Archive for the 'Rounding Third' Category

Instant Oatmeal, Instant Coffee, Instant Replay - Blech

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The current debate in baseball is whether to institute instant replay, but only for questionable homeruns. There is, of course, a camp for it and a camp against it.

I’m like every other baseball fan and get completely frustrated when an ump blows a call - especially when the sportscasters SHOW the call was blown within seconds of it happening. But, in more than 30 years of baseball ‘fanship’ there are a few things about this game that I believe are indisputable truths:

1) Umpires by and large do an incredible job - I often marvel at how they get as many calls correct as they do, especially on really close plays at a base - it happens in a split second and yet they call it right most of the time.

2) Umps who have what I consider to be idiotic strike zones at least have the same stupid strike zones for both teams, so it works out…

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I Agree, Trust the Umps!

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I came across this article - and the author has some great points and I wholeheartedly agree with him. We’ve trusted the umps for more than a century - championships have been won and lost, players have gone down in history, children have watched their heroes and baseball has endured, why the change?

Anyway, here is part of his article, you can read the rest at the link at the bottom.

by Josh Millar

Recently, Major League Baseball says it wants to speed up the game. OK, that’s fine. Just have extra bats ready, keep guys in the batters box.

But if baseball wants to speed up the game, it should take a good, hard look in the mirror.

At the start of this decade, MLB decided it wanted to evaluate the performance of their umpires, thus they introduced a system called QuesTech. In simple terms, it measures which pitches are balls and strikes. Doesn’t seem so bad does it?

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To the MLB: Let’s Have Mind Power Instead of Steroid Power!

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Since I’m a natural health professional by trade, I got to thinking on things that could help professional baseball players play better, have better attitudes and ideally, win more games. So, I started looking for information on using hypnosis, creative visualization and the like.

From what I’ve read, psychology and its associated techniques, have been employed - from as far back as 1920 with the God-like slugger, Babe Ruth, to the early to mid-1980s. Interestingly, I couldn’t find much on CURRENT use of techniques such as visualization and hypnosis in MLB.

But, what I did find is interesting…

Baseball is a mental game

“Succeeding in pro ball is 90 percent mental. It’s big,” said Diamondbacks infielder Andy Fox. “Baseball is 80 percent mental,” said one manager, “you have got to make players believe in themselves to perform well.” [2]

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