Unconventional Warfare of the Mind

Mental Skills and Player Development in Major League Baseball

Have you ever learned more in seven days than the past seven months combined? That sums up my first week of the 2021 Minor League Spring Training for the Cincinnati Reds in Goodyear, AZ. 12 months ago I was preparing to get on a plane and travel here to the Valley of the Sun for the 2020 MLB Spring Training - part of my military transition internship with the Colorado Rockies. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. Long time friend and sponsor, Dr. Doug Chadwick (Mental Skills Coordinator for the Rockies) called me the day before I flew. "Dude (we're both from California), it's bad. Don't come because I don't want you to get stuck here. I'm trying to get out, myself." COVID-19 and the pandemic was here, and it was real. Spring training canceled.

Putting things in perspective

The world changed in an instant. In the grand scheme of things, baseball seemed insignificant, but it continued with a 60 game season because that's what we do - we carry on. Supporting the Rockies remotely? Simply bazaar. Uncharted territory for everyone. Meanwhile, an entire generation of minor league baseball players put their lives and dreams on hold. "How did you get through it?" I asked a player recently over lunch. "Honestly, I had a hard time staying motivated and working on my my craft. I lived in an apartment and I couldn't go outside to throw or hit. Just keeping on was tough - nothing I was doing seemed to matter when people I knew were dying."

One year later - new year, new team and new opportunities. Let's freaking go. Just like these players, I’m a rookie and wearing my white belt - the mindset of novice learning with genuine humility, respect and curiosity. The game at this level, the culture and is all brand new. It's like the first day of school all over again and I'm the new kid. Until I realize there's a lot of other new kids. I was uncomfortable, yet it all seemed eerily familiar. Time to lean in.

The words of a Green Beret - "ScottyMoGringo"

When I feel lost or alone, I seek the people who know and love me and vice versa. On a local hike, aptly named the Victory Steps, I was talking with good friend and retiring Green Beret Officer Scott Morley. Scott and I have known each other for over 24 years - our entire adult lives. We went to West Point and served together later at Majors in 7th Special Forces. He is one of the best men and leaders I've ever met. He asked me what it was like being a "Mental Skills Dude (Scott sometimes talks like he's from California - mainly because he's cool)." It was the first time someone asked me this question. I didn’t have a good answer so I tried to explained. He listened, because that's what brothers and quiet professionals do. He said, “cool, sounds like you’re doing Unconventional Warfare (UW) of the mind? Remember:

SOF Truth #1 - Humans are more important than hardware, right?”

I thought about it, and we continued talking. Days later it hit me like an artillery round - that’s exactly what I do! 

Unconventional Warfare defined

US Army Special Forces (SF), whom I had the honor of serving with for five of my 20 years in the Army (as a Special Operations Support Soldier), are the masters of UW. UW is defined as the “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area.” The purpose behind UW is generally because the people of said nation state are oppressed. Hence, the latin motto of SF which is, De Oppresso Liber, which roughly translates as To Free the Oppressed.

I have found the enemy, and they live in my head

In this case, the people are baseball players chasing their big league dreams. The occupying power is in their minds. As Dr. Stephen Hayes, the founder, seminal researcher and author of Acceptance and Commitment Training refers to, the dictatorship between our ears is as clever, insidious and as oppressive as any force known to man. It thrives off of fear, pressure, ego, greed, negative stress, distractions and self doubt. The savvy veterans of the game, the men who have spent their lives fighting this irregular war in baseball, speak of this oppression openly like it was peanuts and cracker jacks. My locker mate, who happens to be a baseball legend, said it best in that - "baseball is the ultimate mind f_ck. You get called up to make your major league debut only to go back down to the minors the next day. It's a constantly moving target."

The Liberators

He also happens to be a major part of the insider resistance movement. Meanwhile, the Reds have recruited and embedded them with new "baseball outsiders" (trying to become insiders) like myself. We represent the new and old guard of baseball to include the art and science. We're all supported by the local government - the Reds organization and MLB in this case. The auxiliary forces include our front office and support staff. The underground is our families, friends and fans who have a massive role to play - this year more than ever.

The challenge and opportunity is that we as coaches can teach, train mentor and advise the players, but we are limited in our roles.

We control nothing when it comes to player performance because it's a game build on failure. Getting their butt kicked 70% of the time over the course of their career is worthy of the hall of fame.

We as coaches can only influence the process of the players becoming physically, mentally, tactically and technically tough. To persevere through the inevitable adversity of a 162 game over five months amidst a global pandemic and win on a consistent basis - pitch to pitch. The players ultimately have to do it themselves. They have to choose to compete at everything, everyday and then do it consistently with military-like focus, discipline and precision. We can't do it for them. We are simply guides, like sherpas on their climb up the mountain.

Perception versus reality

Just like the Special Operations Forces (SOF), UW Mind work in baseball isn’t like the video game Call to Duty or Hollywood movies. As the guys learn that I was in the Army I wonder what they think I did versus what I actually did. The truth is, that in the special operations world I trained and deployed with, you rarely fast rope from a blacked out helicopter at "0 dark thirty" and land on "the X (directly on the target area)" before silently entering a clearing a building to shoot bad guys in the face. Likewise, Mental Skills work that we perform on a daily basis isn't always standing in the dugout during the game (if nothing else because COVID restrictions) and subtlety whispering something magical into a player's ear that inspires him to hit the game winning home run and win the game. It doesn't work like that.

UW mind in baseball is like SOF, in that the real work is the equivalent of taking a "grey hound" version of helicopter that clumsily lands on a plowed field, somewhere behind enemy lines, with no greeting you upon arrival. You fall out of the aircraft and step on to moon dust when the enormous weight of your responsibility, like a 100 pound ruck, plunges you into the ground like a lawn dart. You look around making sure no one witnessed your complete shit show, (SOF Rule #1 is always look cool - see pic below), before picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and figuring out how to get where you need to go.

Trust and rapport - the currency of optimal performance

As the Army of more experienced and esteemed Mental Skills colleagues in baseball have told me, UW mind work in the Major Leagues is all about relationships - slowly building rapport and trust before all else and that is unglamorous work. It’s very subtle can look lazy or even passive to the untrained eye. It's even harder to do via Zoom that can now be used as a force multiplier.

It's about being present and available without getting in the way - until the players realize you're gone and wonder why. It's knowing how to throw as baseball and playing catch (even though you don't own a baseball glove), shagging balls in the outfield, hitting fungos if you dare, and becoming a fixture of the game like the chalk lines and backstops. Like an episode of Seinfeld, you're having conversations about nothing related to baseball. If the mental game comes up, it's a very small part of the conversation - a micro dose of resistance that's just enough some times.

Most of the time you have no idea of what you’re doing is yielding results. Another friend asked me, "how do you know what you're doing is working or not." My new identity as the "clip board holding, copious note taking, Sport Psychology guy" answers smugly "well... it depends." Meanwhile, the former Army officer in me - the guy who used to make it happen at all costs and break stuff for a living, shakes his head in disgust, Gronk-spikes the clipboard on the ground and disapprovingly walks away.

The game is evolving and struggling in the same way before our eyes. Baseball is hyper obsessed with metrics and results, the science over art, yet the mental game is more accepted, talked about and understood now than ever before. Yet, you still wonder whether you're going to have a job at the end of the season because you can't actually prove you made a difference on the field. Feedback? Not much to speak of early on. After all, doing your job by "doing no harm" and helping players to think less - so they can let their incredible baseball skills out. It requires no thanks or accolades.

The reality is, you do it because you know it's not about you - it's about the players and their journey to the big leagues and beyond. You're reminded that you're making better men through baseball.

The mission is much bigger than you.

What you're doing matters because the game slowly changing in a good way. Your employment is an artifact of a cultural paradigm shift, but that's not good enough. There is a lot of work to do, and the mental game in UW takes patience and persistence - often times doing something by doing nothing at all and letting the game come to you. Even after you're gone, or have moved on to the next Minor League affiliate in your rotation, the resistance and the war will continue in the players minds without you because it's an inherent part of the game. UW of the mind is strange - ugly and beautiful at the same time.

I can't wait to get back into the fight tomorrow because that's what being in the arena is all about.

See you in the arena

Andy