When August feels 78 days long
How to stay fresh with tired legs and the finish in sight
The team did not take a normal batting practice yesterday. Ryan Lewis captured evidence in print for ye olde Beacon-Journal here.
Manager Stephen Vogt and hitting coach Chris Valaika turned one of the sport’s more mundane activities into a home run derby and set of mini-games. It’s late August. The team hasn’t shown the same chutzpah lately — not with consistency, anyway. Time to mix things up.
The Guardians responded with hooting and hollering before the game and a thirteen-run outburst during against the Texas Rangers last night. They did it on the night of Rock n’ Blast Vol I| feat. Twin Mustard.
See? Even the promo team is pulling out all the stops these days.
It is late August. June and July? Gone, but both brutal. It wasn’t so much the peak temperatures or the humidity or the total lack of rain but the monotony. Now imagine you are outside in it every single day running the same drills, going through all of the same routines, nine innings today, nine innings tomorrow, nine innings—
You get it. The point is that Vogt continues to impress in his rookie managerial campaign with clever choices like yesterday’s festivities. In other more official realms they would call it a pattern break, but the idea is to introduce nuance or straight-up novelty into something that has become habitual in order to liven it up again. I understand we are talking about baseball but batting practice isn’t the game. A lot of the time it looks like a lot of standing around in the sun while kids and moms stare.
Pattern breaks also help people see something they’ve grown accustomed to in a new light. It might also be an important part of maintenance. Now, you might be mumbling to yourself “How on earth is a bunch of batting mini-games and playing home run derby a form of maintenance for baseball players?” and those mumbles would be long-winded but fair.
My counter-mumble is this: baseball is such a mental game. Because there are 162 games. How you approach each of them matters. The energy you choose to carry and the intention that you set when you step up to the plate or take the field matters. Malaise can crawl into any long-term pursuit but baseball late August is when focus melts and creepers cling.
Someone gets lazy running down a popup. This one doesn’t drop but it gets bobbled and everyone twitches. Somebody stays conservative on the bases with a two-run lead. Stretches and drills might get skipped here and there. A hitch in a swing vines its way into an otherwise manicured game. I don’t have actual insight into team morale this season but these are just examples of the small things that can add up. If too many of these start to grow wild they can choke out a winning process.
And no, that isn’t close to what is happening in Cleveland. I mention it just to highlight the importance of what I suppose we can call team maintenance. A lot of it is having a “feel for the room,” as Hamilton put it on the radio broadcast last night. Few things can perk up a clubhouse of guys who are all dragging a bit than some friendly competition and banter. On the other hand, a winning team that’s feeling tense after a few tricky loses might be one red assed rant from a minor meltdown.
Malaise? Fight it however you can.