← Most Valuable Agent with Matt Hannaford
Most Valuable Agent with Matt Hannaford
Top 5 Traits Travel Ball Players Must Have
00:12:57
Want to know the five real traits of big league cool for travel ball players? ⚾ Learn how to earn respect and play with purpose. Subscribe now! In this episode of The Most Valuable Agent Podcast, host Matt Hannaford shares what truly sets big...
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All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of the Most Valuable Agent podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hannaford, and today I've got a special episode for you. If you're a player, a young player, you may love this even more. This episode we're going to call the five Real Traits of of Big League Cool for Travel Ball Players. Okay, so why am I doing this episode? I saw this article the other day and it broke down. The five Real traits of being cool is what it was called, but it was more just generally speaking about kind of life. Five Real Traits of being cool out there in the world. But it got me thinking, what's the baseball version of this for travel ball players though, you know, and so at the end of the day, look, I mean, every weekend I'm at games and I see kids trying to copy these big leaguers and you know, they're obviously watching them on tv and I get it, right? Like those guys are your heroes. I was in your shoes at one point. You watch these guys on the field and you see the chains, you see the bat flips, you see the swag, the walk up song. I mean, you know, you obviously want to bring it to your own game, but here's the thing that I want every young player to know. You're copying the wrong stuff, okay? The pros who actually get respect, okay? And I'm talking about the respect that you actually want, okay? When, when I show up at clubhouses or I'm meeting with our clients or I'm at a big league team hotel and I'm seeing some of our guys, it's very easy to see who those guys are that actually get the respect that every single player aspires to have respect from their teammates, from the coaches, from the front office, right? From the media, from guys on the other teams, right? That's what we all want. So the pros who actually get that respect, they've got a completely different definition of cool. They know it's not about the flash of the camera. It's about traits that make you reliable. Right? Trustworthy, dangerous on the field, yes. But a good teammate. That is ultimately what's looked upon at the next level with respect, admiration and cool. So what I wanted to do is I, I, I took these five traits from the article, I stripped out all the fluff and I rebuilt them for baseball. So if you're a travel ball player or you're a parent, this is worth sharing with your son. Okay, player, listen, I'm going to just let you know right now, lot of what I'm sure your parents have told you up to this point. It's hard to listen to. You know, you think you know it all. Trust me, I'm. I'm saying that as a joke a little bit, but I know it's hard to listen to mom or dad. You think they don't know what they're talking about? I'm telling you, inexperience. I'm 44 years old, okay? I was in your shoes at some point. I've been an agent now for almost 25 years. At the end of the day, oftentimes what we say, mom and dad are also saying. Now, I recognize it's different when it comes from us, but just be mindful of that. Your mom and dad. There's going to come a point in time, mark my words, where you call your mom and dad on the phone and say, you know, I remember when you used to tell me this, and I never wanted to listen. You're. You're actually right. You were right. So. All right, without further ado, here we go. Number one, Play with confidence, not ego. In the big leagues, there is a wide range of personalities, right? Some guys are loud and fiery. Think jazz Chisholm, Marcus Stroman. Right? Others are quiet, businesslike. Think Shohei Ohtani. Think Mike Trout, Austin Riley. But no matter how different they seem, these guys all have one thing in common, okay? They walk on the field like they belong. All right? Now, if you're playing travel baseball, you're familiar with college recruiting coordinators and scouts and coaches and whatnot. All of these guys, they can pick up on that before you even throw a pitch or take a swing. It's in your body language. It's in how you carry yourself between innings. And what you need to understand is confidence. The confidence that you have, it's earned from preparation. You've got to put in the reps. If you've done that, then you've handled that pressure before. You've. You can now trust your work, right? Ego, on the other hand. Ego's fragile. It talks big, but it crumbles fast when it's tested, okay? So my pro tip for you is play like every coach in the stands already likes you, okay? I said likes you, not loves you. Because you don't want to have the other impression of. Everybody loves me. I'm something special. No, play like they like you as a player, okay? It's going to make you looser. It's going to make you approachable. It's going to make you more competitive and It'll give you the right confidence, okay? It's confidence. It's not ego. Number two, have fun, but the right way, okay? Now, as I said, I've been around major league clubhouses for decades, and here's what I see. Big leaguers, they love the game, but they don't confuse fun with messing around. There's a difference. They enjoy the moments, okay? They've earned them. They enjoy when they get the game winning hit. They're going to celebrate. They may toss a bat every once in a while, okay? But they're not messing around. They're not jokesters, right? They may cut a few jokes and have some laughs with some buddies after the work is done, after taking a great round of bp, after celebrating the walk off, okay? But they're doing it because of the grind that got them there, not in place of it. The players who burn out early, okay? These guys are the ones that chase the fun. They chase the jokes without doing the work first. So my pro tip for you is you need to handle your business first. Whether that's your pregame work, whether that's in your strength and conditioning program, whether that's from the mental side, your routine with your checklist. Once you handle the work, then enjoy all the other things. Then enjoy the dinners with your teammates and your buddies, then enjoy the road trip, then enjoy the dugout laughs. And I'm not telling you, don't have fun. I want you to have fun, but you got to put in the work first. And when you can do that and then be because of the work, you get the result. You're going to have way more fun than you ever thought possible. It's going to mean more, too. All right? Number three, run your own race. Now, look, the best players in the world, these guys aren't chasing every single new swing or new drill they see online, all right? They're not going from one offseason to the next making a drastic overhauled swing change, okay? They. They're going to make small adjustments, they're going to tinker with things to see what works and what doesn't. But they're not overhauling every single off season or every couple weeks. They're not chasing the new thing. They know their game. They've got confidence. They've tested what works for them, and they stick to it. And along the way, they'll make some tweaks, not constant overhauls, okay? So my pro tip is take what works for you, but be mindful. It's okay to leave what doesn't. And if you want to try out a new drill, that's fine, too. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, move on. But don't follow the trends like everybody else. Were you somebody who immediately upon seeing the Torpedo bat. Oh, I gotta. I gotta try the Torpedo bat. And then immediately upon seeing this, you had to try that too? Look, I think it takes awareness. You gotta be mindful. What I want you to remember is you need to own your process, okay? It's about you, not about anybody else. Okay? All right. Number four, stay curious. Even guys with 100 plus million dollar contracts, and two of them right here, Manny Machado and Joey Votto. Okay? These guys, trust me. You know, Joey's now since retired, but these are some of the most curious guys in the big leagues. All right? Are they making adjustments? Sure they are. But you want to know what they do? They ask questions. When these guys got called up to the big leagues, they asked the veterans questions. They wanted to know, why did you do that? They sat on the bench and literally picked the brains of all of the smartest guys on the team. Hey, I saw you did this. Why? They're trying to understand they're putting themselves in the position of that player. If I was in that situation, what would I do? So the common thread among some of the best players is curiosity. Now, it's not 100%. There are some players, I'm sure, that are really good, that aren't too curious. But the likelihood that you're going to be as talented as those guys and you can get away with not being curious, it's probably not anything that's a likely pathway or a smart one, to say the least. So what I would encourage you to do is you have to have curiosity. The game's best players, they've never. They never just believe that they've arrived. They see their career as a constant evolution. Okay, so my pro tip, Ask yourself, what's one tool that I need to improve upon? Maybe for you, it's arm strength. Maybe it's, you need to work on hitting V. You know, maybe it's creating a routine for pregame. Maybe it's the mental side for you, okay? But get curious and ask yourself, I wonder where I could get better. All right, number five, make it look easy. But after making it hard, okay, that may confuse you. So let me explain. In baseball, smoothest players, right? Most people think, like, shortstop, right? Really smooth. And when they see these players make these crazy plays, what they're losing sight of is most of the time, those guys are often the hardest workers. Now again, it's not 100% of the time, but what you don't see when you just see a guy make a great, you know, double play, flipping it with his glove to his teammate at second base and whatever. Like you don't see all of the countless times and reps and all the energy that they put into actually practicing that play, right? That's thousands and thousands of unseen reps. The pitcher who throws any pitch in any count for a strike, he doesn't just like dumb luck his way into that. That's years of bullpen, right? Bullpens, mechanics working on those things, right? And they're through that process. There have been days where they've missed. They weren't a hundred percent capable of turning to the perfect way every time or executing on every pitch 100% of the time. So part of the process is there are going to be those misses. But you need to understand that when you see the effortlessness that goes into this, it's oftentimes a result of the, the, the brutal repetition behind the scenes. So my pro tip for you is you want to master the fundamentals. Until you master the fundamentals, all the hardest plays, they're not going to look routine, okay? But when you do those toughest plays that you've seen, maybe it's possible for you. And that is the kind of cool that sticks out in a scout's mind. So to close, here's the bottom line. If you want to play like a big leaguer, it's not about the sleeve, it's not about the shades, it's not about the walk up song. It's about the confidence, the discipline, the ownership, the curiosity, the mastery. Parents, if you want your son to really understand what this means, share this episode with them. And players. Ask yourself, which of these five traits do I need to build first? Start there, grow from there. That's how you go from playing travel ball to actually being remembered by a scout. And you never know, maybe one day next generation will be watching you and saying that you're cool. Appreciate you guys joining me today. See you next time.