Being a Tiger, Eating like Big Mac

Doug Glanville: Lessons from the Times

I know it is hard to see what has happened to some of our most famous athletes in the last couple of months. As if the drug investigation into baseball (Mitchell Report) didn’t expose enough about the greed, insecurity, and rampant drug culture in baseball, now we are looking at athletes that broke records or are knocking on record doors and wondering why their lives are such a mess.

Mark McGwire admitted to taking steroids at various times during his career, including the year that resulted in his breaking of the single-season homerun record. He genuinely seemed tormented by making this admission, one that most of us knew was eventually going to come, but even after hearing the news, all I thought was that this was another question mark about the legitimacy of baseball.

It goes back to the same idea. What are you willing to do to be the best? How far will you go to be a legend? Is it worth any price?

Well, I hope you have limits and boundaries that have been shaped by what you value in your life. Things that you will not compromise no matter what the promise. That is what it means to “stand for something.” This “something” is what you would never give up.

Yet everyone has different lines in the sand as to where to draw that wall. But no matter where your line is, once you give in to temptation and peer pressure to use steroids, it is hard to go back. Once you pop that first magic pill, it becomes part of you and you will now wonder who you would be without it. Now McGwire cannot separate the man on the juice and the man off the juice and that is a bad place to be.

Then we have Tiger Woods. Undoubtedly a force of nature and the greatest golfer on the circuit. He is dancing right up to legendary records set by Jack Nicklaus as a young man. So what happened? His “off the field” choices derailed him indefinitely. Is there lesson here?

There no doubt is a lesson. I still remember my days in high school and I understand how difficult it was to find your social life. You could be shy, you could be a late bloomer, you could be busy with other activities, you could just be scared. It is OK. I also remembered how nervous I was when I asked Christine Saunders to the prom. I barely could speak after she said yes. It is hard in high school.

So imagine you make it to the next level in baseball. Your confidence rises, you can now talk to all of those young ladies that used to scare you half to death. So you keep going, trying for a little cuter, trying to impress your teammates, trying to “one-up” yourself. But will you have the discipline to stop? Will you even want to stop as you keep going until you end up like Tiger Woods or many other pro athletes that have unlimited access to women all over the place. Maybe it sounds fun as a young man in high school. But it is important to pay attention to what has happened to Tiger Woods. It is important to separate ego from learning yourself and other people. Ego keeps score, measures conquests, compares to things that don’t really matter. Ego comes and goes, just like his career came and went in the blink of an eye. If you are rising in the world of baseball, congratulations, but make sure you keep a foot on the ground because there will be a lot of people telling you things and pumping you up, including in your new social circle, but they disappear when the music stops, leaving you solo. Just like Tiger is right now.

But there is always someone around in your life who is stable, who has your back, no matter what happens. Focus on them, listen to them, and stay close. It will help you when the attention gets addictive, the type of attention you may not have gotten in high school and are enjoying for the first time.

Opportunity will always be there socially, but the window for being a pro baseball players will not and even when you take advantage of it, it doesn’t last that long. I saw too many players fall apart from chasing the night life before they fulfilled the dream. The night life is just an illusion, people in that circle come and go, but will baseball be there?

McGwire, Woods, A-Rod, whoever. It matters how you do things on and off of the field. Treat people with respect no matter if you are hitting .400 or .200. Try and do an honest job, so you get honest results. Accept setbacks and struggles, it is how you grow. Have fun, but be smart about it. You can party from time to time and still get your rest.

Now that it is out, was it all worth it for McGwire and Tiger? Breaking a record by any means necessary or tallying up yet another woman is not a broken record at all, nor a score worth keeping. All you end up with is a broken soul and an empty scoreboard.



Doug Glanville joined the Baseball Factory as a Special Consultant at the end of 2007. Glanville attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Systems Science and Engineering. Glanville was drafted 12th overall by the Chicago Cubs in the 1991 amateur draft. Glanville played nine seasons in the Majors, getting his break with the Cubs. He also spent six seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and a portion of the 2003 season with the Texas Rangers. In 1999, Glanville batted .325 with 204 hits, 101 runs, six homeruns, 73 runs batted in and 34 stolen bases. He led the league in singles with 149 that year. To review other articles from Doug Glanville, including his New York Times column, please click here.

Tipping Pitches

Doug Glanville: Lessons from the Times


For the 2009 baseball season, I will be discussing the lessons the Baseball Factory family may consider from my New York Times column, "Heading Home." Your feedback is welcome! Drop me a line at askdoug@baseballfactory.com!

We can learn a lot from the latest cloud over Alex Rodriguez. He has been accused of “tipping” pitches to the other team by using his glove or his body to signal the upcoming pitch to the hitter.

For starters, I played with Alex for a year in Texas and I don’t recall seeing anything from centerfield, but let’s just say for a second that I missed it.

Even so, it is a bold statement to accuse a player of helping the other team, which is one of the worst things a player can do. I also think that he may have tipped pitches, but not for his opponent, but for his own team. And either way, maybe he didn’t do it on purpose.

As you advance levels in baseball, it becomes more and more important to find an edge. There are a lot of ways to find it (that don’t involve bad things like steroids). One way is to study your opponent closely. If you look hard enough, you will see that they are sometimes giving you information that can help you know what they are about to do.

Tipping pitches is something that pitchers and defenders do without even knowing it. As players, we have patterns, we have habits that can be detected by a trained eye. The higher the level, the better the players are at picking up these unintentional signs.

When it comes to pitchers, most pitchers do something a little bit different on each kind of pitch they throw. Maybe they curl their glove when they are throwing a curveball, maybe they arch their back when they are trying to get on top of a splitter, maybe they change their foot position when they are going to pickoff to first base. It is there, you just have to find it.

The more experienced pitchers study themselves just like their opponent would to try and change if they are giving away their pitches.

So as a hitter, after facing a pitcher a bunch of times, you may be able to find something that can help you. Bobby Abreu was the best I ever played with at figuring out a pattern of a pitcher. By the third inning of every game, he knew what the pitcher was throwing with great accuracy.

You can see how this can help you. Not just at the plate, but on the bases. It would be nice to know when the pitcher is going home and when he will try and pick you off.

But pitchers aren’t the only ones who tip off pitches. Watch the defense. Did the shortstop move a couple steps to his left to pinch the middle? Did the centerfielder just move toward the right-centerfield gap on two strikes? A lot of times, defenders move for a reason, they may know what pitch is coming and based on that information, they are protecting against where they think the hitter may hit it. When slow pitches are about to come (splitter, change-up, curve) they defender may protect against the hitter pulling the ball. Just like a catcher may change his crouch because he is worried about a ball in the dirt from a bad curve or fork ball, he usually wouldn’t worry about it on a fastball.

If you are a middle infielder, it is wrong to tip off your own team’s signs to your opponent when it is on purpose. I choose not to believe what they are saying about A-Rod on this issue, but keep in mind, sometimes you are tipping pitches without even knowing it and as a ballplayer, it is your job to know this about your opponent and use it against him. During the game, be a good sportsman, but don’t help your opponent beat your team. When the game is over, if you have a friend on the other team, you can link up after the game. But never tell anyone your secrets unless it is to help your team.



Doug Glanville joined the Baseball Factory as a Special Consultant at the end of 2007. Glanville attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Systems Science and Engineering. Glanville was drafted 12th overall by the Chicago Cubs in the 1991 amateur draft. Glanville played nine seasons in the Majors, getting his break with the Cubs. He also spent six seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and a portion of the 2003 season with the Texas Rangers. In 1999, Glanville batted .325 with 204 hits, 101 runs, six homeruns, 73 runs batted in and 34 stolen bases. He led the league in singles with 149 that year. To review other articles from Doug Glanville, including his New York Times column, please click here.

Diversity

Doug Glanville: Lessons from the Times


For the 2009 baseball season, I will be discussing the lessons the Baseball Factory family may consider from my New York Times column, "Heading Home." Your feedback is welcome! Drop me a line at askdoug@baseballfactory.com!

My high school was in the town of Teaneck, New Jersey and it was a unique place. In 1965 it was the first high school in the United States to voluntarily integrate. This allowed people of all cultures and religions to attend the school.

Today, so much is changing and as a rising high school baseball player, it is important that you see the beauty and the lessons of being around different kinds of people. Maybe many of you are not growing up in a place where there is a lot of diversity, but these days, there are many more opportunities to interact with different kinds of people and it is important that you focus on the fact that we have so many things in common and so much we can learn.

Baseball is a game that has done so much in our country’s history to teach people about what we can learn from diversity. Jackie Robinson was the first African-American to break into the major leagues after years of quiet rules that kept African-Americans out of the game. But don’t think he was just important for the African-American people, he was a hero for all of America because he opened up the world to talents of people who had not been given a chance before. This allowed our great game to see a new perspective, to enjoy a different kind of game, and to see the power of overcoming adversity. Jackie ran hard, slid hard into bases. He was a great spark and a great ambassador for the game.

He also showed us the importance of learning from everyone, not just people who look like us. We found strength, we found honor, we found discipline, we found a passion for our game and opening the door to Jackie is what allowed us to find these things.

Every culture in our country has this kind of story. Whether your parent’s parents came from a far away place in Europe or whether your family had been living in the same house in Nebraska for 100 years. The story of baseball is about things greater than our color, culture, religion, or whatever makes us feel “different.” (So listen to your parent’s stories!).

If you watch baseball today, it is showing us what makes up not only our wonderful game, but our wonderful world of people. So see this as an opportunity to learn from all-kinds of people. You may have a teammate right next to your locker that can show you new things and this same teammate is the person you are working with to win a championship or figure out how to turn a double play. He has your back, you have his back and it doesn’t matter where he was born or what he looks like.

That is the true American story. A story of opportunity, of new ideas, of great games, of different kinds of people working together. Baseball is that entire story and I hope as a young player in this game, you take the time to learn your teammates and your opponents. You may be surprised where this takes you and how much you have in common.


Doug Glanville joined the Baseball Factory as a Special Consultant at the end of 2007. Glanville attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Systems Science and Engineering. Glanville was drafted 12th overall by the Chicago Cubs in the 1991 amateur draft. Glanville played nine seasons in the Majors, getting his break with the Cubs. He also spent six seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and a portion of the 2003 season with the Texas Rangers. In 1999, Glanville batted .325 with 204 hits, 101 runs, six homeruns, 73 runs batted in and 34 stolen bases. He led the league in singles with 149 that year. To review other articles from Doug Glanville, including his New York Times column, please click here.