At MADE Baseball, heart is always valued much higher than talent. This goes hand in hand with the other two MADE Baseball Pillars of Championship Habits and Master of Mechanics. There are two long winded reasons we have that make us desire and value heart more than talent:
- It’s way more fun to coach players that are grateful to play the game EVEryday. It’s difficult to teach younger players to have this appreciation and awareness and it often is highly dependent on the day to day lives and obviously the role that the parents play at home. Obviously, your players must have talent and ability, but for the special players that show they are “gamers” and have the ability to scrape and claw in everything they do on the field, the talent will be combined with the grit…and it normally ends up being a lot of fun to watch these guys develop and respond to adversity. These are usually your best players for many reasons.Many players can be very talented and make it to high levels of the game, and play with little heart. They may add value to the team statistically, but if they don’t bring an element of that scratch and claw attitude to their team and fellow players, and if they have any entitlement to their character or act like they are better than anyone then they will often bring the team down overall. Some players though, don’t seem to play with a lot of heart and just keep to themselves. These players are often quiet and even keel, and this may just be their natural disposition in the game. Everyone is different and has their own style, but I always want to work guys that really love being there and are ready to do what they need to do to get better EVEryday, and to have a desire to continue relentlessly refining and improving their routine.
- We find that having heart is something that statistically wins more often in the long run. Good things tend to happen to people that are very passionate about what they are doing. We find that players that exude a great deal of heart tend to end up the right place at the right time more often and they tend to make the outstanding play or clutch hit when the team needs it most. Again, this is not 100% of the time, but in baseball nothing is. What we can say is that as MADE Baseball coaches, we see heart win more often in all aspects over the long run of a season.
You can’t expect to keep moving up the ladder in this game and being successful just because you have a good attitude and play the game with heart. You still gotta get the job done and be one of the best on the field, but it’s gonna be a lot easier to do that if you have the inherent vigor of a winner and the heart of a lion who is not willing to give up and is willing to work for and earn all the opportunities that are coming his way. That’s MADE.
-Coach Isaac
