Brian's book through for the first time yesterday...

Man, I dig the way Brian thinks... Great book. (like EVERYONE doesn't already know that).

[XRe]

This phenomenon is the reason for the mantra "Do one thing at a time".

One other cool thing I noticed was that for certain hitters, I could predict their batting success based on how they looked while swinging on deck. I could tell how focused and "in the zone" they were. The first year Mark McGuire was really followed for homeruns, we were watching a game, and I picked up on it. I said to my wife "Watch this, he's going to hit a homer..." First pitch outta the park. Next time up, I said "strikeout...", and sure enough.... It was interesting to watch someone else go through a completely different routine, and be able to visually determine how successful it had been, before they ever began their performance...

[GuildSF4]

I know a few ballplayers that were/are pretty good. They all told me that they practiced batting a lot and one day they were up at bat the pitcher pitched the ball and they saw the stitches and knew how the ball was going to go.

I have considered watching the pitches at a batting cage to see if I can learn to do this, but due to lack of time and the fact that most of the balls at batting cages around here have no stitches I haven't tried it yet. (Would still be an interesting experiment.)

[cautery]

I WAS a pitcher when I played, and typical of pitchers, I wasn't a particularly stellar hitter... Frankly, at fast ball speed, I'm lucky to "see" the BALL, much less the stitches.