The Team Melting-Pot & Slaking #1

We build Teams, practice, and play chiefly to Win. Win with individual player development. Win with parental pride and fun of association with the rising players. Win with the stories and experiences we take home after each game and effort. To actually “Win” from the game most often, takes a Team. A real Team is not a Team because players join together with a similar uniform. The Team comes from practice, sharing common experiences, placing optimal strengths in one position, while calculating potential weaknesses to be avoided in other positions.

The Team is actually the epitome of a melting-pot. The “melting-pot” term, in the past was a broad reference to the population of the United States, as immigrants from all over the world arrived in America to assimilate into the “American” population and evolving culture. Laws, energies and accomplishments of the growing, collective greatness of America, all were respected in the melting-pot concept. That historic “melting-pot” no longer is generic to our embattled country. We are now a country of competing factions, fueled by selfish, greedy and collectively disoriented politicians who work hard at dividing populous segments into shifting factions of influence peddling power, and then into voting blocks.

But baseball and softball teams will always be exercises in “melting-pot” management, as each year personalities, bodies and ambitions of all types, sizes and shapes gravitate to teams, who will be on the field, hopefully working together for a common Winning goal. As a perennial coach (if you are paying attention), you discover each team is very different from the last, and thus must be coached differently. Teams are presumably coached with the same solid fundamentals of field performance, but differently in attitude and levels of strenuous character building, and most differently in field strategies.

Coaching and Team Building are moving targets, even once the melting-pot of players and associates is defined. Once a coach gets comfortable with the players in their practiced rolls, inevitably things change. The weather changes, injuries change the line-up, parents change, the opponents change, and finally the simple terms of Winning changes. Wins will come in many ways, and the losses will also.

Each melting-pot is coached and influenced to improve, thus gain confidence, and everyone is a winner before the games start. Then a schedule revs up and the melting-pot looks down the schedule to assuage the opponent’s talents as they will meet on the field, one at a time. And thus is the first Team test, to anticipate an outcome of the experiences together. The melting-pot lopes through a few passive opponents, gaining more confidence, but sometimes depleting practice intensity because of the easy W’s. Then the tough part of the schedule confronts a melting-pot, and different players have different reactions, just as in business, life and war. A melting-pot hangs together, melting together unchallenged by serious opponents to progress. The intensity and competition become acute, cutting, defining weaknesses that previously had not shown. Then that challenging day arrives, it’s time; #1 - the top team in the state arrives. #1 always arrives with an attitude, a comfortable, athletic stride that generally speaks for itself. To win, it is not up to #1 to have a poor game, it is up to your melting-pot to have your best game, ever, and thus meet the challenge of the #1 status.

It is always a long way from a wanta-be state of mind, to slaking #1. It is at this lookem’ straight in the eye moment, that you will understand your team and the melting-pot that you think you have been coaching.

“The Team Analyst reports, about #1: In watching them warm-up it was evident this (opponent) was a talented, experienced, and well coached team.”

“Their pre-game taking of the infield was clean and nearly mistake free.”

“Through the first half of the game it was a pitcher’s duel, supported by great fielding from both teams.”

“The melting-pot continued to show very little offense against the amazing pitcher for #1.

“But at the top of the 7th, #1 broke the game wide open with power hitting that continually found the gaps; there was little the melting-pot could do at that point.”

Isn’t that always the way it is? You get #1 in your crosshairs, nose to nose, pitch by pitch, inning by inning. Then they pounce all over your melting-pot level of play, which had become satisfied with a close game, not expecting the butt kicking #1 had waiting for them in the 7th. #1 knew what was going to happen, that’s why they are #1.

So what now? Your melting-pot remains just that, a melting-pot. They have W’s, but they also have seen reality, being they have not matured from a melting-pot to a Team. How do you reconcile who stepped up and who didn’t, and to what degree of adjustments the melting-pot must prepare to gain the skills and confidence to Slake #1. Then comes the second half of the schedule? You’ll play #1 again, at their place.

The coach analyzes the first meeting with #1 as:

So & so, didn’t make this effort.

The shortstop let the ball go under her glove, instead of bending at the waist to ---------.

The footwork at first base caused another missed ball by committing to the play too early.

And the worst fear, WE CAN’T HIT! Etc. Etc.

All are skills and fundamentals the melting-pot has gone over and over. So why now, against #1, does the melting-pot recede and depart from learned and practiced plays?

The reason is: They don’t yet Want It! They are still a melting-pot; where some Want It, but others have not bought-in. And, you don’t go from a melting-pot to #1 unless you Want-It. It is supposed to be that way; always has been that way; and always will be that way. The melting-pot, by its melting-pot nature will have parts that will Win on the coattails of a ringer pitcher, or power hitting SS – 3B – C, etc., etc. but, for some of the melting-pot it remains a recreational distraction, just a game on grass & dirt, with white lines. They do not understand the lasting, nourishing, strength of a winning nature that collects prizes for life, and improves the foundation for bigger, better, more important battles not yet thought of.

The fact is, most Teams are not real Teams; They are melting-pots, where a certain percentage of citizens drag back and inhibit the others, not yet Buying In to the effort, and remaining unsuspecting of the Obligation to Improve any Team they have joined, and thus oblivious to the gifts. The games wait to be taken, even against the #1’s of the world:

Especially against the #1’s.