Switch Hitting

Guest Blogger: Inner-Sports

by Garret Kramer

Several months ago when I was driving to where I’m not sure, a crazy insight about my 15 year old son’s baseball career popped into my head. I envisioned my son Jackson as a switch hitter. Now to be forthright he has fooled around in our backyard batting cage with this thought before, and he always plays wiffle ball home run derby lefty with success, so why not give it a real shot? Jackson is a pretty solid shortstop who dreams of playing college ball, and surely college coaches are attracted to players who can hit from both sides of the plate… Problem is that when I excitingly revealed my insight to my son, he thought I had totally lost my mind!

While at first glance it looked to me that the concept was intriguing to him, in the next instant Jackson reacted and blurted out all the reasons why this change wouldn’t work. He was too old to do it, he’s a natural righty and if switch hits then he would be forced to bat lefty 85% of the time (due to his estimation that 85% of high school pitchers are right handed), his high school coach would never allow it, and lastly, “Dad you must think that I’m not a very good hitter for you to come up with this suggestion now!” To put it simply, the young man had a major thought attack right on the spot. One negative thought led to another, then to another and pretty soon the brilliant insight that I believed would help had been transformed to a threat against his life!

Luckily, I know better than to try to reason with anyone when their state of mind is all over the place, and while I wanted to tell Jackson that I was simply making a loving suggestion, he didn’t even want to look at me in the moment. Calling in the thought police at this point would also pay no dividends because if I (or even he) tried to show him how off his thinking was or offer a solution, his revved up thoughts and our relationship at this point in time, would only get worse. Thus, I made the decision to get as far away from my son as possible, which was easy due to the fact that he wanted no part of my presence any way. The next morning the sun came up, my family had breakfast together, and we all went about our day. Several days came and went with no mention of the switch hitting incident at all. Then about a week later, I was sitting right here in my office and the following text message from Jackson came across my Blackberry: “Shane Victorino (the Phillies centerfielder) started switch hitting 4 years into his professional career!” That’s all he said. And that’s all he needed to.

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Often times, when our thoughts, feelings, or even our relationships go astray, we feel the need to come up with a solution right on the spot. After all, if we don’t feel right, why wouldn’t you want to fix the feeling? The best solution however, is to actually do nothing in that moment, for all we really need is a little space to find the meaning and proper path to any apparent predicament. Our natural state of minds is truly crystal clear, and like a murky fishbowl, if we allow the sediment to sit, the water will eventual filter all on its own… All my determined son Jackson needed was a little time to discover, independently, that trying to find a way to do, is always better than finding a reason not to. Oh and by the way, he’s really smacking it from the left side of the plate these days!



Garret Kramer is the founder and Managing Partner of Inner-Sports.com. Inner-Sports evaluates and then coaches athletes of all ages on the behavioral characteristics that lead to peak performance on and off the field of play. Inner-Sport’s evaluative partner has created the behavioral assessment used at both the National Hockey League and the Major League Lacrosse scouting combines. Inner-Sports and Garret work with Baseball Factory players at select player development events.