Geoff

On today’s show, we talked with Dr. Bill Harrison and we talk about vision and the role it plays in baseball.

Intro

Welcome to another episode of The Baseball Awakening Podcast where we dive into the raw, unfiltered, unsexy side of player development. Get ready for some knowledge bombs with your host, Geoff Rottmayer.

Geoff

Welcome to The Baseball Awakening Podcast, I am Geoff Rottmayer and today we sit down with Dr. Bill Harrison of, slowthegamedown.com. Again, that is slowthegamedown.com. Dr. Bill had a long bio, but I’m going to shorten it up a little bit, but Dr. Bill began his work in professional baseball in 1971 with the Kansas city royals. Baseball hall of famer George Brett was among had a player that he had trained and over the years he trained many, many, many, many great athletes. Since then, he’d worked with 12 major league organization and many NCAA baseball program. Most recently he worked with the Bluejays and the Giant. He’s also a frequent contributor to the Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons collegiate baseball news as well at co-authoring with his son, Ryan Harrison on three books, how to focus like a pro’s, how to focus: the hitters zone and how to focus at the picthers zone. So with all that Dr. Bill, how are you, sir?

Dr. Bill

Just fine, Thanks you. Good speaking with you Geoff.

Geoff

You too, Dr. Bill, you’ve been at this thing now since 1971 when you were brought in by the Kansas City Royals to do, from my understanding, an experiment. And that experiment started with a handful of guy. With George Brett being one of them and since then you, started working with a bunch of different organizations and a bunch of college programs. And so you would be, you would be considered a visual performance coach. How would you describe exactly what a visual performance coach does?

Dr. Bill

Okay, well, let me clarify one thing. I wonder if it wasn’t brought in as an experiment with the royals as, as it sounded from the standpoint that actually, um, I was very impressed and an article I read in sports illustrated about the kids, the city royals baseball academy, and they had just finished her first year in Sarasota, Florida. And it was, uh, the, uh, the bright idea of Mr Ewing Kauffman, the owner. And so I simply wrote Mr Kauffman a, a letter back to the day. Of course we didn’t have the digital communications. It’s so odd. I didn’t necessarily expect you to ever read it, but I complimented him because not only because their academy was so progressive, uh, something I wish I could have done when I got out of just a few years earlier I got out of school, but also the fact that he was impressed if on selecting players who had three or four characteristics, uh, they didn’t have to be baseball players. They had to have running speed. They had to have a lot or a movement. They had to have throwing arm speed and he wanted 20/15 eyesight. And so that was really unusual to me, is that eye doctors, like, wow, you’re interested in vision. So I, uh, it complimented him on that. And Ah, Lord, behold one morning, uh, uh, in my, Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons my schedule was quite, I got a call from Mr Kauffman directly. We spoke for an hour and a half and, uh, he said, you know, I’m really fascinated in what you can do. And they said the team is going to be in a, the Kansas city royals are going to be an oakland. Um, this is like September 71 and I’d like for you to evaluate at least one player that was sort of the experiment part of it. And, um, uh, I evaluated the player and sit a report and a Mr competent called me. He says, well, can we send Ed Kirkpatrick and our sports psychologists out for a week with you? And I share, absolutely. That was probably in November of 71. And it, Kirkpatrick was a, they didn’t have a, uh, when he was, when he was signed, he was signed as like a, almost like a 17 year old buddy, California angels. But, uh, the royals had picked him up and they weren’t satisfied that he was performing to his level of potential and so sure enough, we found some vision issues and the evaluation, but also was able to, uh, uh, get ed understanding how he could see the ball much better, but he wanted to work on it. So it came out for a week. The sport psychologist came, he was very negative. He was very much against it. Uh, he had to fly in from Florida, but by the time they left at the end of the week, they were both excited that this is going to be significant in its career. And they recommended a Mr coffee that he extended to more players. So Mr Kaufmann called me a couple of weeks later. He says, I’ve got a, Oh, I dunno, something like 18 players. Then I’d like for you to come to Kansas City in January and work with these players. And Ironically, George was not one of them, a community take. There was like 15 players in, in, in Kansas City. And he said, I’ve got three a young players in California. Would you possibly willing to see them? I said sure. So they came about the 10th, so seventh to 10th of December. And that was George. George was just 18, you’d side as a, as a, uh, in the prior June. And, um, anyway, we went on and worked with the players in Kansas City which involve Lupron, Ella and Amos Otis. A lot. Pretty good players. Pretty Patek. And um, uh, what in particular, Mr Compton Dekalb. He says, I have one boy, a young player I’d like you to see, would it be possible we could squeeze him in? I said, well, sure. And his name was Frank White. So we had some great experience with some very interesting players and talent at that time and it was all about training them to be able to use their eyes, their brain and their body better together so they could see the ball tractable, uh, have better eye hand coordination and uh, and, and, and really a lot about how to improve their focus so they could have better focus defensively, run into basis, throwing, hitting bunting. So on, and um, you know, we had some very willing young guys willing to get better and, and uh, they, they got some pretty good results.

Geoff

Yeah, that part is fascinating to me whenever, you know, I read your stuff on slowthegamedown.com, you know, the whole mind body working together and I think, I think it’s one of those things that not enough people understand this concept and how important it is, especially when you got a guy throwing 95 with, with movement. So, so that’s so interesting to me that, you know, one of the first lesson we ever got at the young player is see the ball and it kind of assumed that everyone knows what that means and really nobody had really been taught on what that really means. How do you see the ball? So I think we’re missing this part for what to look for, how to do that and, and stuff like that. Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons So can you talk a little bit about the how to part?

Dr. Bill

Well, you’re absolutely right Geoff, you know, it would be very interesting or very easy if you just walked out in your backyard. It was to look at the ball or look at the bird or whatever. That’s easy to do, but when you come to the game of baseball, there’s so much going on. And uh, uh, you know, you listeners and coaches a good describe it even far better than I, but all of the sound, all of the, all of the movement and obviously it changes and can get very intense, let’s call it. Okay. And it could get very, very chaotic. So how do you do it when it gets chaotic and part of that chaos is a different cut of deliveries. So for example, as a right handed hitter, maybe I can see the ball pretty well from a left handed pitcher, throwing it over the top, but how do I see it from a right end or with a three quarter or maybe even a submariner side arm or, or over the top. I mean all these different deliveries. And uh, I know, uh, when I, uh, Kinda got excited about helping players, I realized I played for, Gosh, how many years? Probably 10 years to youth ball high school and college. I played four years at University of California, Berkeley, and it’s no one ever mentioned anything about how to see the ball. So how do you see it? Well, uh, obviously you make it priority and that’s easy to say easy, but that’s not easy to do. And you got you gotta get a hit right now, if I don’t get a hit, they’re going to pull me out of the lineup or you know, some other. Uh, and so I would say the number one probably hurdle is thinking too much. So you mentioned the mind and body. And I used to use that phrase today. I prefer to use the ice because there’s two eyes and the brain and the body, eyes, brain and body. And here’s the deal. The brain is, it’s everything and that’s what you’re training with all of the drills and all of the, uh, you know, everything that goes into getting better is training the brain so the brain can take over. And, but the interesting about it is at that moment that the Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons ball is being pitched that half a second, less than half a second. The best performances when the brain becomes quiet, it’s not active consciously, is certainly it works subconsciously, but the brain needs to be quieted down. So one of the things that we learned long time ago was if there’s a lot of noise and a lot of talking and so coaches, uh, I would say if there’s one thing I would try to make it a requirement that a game is no one talks to the player, including you as a coach with the player steps in the box. When the player steps in the box, he cannot be thinking about where his hands are, his feet are launch angle, whatever it may be, is going to let all that go as is thinking about or the fact look for the curve ball. He can’t think about those things. You can be told that on the bench neon deck circle, but once you step to the box, he should own that exclusively. There should be no more signals or signs. He’s got to just focus on seeing the ball. So you mentioned George Rec. Wow. How was I? Such a lucky fella that in December 1971, I connected with this young man who looked like a surfer from California beaches and he was sorta went a very good player from what most people said, even though back now, uh, you know, people say, Oh yeah, he was a great high school kid. Well, he was good, but uh, it didn’t hit that well and in rookie ball, but George wanted to get better. And the interesting thing about it is it really had lot to do with his brother. Uh, uh, Kenny Kenny was a, I don’t know, what, three years older and a, had a, had a great career, but he got up, he was pitching in the world series with is 19 years of age. I don’t think George ever wanting to be a pitcher, but he wanted to be a better hitter than Kenny. Kenny was a pretty good hitter and George would do everything he could to get better. So he took my recommendations. You know, how you get players who will really listen to you. And I mean, I’m so fortunate. The first player was one who really listened and he made seeing the balls the priority, for example, after each pitch, and I think this is something that every player today needs to be taught. George had one thought. How well did I see the ball that’s after each pitch. Now, if he, obviously he hit the ball, he didn’t be that concerned about, but if there’s a vichie popped up or you took the picture he swung and missed, which he didn’t do too often. How well did he see the ball now in doing that, he learned that when he took a pitch, he really saw the ball. Well, as a matter of fact, if he took a pitch three, uh, no. Uh, and after that pitch is like, oh, why did the coach had me take the pitch? It looked great. I haven’t received that book around the pitchers hand and it slowed down and it just looked like a beach ball for me to crush. That was a standard. Uh, you know, that’s what we today call it. Ken would, you saw that ball at 10 and we would like using numbers to quantify it. We didn’t do that so much with George. It was more just how well did you see the pitch now if he didn’t see the ball, well this is between pitches. He would just simply to themselves, come on George, perk it up, you’ll see the ball like, you know, you can in any step back in the box. Think of nothing. And the one thing we got him doing it, he did it very well, is to get a rocking rhythm. He got a little movement going from left to right, left to right. And the other thing that he did is he looked around on the a lot he didn’t stare because you’ve got to understand is he really didn’t need to focus in until the ball was released. Uh, he could waste a lot of time and lot of energy if he did it before. So he stayed real relaxed when he was right, until the pitcher was just about ready to release the ball in any really zoomed in and he would see the ballroom of the pitcher’s hand most of the time. And then he would stay with it because some players, you know, and you probably can think of is as a coach and a hitter, it’s easy sometimes to see it early and then let it go. No, it’s got to be zoomed in all the way. And uh, we talked a little bit later, but trying to see the ball deep to contact that Dick doesn’t mean into the catcher’s glove, but it means to contact it. And he knew when he was right, where it was a 10 and he would, between pitches, he would amp it up if it wasn’t. And if he did see a 10, even though he felt back or took the picture, whatever, uh, he would just say, okay, just stay relaxed and let’s do it again. Get. And uh, he had a really simple, a repeatable routine while it’s in the box. Now George also on the brain side and we taught it us, he didn’t know anything about it. He became really great at, at picturing the opposing pitchers, pitchers and see what those features would look like and feeling his actions, uh, whether the, uh, taking the pitch or drive it up the middle, which was primarily his focus, but he will actually see a, he would practice it besides fiscal practice. He’d do a lot of mental practice where it was really visual thinking and uh, it became almost like a natural way for him to think about the game. So he would, he, he would picture the acts, his actions, but once he got in the box, he would not think much about that at all. But just see the ball.

Geoff

Yeah, so when you talk about visulaization is that something that you teach? How do you teach visualization?

Dr. Bill

Well, it was your question. How do you teach visualization?

Geoff

Yeah, because we can tell them, but we can’t really see what they are seeing.

Dr. Bill

Here’s one thing that I would say. I don’t like the word visualization, uh, and they took it to use it, but I want to get some clarity. It’s really just visual thinking. It’s a form of thinking now. Most young people in school obviously do a ton of verbal thinking. Uh, and that’s kind of the thought process is typically verbal and it is as an athlete, there should be very few words involved, a key word here or there maybe, but not a string of words. Visual thinking is more like seeing yourself receive a ground ball, catch the ball and make the throw to wherever your first base, I assume, uh, now how do you teach that? Well, it’s not easy. The first thing is you make them alert to the fact that it is a factor and one of the better ways is I, I’d like to choose successful actions. And so a, even playing catch or fielding or bunting hitting a is immediately after doing something. Well I, I called replay, but you can call it recall, recall exactly what you remember seeing, what it looked like a when you did it and just leave it there. No, we don’t take it very far. Just have a replay. What they did when they did something well that will put them in touch. The visual thinking. Now let’s say that in batting practice, I hit some line drives and they have the exact reaction that you want, have the replay, it immediately recall what they remember, see and what the feeling, and then later encouraged them to recall that just before a pitch, so I call it pre play. So they reply and they briefly and they just work on that. Now they have to understand there’s no guarantee they’re, that’s going to produce results. They just do it. They just, it’s just becomes a form of thought that they get in a habit to do it. Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons And usually, I mean, I’ve never had any kickback to say that’s not helpful. It’s almost always like, well, it’s pretty amazing, but every player’s different. I do know this, that it will never hurt them. The emphasis on seeing the ball as well as possible and trying to get better at it. I’ve never had a player come back to me with any kind of a complaint or confusion or frustration. Uh, the ability to picture success for actions right after they’ve been done, never seen that caused an issue. Uh, so there’s no negative there. And other times it doesn’t here to players performance

Intro

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Geoff

Right, Dr. Bill, I liked the idea of replaying your success, the the pre play that gets you away from thinking about where your hands are. You know where your feet are, kind of thinking about any negative thought. You’re constantly replaying your success, your successful at bat, and really you’re playing that over and over and over. Now you’re not overdoing and in terms of over analyzing, but you’re not thinking about a lot about what you need to do.

Dr. Bill

Yeah, well, Geoff, realistically you can incorporate the right mechanics, visual thought and is a matter of fact. You can even encourage that when they’re not in the cage, that they have visual thinking as if they are indicated they could actually have batting practice without having live batting practice. Is it as good? No, but it’s sure better than nothing is it. It’s going to get them ready as opposed to stepping into the, to the cage code with a dead brain, if you will.

Geoff

Yeah. And that takes away from the mindless going because there is alot of mindless work that is going on.

Dr. Bill

Right? And so by the way, there’s no magic to that. It just thinking as an athlete, it’s a, it’s, it’s what I would call athletic thinking as opposed to academic thinking. And I want to mention a couple of days because I know you have several coaches listing. See coaches tend to do this very well. Uh, coaches, uh, just in the process of coaching. I mean, uh, your, your visual thinkers, Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons I’m sure, and you see everything in advance and it’s automatic. It’s hard to believe your players don’t do the same thing, but they don’t have the same experiences that you have and they don’t do the same thing and you’re right, they will tend to think about all kinds of things. Whereas to you it’s so obvious they should be thinking about, you know, hitting that shot to left center, right. Center of whatever they’re thinking more about, you know, Gosh, I better hit it. Or, you know, I hope my hands are in depth in the right spot or whatever. So a part of it to get them to think like you do.

Geoff

And alot of that comes with expierance, expierancing the right stuff, they got to expierancde the wrong way and got to be patient with that process.

Dr. Bill

That’s right. Exactly. And you know why you say that? Uh, uh, we, we, we were just with a major league player the other day who’s very, very good. And uh, asking the question, how many at bats to. Yeah, well he had a, he had nearly 600, at bats during the season. Well we know that the major league average, this is major league baseball, but there’s, you know, you can break this all the way down to literally the, you know, the average is about four pitches per at bat. So he spent his whole season, he saw 2,400 pitches, you know, high school kid might see 400 teachers and maybe a youth league might see 200 pitches. But uh, typically in the major leagues, about half of those are taken as balls. They swing it a little less than 50 percent. And you know, obviously some, a little more than others. But let’s say that let’s say that a hitter’s swings at 50 percent of those pitches. So the major Leaguer, he swung at 1200, you’re a high school player, maybe swimming the $200 in your youth player, maybe a 50. Okay. The question that we’d like to ask them is how many, what percentage of those wings were absolutely perfect. And uh, we’re just amazed at the results. I mean, the answers we get the undeveloped player, uh, and sometimes even like a young white, a major leaguer. Uh, no. They might say 20, 30, 40, 50 percent were perfect. Swigs the veteran guys, successful guys, five percent or less player yesterday said, I don’t think I ever have a perfect swing, but he says, I don’t care. I just, you know, I, I’m just swinging. I’m not trying to get the perfect swing, but some are different. They all strive. Now the question is, of all of those pitches, say the 2,480 that like what percentage of those pitchers bowls in, in, in a ballsy swung at balls you took? What percentage of those did you see really well? And you know, we’ll hear a little higher number, but pretty low, probably 10 percent, 20 percent. So the players that were, no, we’re going to work with. We say, well look, here’s a goal. You’re not going to get perfect. It’d be nice if you were, but let’s increase by 10 percent, let’s say 10 percent more pitches in his case, 2,240 pitches next season. Let’s see them really well. Let’s increase it by 10 percent. What would that do for you? Oh my gosh, you know, I’ll get, you know, increased my home runs and increased my hits and so forth. Uh, well some of you caught. But that’s kind of realistic. A of a player that is playing during the season is to just focus on increased it by 10 percent. So, you know, how do we do it? Well, one thing the hitters don’t do is they tend not to pay very careful attention to where exactly a pitcher releases the ball. For example, let’s say we have a throw and run over the top. And so we can all visualize visual thinking. We can visualize that picture out there. Throwing over the top, but before he goes over the top, he’s standing there on the mound in relationship to his body. Where is that ball released? Well, you probably first easy to think. They probably releases it six inches above his ear or ear level or whatever is. Does that seem reasonable? Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons Well, most pitchers released the ball armpit high. When they’re coming over the top, that’s because they come down the mound and the release. They’ve, you know, everything is lowered. Now we think about it. It’s pretty easy to realize that, but we tend, we all tend to look too high. We, we, we look over the release and we adjust to the ball, but we don’t pick it up immediately. We pick it up later. Yeah, so on deck circle, one of the key things that a guy needs to do in the on deck circle is really see where that guy’s released, so in this, in relationship to the height of his body and of course often cite or out front so that when he’s hitting, he knows that’s where he’s got to get his attention to that release area. But you’re not going to do it right if you don’t know what it is, because here’s the other thing, Geoff eyes are designed. This is the way the brain works and the eyes work is to see motion in movement in peripheral vision. So the eyes tend to react to a, you know, the glove or to the front leg or whatever. Or obviously if a second baseman or a shortstop is moving or a base runner is stealing, the eyes tend to go to that. They don’t tend to go to the central area and uh, they can, uh, and, and that’s what you want. Do you want to keep your vision centrally focused? And to clarify on that, there’s really like two different types of eyes. One is peripheral vision where you see everything which you don’t see any detail, you just see movement, you see a flash of light and you see movement or central vision and there’s parts of the idle allow for central vision. They’re very narrow. It’s a very small area, but the Times that you’ve seen the scene, you’ve seen the direction of the same as you’ve seen the rate of speed of the sames. That’s when you’ve used central vision and so I asked you, when you think back as a player, when you saw the seam spinning, the direction they were going and the raiders fan, how well did you see the ball?

Geoff

Yeah, honestly as I think about it, probably not as well as I could have. I got better as I got older, but I still don’t think I really thinking about. I really don’t think I understood what I was supposed to be happening,

Dr. Bill

But you didn’t see the spin is what you’re saying.

Geoff

Not as consistently as I probably could have had I known.

Dr. Bill

Let me see. that was very basic, you could have been taught how to see the ball spinning the direction of it and the rate of spin. It would not have disrupted you mechanically. It would not have hurt you in any way. It probably would have helped you. Now, that doesn’t mean you weren’t successful. That doesn’t mean you still couldn’t hit a, you’ve probably hit the fastball really well.

Geoff

Yeah, I hit the fastball really well.

Dr. Bill

But maybe certain off speed pitches you didn’t see, you didn’t have that information. So part of using the eyes correctly, like how to see is there’s a lot of information. Do you process it know, or how did you process it? Or would it be better if you did process it? And today, like at the major league, you know, they’re starting to throw a lot worse bidding pitches and uh, if you could see the direction of the spin and the rate of spend in addition to the trajectory of the ball, now you over the net ball is going to be in the zone, has a chance of being in your zone. Or if it’s going to be something that you know, swinging out, you’re going to end up chasing because it’s going to be in the dirt or wherever. So that central vision, here’s what happens when you see the ball. This is what I think is critical and this really is the brain, but it’s the eyes feeding the brain. When when you see the ball in peripheral vision, here’s what happened, the ball look smaller, it looks faster, which is not always bad because it gets you going and it seems to move even more. When it moves particularly late senior peripheral vision is like, wow, that thing was a double break or whatever. Now when you see it in central vision, the ball first, you do see that when you see in central vision, you see the spend and the direction to spin. The ball looks larger, the fall look slower and in no way does it seem to move nearly as much. It moves less and when you start seeing it that way becomes a little bit easier to square that ball on a regular basis. Now, case support. Let’s say you play the game and the lead off your number to hit a lead off hitter goes up and boy, he just gets worked over on the first for free for fitches and he’s coming back to the dugout. You’re walking out and uh, he says he, that guy is nasty. Oh my gosh, I couldn’t. You know, the guy who was really tough. Now you get up there and you picked up the ball, got another release, and you see the spin and you track the ball really good and you stay with it and you crush a double and you’re thinking what you’re talking about. I mean, in other words, when you think back later, once he tells me that guy was so tough. It wasn’t tough at all. So the point is a credit makers, if you see the ball in Oklahoma Baseball Hitting Lessons central vision, it doesn’t look as nasty in sometimes when you get spooked because a player or several players on the team talk about how tough that guy is it because they’re not looking at the ball, right? They’re not silly. Correct. And they’re given misinformation and you as a hitter have to just ignore that. Not Get spooked by what others are saying or doing

Geoff

I love that, so can you talk the alittle bit about picking up the ball and then tracking the ball, is that two different things?

Dr. Bill

Yeah, they’re, they’re kind of your right to cut it. Two different things. Let’s take it defensively and then, you know, you can divert it as a hitter, but defensively, the tendency from center field, left field, third base, first base is to see way too much. Uh, and there’s also a tendency, and I think this is the one thing that is so difficult and I haven’t, I don’t know that I’ve really been successful and helping as many guys understand this as I would like what are the worst things to vision and seeing the ball defensively or as a hitter is staring, staring is good for a half, a second or a second, but then it falls apart. So, uh, what, you know, what your players is staring to where they want to see the ball, they want to look at that area, but they don’t have to keep looking at it. They can look away, they could look at different places and then they come back to it. They need to know when they come back, they got to come back on time, but they don’t, they don’t want to stare. Now the next thing is, uh, maybe having some kind of a habit. So what we teach our defensive players to do is to have a place between themselves and the contact zone to the hitter. In other words, identify where the ball is going to be hit. If I played third base or first base and it’s a left handed hitter or a right handed hitter, what’s the contact zone that he could make contact? It’s out in front a little bit in most cases and that keeps me because I want to end up looking there. I don’t want to look at the hitter himself. I don’t want to look at the catcher or the umpire. I want to see the contact area now which are identified that I can look back to close to myself down at the ground and see a spot on the ground and I could look out at the zone, back to the spot, back to the zone. Again. The interesting thing about it, this may sound a little bit strange, but if you have a specific spot and you know where you’re going to look and you’ve already been there, if you look away and look back, when you look back the second time, you see better than you do the first time, so it’s like you need to preset your focus point. Have a spot to look away and indirectly back to the area, so in a defense, see I, I’m not a big fan of on defense of watching the pitcher very much you’re watching, but at the time that goes into motion, you do not need to see the picture. You do not need to see the pitch and your central vision. You need to switch your eyes ahead to the contact area so you get to where the action’s going to take place and you’ll see the ball right off the bat and there’s just so you’ll react effectively.

Outro

I am Geoff Rottmayer and thank you for listenting to our conversation of The Baseball Awakening Podcast. Stay tuned for part two of our conversation with Dr. Bill Harrison tomorrow.