This is an article that originally appeared in the New York Times in 2007. David Brooks was
in Vero Beach covering the Los Angeles Dodgers spring training. This is among the most insightful articles ever written
about the art of practice. THIS is why we, at AcademyELITE
baseball, do what we do...
It's spring training. Dodger's second baseman
Jeff Kent is covering first base. The coach rolls a ball toward the mound. The pitcher scrambles to field the
ball. The catcher yells which base to throw to. Kent runs over and catches the ball at first.
Jeff
Kent is 39 years old and has played professionally for 17 years. He's done this same drill since he was 10 years old,
as little leaguers basically do the same drills the big leaguers do. So...why after all of these years is Kent still
learning to cover first base???
ANSWER: Because the institution of baseball understands how to make the most of
the human brain.
The core message of all brain research is this: Most mental activity happens
in the automatic or unconscious region of the brain. The unconscious is not a swamp of repressed memories and traumas
as Freud imagined. Rather, it is a set of mental activities that the brain has relegated beyond awareness for efficiency's
sake. Foremost researcher, Tim Wilson, in his book "Strangers to Ourselves", cites that the brain can absorb
aproximately 11 million pieces of information per second of which it can process as many as 40. The unconscious handles
the rest.
Baseball is one such activity that is handled almost exclusively by the "automatic
mind." Professional baseball players have exceptional automatic minds.
Interestingly,
A robot or computer can be taught to operate the most sensitive technological equipment, yet no such mechanism can be
built with a robotic arm that can catch a baseball. The calculations of time and space are too many for such a mechanism
to accomplish in time. Baseball players not only do it with ease, they can hit a split-fingered fastball besides.
Over decades, the institution of baseball has figured out how to instruct the unconscious mind, to make it better
at what it does. Jeff Kent is practicing covering first base because the patterns of the automatic mind have to be constantly
and repetitively reinforced.
But baseball has accomplished another, more important feat. It has, over time, developed
a series of habits and standards of behavior to keep the conscious mind from interfering with the automic mind.
BASEBALL IS ONE OF THE FEW ACTIVITIES IN WHICH THE HARDER YOU TRY, THE WORSE YOU DO. The more a pitcher aims
the ball to throw more strikes, the wilder he seems to become. The more a batter tenses, the slower and more tentative
his muscles become.
Over the generations, baseball people have developed a seemingly infinite number of tics and habits
to distract and sedate the conscious mind. Managers encourage a preternaturally calm way of being--especially after
often and inevitable failure. On one play this afternoon, the pitcher threw wildly toward first base with Kent covering.
The pitcher trotted to the back of the line and Kent calmly retrieved a fresh baseball and the drill continued. The
utter indifference of the misque was the key. Everyone "hustled", everyone attempted perfection, the
failure was met with complete nonchalance. Often the lay person will accuse these same players of having a lack of passion
or being lazy. They are merely performing the tasks that the automatic mind will require when it counts. This
behaviour in the face of humiliation and failure helps ensure these players that they will do better next time.
Believe me, the people in baseball have no theory of the human mind, but under pressure of competition, they have
developed a set of practices that embody some key truths.
First, habits and etiquette shape the brain. As Tim Wilson
puts it, "One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change often precedes changes in attitudes
and feelings."
Second, there is a certain kind of practical wisdom that is not taught but is imparted only through
experience. It is based on on gaining sensitivity to the contours of how a situation may evolve, which cannot be put
into words.
In the end, baseball players are like storm-tossed sailors falling and rising
with the slumps and streaks that emanate from inaccessible parts of themselves. The good ones somehow innately, perhaps,
understand and accept the changing tides as they move fearlessly forward. The bad ones get consumed around puberty.
The rest of us rationalists use mere statistics to understand the patterns of what they do.
--David Brooks
