Two things that young(and old) players fear in baseball are getting hit by the ball and failing in front of a crowd. These are normal fears and must be dealt with on an individual basis. Every player is different and we must acknowledge this and provide a learning environment within which a player can learn to overcome these fears. The fear of failure is a concept that requires the belief in oneself and the understanding that baseball is a game of “small failures”. If you look at the history of the game and the statistics of the past, it is easy to deduce that one will hit less than 50% of the time and not make every play. The fear actually is a mental image that a player has created within himself that has no real meaning. One must play baseball without thinking of errors/mistakes as failure(s), but as a learning situation!
Essentially failure will NOT stop a player as much as the fear of failure will. It is very important that young players do not confuse a single error/mistake as a final defeat or failure. As someone once said, “There is no failure, just negative feedback”. Babe Ruth would say, “Every strike brings me closer to another home run”. Players must learn to continue playing and put the past “away” and focus on the next play. A memory in baseball must not include the bad plays but the conversion of these into positive results.
Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, and almost every Major League player has experienced failure! However, none of them allowed the failures to get in their way or path to success. WE are ALL failures, at least the BEST of us are!! NEVER QUIT and remember, “No pressure, no diamonds!! GAGPTH!!!!!