By: Casey Fisk

Most of the baseball coaches I know are pretty good. Some are extraordinary. Others are the kind you could, conceivably, read bad reports about on the internet. The third kind isn’t reading this article, so congratulations! You are somewhere on my “pretty good” to “extraordinary” scale of coaches. You care, and you’re looking for the edge to make yourself and your program better. My hat is off to you! You make me proud to be writing to you. But pride is a sin, and so is prejudice. Dang it! Why did I have to go there?

Here is why. You have been in the game a long time. You’ve learned a lot of information from a lot of coaches and experiences that you then distilled into the essence of what you teach and how you win. That’s a ton of work, and what took you a lifetime to figure out, you try to infuse into your players in the shortest time possible.

Some “get it” right away, and you love them for it. The rest, I hope, work hard to do what you’re asking, and you work your butt off to help them. They “can’t hear Jimi,” yet, so you go All Along the Watchtower to get them out of their Purple Haze. Your job is to help young players succeed, and you take pride in that. Oops, there’s that word again

Henry Ward Beecher said, “The philosophy of one generation is the common sense of the next.” That’s true, for better AND worse. Mike Schmidt said, “Any time you think you have the game conquered, the game will turn around and punch you in the nose.” We’ve all been there, so we’re never satisfied – always on the lookout for the next big thing.

To be clear, I am all for innovation and using new means and methods to help players. To be clearer still, not every new thing is an improvement, and there’s a glut of worthless information online. Before buying in and implementing some new gadget or philosophy, it’s wise to ask yourself whether the best in the business did/do it that way and/or would this help us understand what the greats did and how they did it?

In 2015, John Smoltz will become the first Hall of Fame pitcher ever to have had Tommy John surgery during his career. Before you remind me that TJS has only been around since 1974, suffice it to say, the earlier HOF pitchers didn’t need it, or their careers would have ended. Agreed? Cool. The point is that these guys had incredible success AND stayed healthy for a long time. Go to YouTube and click on videos of Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, Bob Feller, Steve Carlton, Don Sutton, Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, and the rest you can find on the HOF roster. I know you’ve seen them before, but take another close look. How many of your guys move like that? My bet is none. Is that how you teach your pitchers to throw? I’d guess not, but why not? If success leaves clues, why are we not picking them up?

I’m not trying to tell you how to coach. I’m just asking whether we’ve become so prejudiced toward our own methods that we’ve found ourselves downstream in a game of generational operator. If we’re not careful, the message at the end looks very little like the original, and the kids pay the price for our pride. What are we teaching that’s different from the commonalities among the best who’ve ever done it did? I suggest we stop teaching that. Let’s take a half-step back from our pride and prejudices, and deconstruct the successful patterns of the most successful players, ever. Focus on similarities among the greats. That’s substance. Dismiss the differences. That’s just style. Let’s be more blue jeans and less parachute pants. Fads come and go, but the classics are always in style.