By Dr. Tom Hanson, Sports Psychologist

If you don't take charge of your mental game you will not find out how good you can be in baseball. You may end up like this guy...

"Player X" was pretty talented. He loved to play baseball as a kid and he had some big dreams. He dominated in the youth leagues, but then many players caught up to him later in junior high and early high school.
 

So he worked hard between his junior and senior years of high school and again became a dominant player.  His senior year of American Legion he hit over .400 and was MVP of his team that finished fourth in the State Tournament.

But in college Player X?s performance waned once again. He got one wrong idea in his head as a freshman, and that one wrong idea handicapped him his entire college career.  He never wised up. Although he was All-Conference his sophomore year and his team won multiple conference titles, he never really found his stroke.  He didn't focus and apply himself the way he had as a senior in high school. In fact, he forgot much of what had made him successful in high school.

He didn't do anything extra. He didn't seek out help from people who could have helped him be a lot better. He chose to "go it alone." In the end, his career was OK. He enjoyed some individual and team success, and he's got some fond memories. But he's now (already) 46 years old and he's got questions. Unanswered questions.  The kind of questions you want answers to but will never get...

• "What could I have done had I been more focused?"
• "What could I have done if I would have known how to 'take charge of my mental game?'"
• "What could I have done if I didn't have that one wrong idea in my head my entire college career?"

Those questions will never be answered.  There's no way to turn back the clock. The door is closed. The lights are out. The party is over. Those questions will live with him for the rest of his life.
 
For the rest of his life he will wonder "What if...?" Not a good feeling.

Do you want to be plagued by those questions? Do you want that feeling? Well, if you want to know more about them, just ask me. I am "Player X?.


Everyone, including me, says it's 80% or more of your success, but what is it?  More importantly, how do you win the mental game?" I went on a mission. I got my master's degree at the University of Illinois specializing in sport psychology. I went straight from there to the University of Virginia to get my Ph.D. specializing in sport psychology. While there I was the hitting coach for the baseball team for three seasons.

Hitting was my passion, so for my Ph.D. research I interviewed Hank Aaron, Rod Carew, Stan Musial, Carl
Yastrzemski and Tony Oliva.  I picked their brains on this "mental game" to get them to spill the beans on the real secrets to their success.

Virtually every one of them said some form of what Aaron told me 15 minutes into the interview...

I had goose bumps the size of golf balls. And I knew I was on the right track.  Clearly this is information that people needed. Some, like Aaron, figured it out on their own.  Others, like me and surely thousands of others, didn't and hung up their cleats unfulfilled.

I continued my formal and experiential research as head baseball coach and professor at Skidmore College, a Division III school in New York. Every day for seven years I got to see what worked and what didn't work for players, and for myself as head coach.

During that time I wrote "Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time" with Dr. Ken Ravizza.  We've sold over 65,000 copies of that book world wide, and it's been required reading for several Division I National Champions, pro players, and the U.S. Olympic team. Collegiate Baseball calls it "the bible for mental toughness in baseball."

After leaving Skidmore to start my own business helping people win the mental game, I consulted for two years with the Texas Rangers before being hired away by the Yankees to work full time here in Tampa for 2001.

It's been 10 years now since writing "Heads-Up Baseball." Ten years of experience refining and advancing the ideas in that book. And now I have a tool 10 times more powerful than the tools in Heads-Up Baseball. And you can put that tool to work for you right now (at no risk to you).

Editor's Note from WebBall's Richard Todd...

Yes, in a way all of the above has been a set up - a commercial, if you will - for Tom Hanson's latest training program. I debated whether that took it away from being a legitimate article. Wondered if I should stick an "advertisement" banner at the top? In the end, my reasoning is this... whether you know it or not, you need to go on the same journey of exploration as Tom did as a young, struggling player.

But you might not have the same opportunity as Tom did - or the same nerve - to get out there and ask the greats of the game. So it's a very good thing that Tom has done that for you, for all of us. This makes the approach he takes valuable beyond money. And for that reason, I feel confident about suggesting you seriously consider Tom's program. Here's the link...  Baseball Success Secrets