When you go to college, and if so inclined, do that sport! Go out for the team! Don’t wonder if you’re good enough.
Playing on a college club is at the least, nice to have on your resumé when you begin a career. Many employers themselves like sports, and as one-time wannabes, some wish they could have gotten farther in that realm themselves!
This is a short piece, so I’m going to concentrate mostly on one sport only here: baseball. Once the iconic American game, and still a good one to embrace, it says here; and again, if you’ve always enjoyed it.
Due again to space limitations, I’m going to skip through womens’ softball teams from different colleges featured in televised tourneys, and which I like watching. If you’re a young woman, dig that particular game, and think you yourself could give it a try at college, why not, too?
Young guys? Let’s talk hardball here. You maybe once played Little League, but then school, part-time employment and other concerns perhaps edged it out of the picture.
So now you’re off at college, and yes, they have a ball team. Too often the young male says to himself: yeah, I used to play, I liked it a lot, but I don’t think I have what it takes anymore.
My advice? Turn out at try-outs anyway! Armed with what? Enthusiasm? Why not? A certain ginned-up confidence? Sure. One’s own innate talent? Yes and yes.
But most important in order to improve, start getting obsessed in a healthy way at this endeavor. Meaning? Meaning learn the fundamentals, while honoring your own particular style, including if you’re a pitcher (better on, say, fastballs than sliders); and especially, at what Ted Williams called the hardest thing to do in any sport: being an effective hitter.
There, too, you must especially be you, but by all means watch the greats and imbibe from them. Don’t listen as much to “little league parents.” More to your coaches.
And most, pay attention to those who’ve executed at the highest level. In that regard you might consider getting a paperback by one of the greatest ever, Ted Williams, called “The Science of Hitting.”
Which may sound like a dull tome, but is anything but. It’s full of interesting material both on Williams’ own struggles, and on other great hitters and their particular MO’s (DiMaggio, Mays, etc.). It’s a very human book, but almost like a class text, too.
It teaches you how to guess on certain pitches (in the very little time you have to commit). How to stride in and use your hip movement, just as one does by the way, in golf.
And hey, if the college has a golf team, and there again you think maybe your 10 handicap just ain’t good enough, think again. In that case, too, I’d go for it, and learn to practice the right things, the way a Nick Faldo or Tiger did. You may not get better at this, another truly demanding sport; but you just might!
Accentuate the positive, as the old song goes. Because you could do much worse with your time.
Like being addicted to social media or gambling sites, or even latte consumption. Minimize or ditch those, and if you have a preferred sport in you, embrace it. That’s a better enterprise by far.
All to the detriment of your studies? Generally not. If anything, having this other pursuit consume a swath of your time may also make you a better student. Ask the busy man (or woman), as the saying goes.
Of course if you’re playing baseball, you can’t just work on pitching or hitting, but also your fielding. I didn’t mean to demean that part of it above. You’ve got to get the right glove, fine-tune your throwing (for accuracy), and … You baseball nuts out there have already got me covered here! But again, obsessing in a useful manner will help you grow in that part of the job, too, and contribute to your team.
How DOES one get better at baseball, or anything else? To cite a great musician, you learn by doing and by getting close to other masters of the discipline, if only via books like … well, like the afore-mentioned one by the late Red Sox’ icon, “Teddy Ballgame.”