I played minor league baseball for 4 years, and I have been giving private lessons for the last seven years. I have recently accepted an offer to be a volunteer assistant at Central Michigan University. I have worked with a world series champion, Little League players, and everyone in between. I cover topics from hitting and fielding instruction down to how parents should use the resources that are available to their kids, and what is going on in the MLB as well. I'll save you money, sanity, and your valuable time, while giving you information that is priceless.
This is usually the thought process of the high school kid who realizes he just spent the last however many years of his life working on his game and just when he became the best player on his high school team he gets to college and finds out his work has only begun.
I saw this happen to people I played with in college who walked in and expected things to be easy and for people to lay down for them, guess what, it didn’t happen. Remember everyone else on that team was at one time in your shoes, they were the best on their team too. As you move up you have to work harder just to play because everyone else is very talented and competitive.
I usually do not use stories of my playing days but this one happens to fit. I was a Sophomore at GRCC and a kid walks in and introduces himself to me. He says “hi, I’m so and so, I am the new starting third baseman”. I laughed and he said “what is so funny”. I introduced myself to him and said “hi, I’m Sam I hit .421 with 7 home runs last year, and I play third base”. He had nothing to say, and it wasn’t that I was being cocky I just wanted to let him know if he wanted the position he could have it, but he had to beat me out and I wasn’t just going to give it to him. So long story short, if you dream of playing at the next level you must put the work in and just when you think you put enough in, do more just to make sure. Also, remember talking about how good you were in high school does you no good. Every player on your team did those exact same things, all your new teammates care about is what are you going to do for this team. A good motto to play by is, if the guy across from me beats me because he is better than me, I can live with that. If he beats me because I didn’t work hard enough, I cannot live with that. Go out there, play hard, have fun, and play for the love of the game.
