A Few Life Lessons

Matt Schilling: From the Batting Cage

I was recently glued to the College World Series coverage on ESPN. It was a great series with a fantastic champion, the underdog Fresno State Bulldogs taking the national title. That in and of itself is a great story and a great lesson. When you get a group of people together who work hard and believe in each other, greatness is possible.

Being an east coast guy, I was actually pulling for the Georgia team to win it all and particularly for one player. Dawgs centerfielder Matt Cerione. Cerione had a rare accomplishment, he struck out five times in one game. Can you imagine, 0-5 with 5 K's on national TV in the biggest game of the year at the World Series. The reason that I am writing about this is because in his next game he went out and had two super clutch hits including a double late in the game that plated two and put the Dawgs ahead.

The mental toughness this kid showed to bounce back from such a dreadful night at the plate was incredible. Many young players would shut down and quit if this had happened to them. But what Matt Cerione understands is that in baseball, these things happen, that you must learn to deal with both the good and the bad. And no matter how bad you are at the plate one day, the sun will rise and you will get a chance the next day. To be a good player in baseball you must be able to deal with failure. Face it you are going to fail a heck of a lot more than you are going to succeed. How you deal with that failure is going to go a long way towards whether or not you are going to be a success in the sport or a failure. My hats off to Matt Cerione...tremendous bounce back.

This April, Manny Burriss was called up to the big leagues to play short stop for the San Francisco Giants. Manny is a local product from Washington DC. I had the pleasure of doing some one-on-one lessons with him at the Baseball Factory when he was just a junior in high school. While he was an athletic kid, he was very skinny and not a huge powerhouse like you might expect a future big leaguer to be. What I do remember about him was that he was working on switch hitting and when the time was up on our sessions, he never wanted to stop. He always wanted more swings and I had to kick him out of the cages.

While I did not think at the time he would play in the majors, I do remember thinking that he had that one ingredient that you have to have to be great...desire. He wanted to be good and he willed himself to be good. To put it simply, he worked his butt off. Many young players say they want to make it to the big leagues, but few truly are willing to do what it takes to get there. Manny Burriss knew what he wanted and made the sacrifices and put in the time and effort to do it. He was recently quoted in Sports Illustrated as saying "practice, practice, practice, drive your parents crazy." That means get off the video games and get off the couch and go work at whatever it is you SAY you want to be great at.

Lastly, if you didn't catch it on ESPN, you can watch it on youtube.com. You will see a 8 minute long piece on a young man named John Challis, battling for his life with cancer. He loves sports and in particular baseball. While his cancer is terminal, his courage and attitude are incredible and should inspire people for a full life time. This young man is incredible. Parents do yourself a favor and make your son watch it.

Lastly I will leave you with a quote that I recently heard:

"If people accomplished everything they are capable of they would astound themselves"

-Thomas Edison

Matt Schilling is the Senior Director of On-Field Instruction at Baseball Factory. Schilling graduated from Coastal Carolina University, where he was an All-Conference and All-State player while being voted the fourth best second baseman in the country by the Smith Award Group. Schilling went on to coach at Coastal for five years, helping them reach the top 25. He is also a former Associate Scout with the Atlanta Braves.