What does it mean to be a true baseball player today? Whats expected of a player today has changed much since when Mantle and Mays were playing. For one thing baseball players make a whoooooole lot more money now than they did then. Think about it. The minimum salary for a Major league contract is $400,000.(thanks to the players strike in 1995). I don’t care who you are…..that’s a lot of money.  But regardless of what level you play at, to be a true baseball player there are a few qualities that you MUST have.

1. Make the right choices
A true baseball player is aware of his ability to utilize the power of choice. He understands that it is HIS choices that determine what he gets out of baseball regardless of circumstances. If he is injured, he can CHOOSE to press on. He can CHOOSE to be patient and nurture his body with the right foods so he may heal properly. He can Choose to get enough rest.  A true player knows that he can CHOOSE to fight even if his team is losing by 10 runs. He can Choose to be a leader, or do the right things of the field. A fake player hasn’t the slightest clue of his ability to choose what he thinks and feels. That’s why he gets beat.

2. Be willing to fail
A true player can take failure and learn from it. I mean truly learn from it, and become stronger. No longer does he shy away from failure, even more importantly, he doesn’t get mad, complain or develop excuses when things don’t go his way between the lines. He’s too focused on making an adjustment, on finding a way to succeed, so he doesn’t waste his energy on any kind of negative emotion.  A true player competes even when failure seems likely.

3. Be Confident
Being confident, especially during a long season, is hard to be on a daily basis. It’s just a hard fact of this game that there will be days were you may feel like you just don’t have it. But how you react to your lack of confidence is important too. Can you do it with the determination that you will transcend your self-doubt? That you will show up and leave it all on the field. Confidence is expressed through how we think, feel, and also the words we use. Confidence is adopting a determined posture and moving forward even if failure seems unlikely. This is the only way to build courage and the ability to persist.

4. Knows how to Dream
Part of making your dreams come true is having discipline with how you think, or more specifically the content of your thoughts. Literally, the pictures you see in your mind dictate what you will experience in the future.  A true player is aware that his present circumstances are the outcome of his thoughts he has had in the past. He knows that through practice, he can control his mind to think only about success (hitting a line drive up the middle) and not failure ( I can’t strike out here, I hope I don’t make an error!) This kind of concentration does take time, but the best players have it.

5. Knows how to re-channel his sexual energy
A true player doesn’t take his sexual energy for granted. Through practice, he has learned to transmute his sexual energy into his performance on the field. He doesn’t waste this powerful energy and leave it on a level of lust. Simply put…he doesn’t waste time on his laptop:) Napoleon Hill has said,

“Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it. When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of course, the accumulation of riches.”

6. Love the game
A true player has learned to truly love this game. As a full-grown adult, he plays this game exactly the same way he played when he was a child. Though he may be getting paid to play a child’s game, on a good day, when the smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of the ball of a bat makes him feel like he can play this game forever…..for free even, he feels thankful for being a baseball player. It’s this gratitude that can pull him through the difficult times of the season. The long bus rides, cheap hotels, slumps, losing streaks. A true player lives in the moment.

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