Baseballs' Mental Game: "The One Thing Over Which You Have Absolute Control Is Your Own Thoughts. It Is This That Puts You In A Position To Control Your Own Destiny." (Paul Thomas, author)

About The Character, Danny O'Neill~ From The Book,"Father and Son", by James T. Farrell, copyright 1940.

For three years he had daydreamed of how he would be a scintillating high school baseball star and how he would hit a home run with the bases full. And look at the way he had folded up in a pinch.

Yes, after kidding himself about his destiny, and having the nerve to think that he would be a star like Ty Cobb or Eddie Collins, he was a miserable failure.

Whenever he was in a tight situation, he was a bust, a flat tire. He didn't have what it takes. He was eighteen years old and he was no good. He lacked something - nerve, confidence.

In a pinch, it was always the same. He lost his confidence.

When he didn't have time, a few seconds in which to think, it was different.

That was why he was better in football and basketball than he was in baseball. In baseball when you batted, there were those few seconds and fractions of a second between pitches, when your mind undid you.

In football and basketball, you didn't have the time to think as you did in baseball. That made the difference. And it was in just that period of a very few seconds that he was no good.

Yes, even though he was considered one of the best athletes in school, he was never really going to be any good.

What You Will Find Inside Baseballs' Mental Game

Ideas, concepts and approaches derived from my own experiences as a player, with my players, generated by ideas and concepts learned from Jeff Janssen as well as the book, The Mental Game of Baseball, by H.A Dorfman and Karl Kuehl.

Hopefully these pages will provide baseball players, coaches and parents a glimpse into the minds of some of the game’s great performers and teachers, becoming stimulated to find out more about a players thinking and consider how that thinking might be structured to improve both mental game approaches and physical performance, in this great game of baseball.

Mike Candrea, softball coach at the University of Arizona and the USA Olympic Softball team co-authored a book with Jeff Janssen titled, Mental Toughness Training for Softball.

In the introduction, coach Candrea states that most athletes and coaches intuitively realize the importance of MENTAL TOUGHNESS, but unfortunately mental skills are seldom formally taught.

Some have taken it upon themselves to do some reading in the area, hear a speaker at a clinic, or may be fortunate enough to be exposed to mental skills in a course somewhere.

However, in many cases, mental skills are just taken for granted and it is hoped that somehow they will develop along with the physical skills and strengths.

He feels an area that is deemed so critical to success should not be left to chance but should be developed and maintained systematically, as an integral part of training.

I am certainly not a psychologist, but my attempts to take the information available to me and weave it into my team and individual player preparation on a year round basis, met with great success.

Results such as increased focus in all areas of the game, the player’s ability to realize when they were losing that focus and how to get it back on the spot, not the next day or week, and much more.

I have always felt there is not a great variance in the physical talents of high school baseball teams; but there is a dividing factor in the mental attitude, the effort they give and the mental alertness that keeps them from making mental mistakes.

Baseball's mental game is about providing players with the tools, in all areas, to be successful. Mental skills can be taught, drilled and perfected the same as physical skills, and are as creatable a group of skills as throwing, catching, running and hitting.