"Cultivating A Team Identity"
When You are the Head Coach of the Baseball Team it is important to solidify your Teams' Identity & Culture right from the first Practice of the Season. It's important for both Coaches & Players to be on the same page to ens the Teams' Success.
-- Joe Rago (SHS Baseball)
“Play all nine innings.”
For four years as a player and another six as a coach at Rutgers University, that was the consistent theme at my alma mater under our head coach, Fred Hill, an American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Hall of Famer. It wouldn’t be until years later when I had my own clubs as a Minor League manager with the Red Sox when I could truly understand the impact of that consistent message year in and year out.
At Rutgers, one of the things that we prided ourselves on was our competitive drive. For the longest time, I thought it was the on-field translation of that large chip residing on our collective shoulders as a result of our Jersey roots. While growing up in the Garden State did give us a “unique” predisposition, the reality of that competitive drive of the Rutgers University Baseball program was, in fact, a result of the intentional work of Coach Hill, instilling an everyday mindset to every single Scarlet Knight that ever wore the uniform. “Playing all nine innings” was his broken record that we heard ad nauseam.
Coach Hill rarely talked about winning. He was of the belief that if we played up to our abilities and executed the fundamental skills of the game that we practiced day in and day out, then the wins would take care of themselves, as they often did. What he did speak of repeatedly, before games, during games, after games, and around practices, was the importance of competing for the entire game. Baseball is a unique sport in the respect that there is no clock. No matter what the score is heading into the last inning of the game, the losing team has a chance to win…NO MATTER the score. Down one run to start the bottom of the 9th, we had a chance to pull out the W. Down 10 with just three outs to go, we still had that opportunity to earn the victory. Whether it be a Todd Frazier walk-off grand slam to overcome a late seven-run deficit against the University of Connecticut, or a 1-0 complete game gem out of Bobby Brownlie to clinch the Big East title against Seton Hall, we won more games out of sheer competitiveness than most could ever dream.
As coaches, we are a product of those who we played for and worked under. I am no different, as much of my approach to developing players and teams is a direct result of being around Fred Hill for ten years, not to mention a handful of others who have helped shape me into who I am today. Unlike college where the core group of players is together for years at a time, in the professional ranks, I am handed 35-40 players over the course of the five-month, 140-game Minor League season before getting an entirely new crop of players the following year. The makeup of each team, each season, is always different, with players ranging from college educated, to high school draftees, to “peloteros” from Latin America who had never been to the United States prior to the start of Spring Training.
But as different as our roster looks every year, before long, each club every year tends to take on the same look. We play the game the right way. We play the game with intelligence (most nights). And above all else, we play the game with a competitive drive that makes our staff proud. While some years we win more than we lose, and in others we lose more than we win, every year, opposing managers in the South Atlantic League have known what to expect when playing against the Greenville Drive, much in the same way rival coaches in the Big East probably knew they were in for a fight when competing against a Fred Hill coached team.
Every September, while recharging the batteries from the long season, I am able to look back with some perspective on the year as a whole, and every September I am amazed at how each team, with its own unique personality, manages to take on the same look as they had in years prior. A couple years ago, at the completion of my third season as a manager, it hit me how this happens: it all comes from being consistent.
For ten years, I witnessed Fred Hill preach about the importance of playing all nine innings of a game. Ten different years, one singular message. That message – because of its consistency – resonated with our clubs year in and year out and became a staple of who we were as a program and what our identity was as a team.
My message, though very different than Coach Hill’s, comes with that same consistency to my teams, no matter how our season is going:
“What is the best part about yesterday? It’s over.”
Good or bad, win or lose, yesterday’s results have no bearing on what happens in the present. Whether it be individually for one player, or collectively as a team, if yesterday we played the perfect game, running on all cylinders, well then today represented an opportunity to do it again. Again, whether it be one guy or the entire club, if last night we got crushed, unable to do anything right, well then today gave us the chance to right the ship. As a staff, we would not allow the past to affect the way we went about our business in the present. And because everyone on our staff was on the same page with regard to our consistent, daily approach, our players couldn’t help but fall in line.
Over time, the players come to appreciate that consistency. When coming off of a high, we made sure they were grounded with the understanding that there was a lot of work still to be done. If licking our wounds, our players knew that they wouldn’t be walking into a fire storm from the staff upon arrival at the ballpark the next day. Over time, that consistency will shape your players and your program into whatever you want it to be.
While the results can make some days better than others, the model of consistency that we can offer our players will soon be what they become; consistent with their work, and consistent with their play.
