Let me get this out of the way up front—I am not a “music person.” I’ve been to concerts here-and-there, but would rarely go out of my way to see even my favorite artists live. I enjoy a number of different kinds of music, from rap to pop to hardcore to Ska to klezmer, but if you ask me my favorite artist for any of those, I’d struggle to tell you. So you’re not going to get a definitive list of greatest hits here…sorry.
What you will get is a particular piece of wisdom about music that have been attributed to many, but certainly stuck with me over the course of time:
You don’t choose the music. The music chooses you.
More than food, more than art, more than great literature, I think. Sound speaks to us in ways that are so personal, so primal that it makes it less of a choice, and more of an instinct. It can be metaphor. It can be mood. But it chooses us, it hits immediately and deeply in a way little else does.
The importance of feeling cannot be overestimated in baseball. The game is a unique blend of a team game where players feed off each other, and a very individual game where in that moment, be it on the mound or at the plate, the game is entirely in your hands. Rather than tweaking swing mechanics or a pitcher’s arm slot, one of the greatest gifts a coach can give to both an individual player and a team as a whole is crossing the line with the right frame of mind.
In our preseason hitting classes, our lead instructor Dan Pototsky has spent more time than I think I’ve ever heard before about the mental side of hitting. “Relaxed” “Aggressive” “Do Damage” are key words rather than “Keep your head in” or “Don’t drop your hands.” It’s an interesting shift, and one that I think is becoming more-and-more common at all levels in baseball. Because as coaches, we’ve all seen it. That kid struggling on the mound and you come out and say something funny. They laugh, you head back, and it’s like a totally different player out there.
So I asked myself, “How can we find a way to teach this lesson to kids in a way that is personal, fun, and engaging?” And that’s when it came to me–the one thing in any professional baseball game that meets all these criteria:
The walkup song.
Whether it’s the crowd roaring 80’s pop lyrics (notably Michael Morse’s hilarious choice of A-HA’s “Take on Me”) or the call of the wild (thinking Yoenis Cespedes’s “Lion King” so popular at Citi Field), the walkup song has evolved into a signature part of the game experience both for players and for fans. So if the big boys can do it, why not the kids?
I asked each of my 11u players to choose the music that they would want as the tunes they’d stride to the plate with. Here’s what they gave me:
- Jacob — Thunderstruck-AC/DC
- Grant — Welcome to the Jungle-GunsNRoses
- Logan — 2 Legit 2 Quit-MC Hammer
- Matt — DNA – Kendrick Lamar (clean version!)
- Sam — Marquee Moon – Television
- London — Believer-Imagine Dragons
- Christian Lam — Thunder–Imagine Dragons
- JoJo — Believer-Imagine Dragons
- Gabriel — All Star — Smash Mouth
- Frankie — We Will Rock You – Queen
- Connor — Thunderstruck-AC/DC
When we met the week after the list was completed for our winter indoor hitting session, as each player marched up into the loft above the hitting area, I popped their song on. “This your tune?” I’d ask. Without fail, a wry grin would spread across faces. Heads would start to bob with the beat. And as quickly as they started to move with the rhythm, they would dance their way around me to peek at what songs their teammates had chosen.
When the last tune had played, I quieted my phone to a collective, “Awwww!”
That brought out the patent-pending CoachN fish-eye. I had already told them that the one sound in the world I could not abide was, “Awwww!”
“Awwww…yeah!” JoJo smartly added. I had told them how my previous team had learned to game that particular peeve of mine.
“So,” I began. “Two of the songs on our list were chosen by multiple players. Why am I not asking those folks to choose a different song? I mean, shouldn’t every player have their own unique walkup tune?”
The guys went silent for a moment, and then London raised his hand. “Oh, because it was the song that guy wanted?” he said in a query.
“Exactly! We don’t choose the music. The music chooses us. This isn’t about finding your unique song. It’s about finding what makes you feel like you can go conquer the world. Some guys want to be pumped up. Some guys want to be calmed down. I remember a major leaguer who had ‘Call Me Maybe’ as his walkup song. Do you know why he chose that one?”
“He, uh, liked it?” Grant ventured.
“Nope. He said he hated the song.”
No raised hands this time ‘round.
“It was because it was his daughter’s favorite song. So the music helped him remember that there were more important things then the at bat he was about to take. He needed that to stay relaxed and centered. That was the song that chose him—and he didn’t even like it!”
“Can we listen to our songs while we hit today?” Frankie asked. Excited agreement followed.
“Well, we don’t want to bother the other hitters today, so this may not be the right place to do it.”
“Awww…yeah!” the chorus replied.
“Buuuut,” I replied, “I will do two things. First, I want you to hum your music when it’s your turn to hit. Start putting it in your head and develop your strut. Don’t just walk to the plate. Do it your way to the rhythm of your song.”
Mild nods of acknowledgement.
“And, on top of it, how about we make your music our warmup music at every practice. Rather than just run, stretch, and throw, we do it to your tunes.”
“Awww…yeah!”
We tried the warmup music for the first time during a pitching workout, and I think the kids would have been fine with an hour of warmups just to get to listen to their music more. I’m now canvassing parents to see if I can get a boom box for the season, as this looks like a tradition in the making based on my players’ reactions.
Being a good coach or player is as much training the mind as it is the body. We get so caught up in the physical aspects of the game that we often forget the number one thing that makes us actually want to play.
Because it’s fun.
Stop Hitting Your Brother 