Recap Show: Walter Beede

Welcome to The Baseball Awakening Podcast where we dive into the raw, unfiltered, unsexy side of player development.

Summary:

On this episode, Host, Geoff Rottmayer, recaps his conversation with Walter Beede of Baseball Process. The biggest takeaways that he discussed on this show are:

• What it means that someone is watching you at all times.
• What travel baseball means and the best way to go about it.
• Be careful of the camps and showcase letters you are getting.
• Understand if those camps and showcases are legit to you by responding.
• Best practices to finding the right team.
• Why understanding the numbers of the college recruiting game matters.
• The academic side of the recruiting process.
• What is means to have passion.
• and much more.

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Email Address: geoff@baseballawakening.com

Transcribe:

Hey guys Geoff Rottmayer here and this is The Baseball Awakening recap show where I share with you the biggest takeaways I got from my conversation the last couple of days with Walter Beede – as well as share how I plan to implement what I have learned with my players that I train at my academy in Tulsa Oklahoma.

Before I get started, one thing I want you to know, is that I want to hear from you because different things mean things things to different people so it would be interesting to see how you guys interpret something that Mr Walter Beede said the last couple of days or what I am going to say today. I will make a show reading off your emails because we cal all learn something from it, so my email is going to be geoff@baseballawakening.com, so send me your thoughts, comment, or feedback.

I love this conversation with Walter, this is the type of conversation I have with parents and its was nice to hear his perspective. The baseball industry is something else for sure, and the culture that some many kids and parents fall for is leaving a lot of people frustrated with the time, money and effort they are putting in. Which is why there is a need for service like what Walter offers, and myself and there are other guys as well.

When I was doing my research, preparing for the conversation, i obviously visit the website where i came up with my first question – which was about the saying that he has on their as soon as the home page pops up – about watch players walk to the field, how they warm up and interact – he can tell right away how committed a guy is. This is a conversation you have to have with kids because they need to realize that they are being watched all the time. And because they are being watched, if there are not aware of some of the thing that they do, then the perception that they give off may not be what is intended but perception matters. So if you have a bad day at school, or broke up with a girlfriend, and it shows and this is the coaches first time seeing you – then they are going to read that and it isn’t going to help your first impression. Which is why everything has to be left on the bus and when it comes to game time and preparation for the game, you need to clear your mind and go about your business.

Body language is something most kids do not have self awareness of, so they need to be brought awareness to. Need to sit a kid down and bring awareness, let him know you are not picking on him, but let him know what you see as a coach or parents and the perception one might have if this was the first time they ever saw you. Again perception matter especially when someone doesn’t know you.

And one thing that I see a lot and I bring this to kids awareness all the time, you can tell when a kid wants to be there or not. You can tell through their actions, body language and how they interact, whether they want to be playing baseball right now. A lot of kids, whether it is the reality or not, look like they do not want to play baseball. This start in practice too, if you practice a certain way you will play a certain way. So if baseball is what you want to do and something your enjoy then, you need to give off the presentation that you want to be there, that you have fun, that you are ready to compete and win. Baseball is hard and it harder as you go up, so you can’t really fake it till you make it.

So I went on at ask about the college recruiting process, and how the camps and showcases and website are leading a lot of player to believing that they are being recruited and a lot of falling into a trap that is cost thing them money, time and frustration. Walter, went on to say how parents are led to believe that there is a straight line from high school coaches, to college coaches and to pro ball. and how nothing could be further from the truth. He went on to share that if you attend any showcase, especially the bigger ones, the email list gets sold to college programs and they will send emails out to anyone on the list regardless of where they live. If you paid for one event, especially a larger one, they assume you have the income to attend college showcases and camps. This doesn’t not mean you are being recruited. It simply means that they want you to come to the camps with a some false hope that you could draw attention. I always advise parent to write  letter back, asking them where you fit on their recruiting depth chart and whether you are being considered for a scholarship and now you can get an idea if it was a generic emails sent out to everyone or they indeed have plans for you in the program.  Walter said it best when he said he always uses the 90/10 rules – where he explains, if there is 100 kids on the field, 90 of those players do not even pass the eye test, 10 percent pass the eye test. Of those 10 – maybe 2 are going to be considered above to elite student athletes. So he went on to say, that if you don’t have a skill set/a tool that stick out above the rest and you do not have a plan academically then you are not going to be investing wisely in these generic camps.

Walter explains their is three things that is needed to be able to continue to play the game at higher and higher level, you need skills, you need academic excellence, and you need passion. So I ask him to dive into each of the areas starting with the skill part. I ask him when does this whole process need to happens. And I love what he said when he said that travel ball before the age of 14 is a waste of time. The baseball culture will tell you otherwise. There is where a lot of parents could save money, just by understand why and how these things work and what makes a good investment and what doesn’t. He saids between ages 9-12 you want them to be kids and develop the passion for the game. Then seeing around 13 years old you are going to see which kids want to play and which kids do not. And a lot of the experience that goes into between 9-12 years old is going to dictate whether they want to continue playing. If it is so serious right away, then they may not have a great expierance and they may not want to play and all the investment you put into earlier between 9-12 turn them off the game.    

But he went on to say between the age 13-14 you need to get an honest assessment about where you are and at what level you could play at. You need to find someone that will be honest with you but not only that, but will help you put together a plan to develop. You need a college like training environment that is based on a process and a routines and let a kids go through the grind of a routine and one is themselves improve being of the consistency of the routine. So I love the way Walter broke all this down, so I would go back and listen to this conversation again.

I went on to ask Walter about travel baseball and the culture of travel baseball – make sure you are finding the right team for you and your skill sets, vs playing for the team with the biggest names and wins all the games. I love when he broke it down in saying that understand that there teams with the biggest names might not be the right fit for your son and his current skill sets, which will lead you to committing to a schedule that is is not worth the time and investment it takes to play on this team. It is the Indian not the arrow. It is about the players, no coach or uniform can magically take an average player and make him above average just for being on his team or wearing their uniform.

Because as we went into with our conversation, if the skill sets are not where they need to be, then you are exposing yourself and this goes on to be your first impression. You are better off taking the money you spend on travel ball that you are not ready for, and invest it in training so that you have something worth showing. There are lot os examples of guys spending a lot of money going to these event and not ready and get nothings as there are lots of examples of guys just showing up with what coaches are looking for and lots of things happen very very quickly. If you wait until you have something worth showcasing, then things can move very quickly. I have seen it – a lot with the kids I have trained, especially late bloomer types. So, my biggest advise would to connect with someone like Walter who is very very good at what he does, and there are other guys that preach the truth like Walter, like myself, but find someone that will give you the truth and help you understand what the process is like.

With that, Walter and I discusses how important it is to listen to the right people. There are things you have to do and thing you have to develop that will make you and all round player. So for hitting, you need to be able to develop the barrel control and get the ball on the ground to move a runner over. Yes is general sense, the goal is to get the ball up in the zone and drive it – hit it over the short stop head, but there comes times where you need tog et it on the ground and I think its dangerous if we tell a kid that ground balls are bad, again not the goal but needs to be able to do. There are a lot of people doing amazing work, its amazing what people are doing, but at end of day we cannot rob a what is going to help a kid advance in this game.

Just an awesome conversation about baseball and what it going take, so highly recommend, if you haven’t listen to listen. We then move into the academic part and Walter say some good stuff here, and I learned a few things as well. Full ride scholarship are very very rare, you have heard of guys getting them but they are guys that likely was  a1st round draft pick  and trying to stear them the college route. But even then it is very rare. A lot of parent do not understand this. A play will get more money from an academic side, likely then he will from the baseball side. Understand that GPA, and test score matter. Understand that everything you do in your high school career matters, and that you are it will all be on your transcript. Understand that the active college roster is 35 guys and they only have 11.7 scholarship to hand out. When you have this conversation with parents, they are not really aware, and its important to understand the numbers game when it comes to the odds of playing college baseball, the scholarship, the academic numbers and finally the person stat numbers. You need to understand it all. So again I refer back to the conversation with Walter, listens to part 2 where he talks in depth about the academic part of the process.

Lastly we talks about passion – and understand what that is as he has seen it first hand with having a son that is in the big leagues. The sacrifices you have to make, the things you have to give up just to make sure you get your work in, and get your games in, and get your studies in. There is such more sacrifice and its not for everyone and thats on, as  tell people. Its ok not to love the game that much, and you can still have a social life but the priority is baseball then you need to get all that work in and training in before you go hang out with friends I refer back to part 2 of Water conversation where he talks about the passion side.

This is great conversation that I think all parent s need to listen to. As it can save you time, money and frustration. Make sure to go back and re listent to Walter becasue lots of nuggets. Thanks for tuning in.