BE DIFFERENT.

Here at the University of Miami, we began our full team practice period on October 4th. In my first year on the coaching staff, I couldn’t have been more excited to get going. With JD Arteaga taking over as head coach, it is a privilege to be a part of a new chapter of Hurricane Baseball and we wanted to start writing those next pages immediately.

We used the fall much like Major League teams and their Minor League systems use Spring Training: to get everyone on the same page, teaching as if no one knows anything as our process of doing so. With every practice, we had a handful of times when we would get together as a group to teach a team fundamental to make sure everyone knew where to be and what to do; to review a game and use its plays- both good and bad- as our teacher; or to explain a drill to ensure it was being done correctly and productively.

A handful of times, while a coach was trying to explain something, I noticed a few guys in the back of the group talking amongst themselves and not paying as close attention as they needed to be. Later, when it came time to practice whatever was being detailed, we screwed it up. Guys weren’t locked in enough to listen to instruction and the result was failed execution. So afterwards, I addressed not the screwup in practice, but the lack of focus and maturity when it was being taught, as that was surely the crux of our inability to do what we were supposed to do in many of those breakdowns on the field.

As I was driving home that day, it occurred to me that the conversation I had with our players was no different than the many conversations I had with the majority of our players and teams for 12 years while working for the Red Sox. And that was the problem.

The next day, at the start of practice, I told the guys that realization and challenged them to be different. To focus different. To have a different work ethic. To think different. All so eventually they will play different.?

If you want different results, you may have to hold people to a different standard, a higher standard. If you want different achievement, you might have to have different expectations, greater expectations. Only one team wins the World Series every season. Just one school wins the National Title each year. Only 7% of high school baseball players will play in college and even fewer will play professional baseball and even way fewer than that will spend a single day in the Major Leagues.

To beat those odds, you have to be different. As in different from the competition. Better than the competition. That’s the kind of different we needed to be if we want to put another year up on our outfield wall. And that’s the kind of different individuals have to be if they want to play in college, if they want to be professionals, if they want to become Major Leaguers.

Don’t be afraid to be different. It may just be the most important key to your success.

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