Wolforth Finally Breaks His Silence Regarding
The Show Time Special & Sports Illustrated Article
The phones have been ringing off the hook. What did Coach Wolforth think about the Ranch being featured on Showtime and in The March 30th Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview article by Tom Verducci? Were they fair? Were they accurate? Was he excited? Was he pleased with the result? What does he think the result of those large media exposures will be?
For weeks Coach Wolforth has been mum on the topic. Now, finally he has spoken out.
Media is always a double edge sword. It can afford you a platform to share with the world your ideas and processes. At the same time, it has significant limitations as it can only tell a part of the whole story and allows your critics and cynics the opportunity to pick your bones raw on the details omitted or missing. Such is life from the front of the pack.
I really enjoyed the CBS 60 Minute Sports Showtime crew. They were funny, genuine and sincere. I felt they really wanted to tell our story. The challenge was that the center piece of the story was regarding injury and injury reduction and we shared the feature with Tom House and a Doctor representing MLB baseball. Three distinct voices are a tall order for a 12 minute segment. The truth is our process is distinctively different than that of Tom House. In my opinion, Dr. House was portrayed as the high tech alternative to this throwing equation and we were the low tech, grass roots, sweat equity version.
My response is that although NPA’s 3-D stick figure evaluation seems very high tech, our high speed video synched up from three different angles is just as high tech. The difference between Dr. House’s process of pitcher development and ours is not primarily technological. Our paradigms of development are significantly different. While of course some of the information and methods are related…the Ranch protocols are absolutely unique.
We START with the pain! We believe in the hyper-personalization of training programs…in essence…we customize a program based upon the constraints, needs and limitations of each individual pitching athlete. We assess our athletes like no other baseball entity on the planet and from those assessments we build a pathway forward. No one else in the world does that. That didn’t come out on the Showtime special. They simply didn’t have the time to show that.
I really enjoyed having the crew visit the Ranch for several days as well as spending time with them in Arizona. I thought they were very fair and as accurate given their time constraints. I’m not a fan of the little clip of me bellowing out about the importance of sweat but my playing with the ponytails of two female summer campers was definitely vintage Ranch.
Overall it was a very solid piece and a very good representation of who we are. I want to publicly thank Tim Costa and Alan Weisman of CBS 60 Minutes Sports for their amazing work on this project. It was a lot of fun.
Now for the Sports Illustrated piece by Tom Verducci.
What I always enjoyed about Verducci was his knack of getting inside of the story. So much of sports writing today is fluff pieces…surface level stuff. The real story has so much more texture, depth and breath. Verducci is a master at telling that story.
After about 30 minutes of initial conversation, Tom said, “This is exactly what I was looking for, an inside glimpse on how velocity is developed in young throwers. This latest influx of hard throwers and their impact upon the professional game has really intrigued me. It has frankly been a bit of a mystery. What is actually occurring at the grass roots level that is now bubbling up to the MLB level and changing the game?”
For the next two days Tom visited the Ranch, watched Barry Zito work out and talked at length with Trevor Bauer. In classic Verducci style he asked probing questions and constantly wanted to see what lay under all the pomp and circumstance.
I thought Verducci simply brought his A game. He double and triple checked his facts. He offered contrary view points and perspectives. He told a very compelling story.
I will be honest that I was very skeptical when Samantha told me Tom Verducci wanted to visit the Ranch for a story in SI. I was afraid it was going to be a hit piece on how very aggressive training placed young arms at risk and of course we are the poster facility for velocity enhancement in the world today.
It appeared to me that from the very beginning Verducci knew we were different. He had already done his homework. When I talked about how arm health and durability was job number one and velocity enhancement was the far, far easier part of our job, he immediately shook his head in agreement. The more I described our customizing process, the more he said, “That makes sense.”
I liked Tom Verducci before he came to 5451 Honea Egypt Road. I like him far more now. He was fair, balanced and told a great story. Everything you could ask for in a Sports writer.
I think the article will really give someone who has never been to The Baseball Ranch a very good grasp of what we are all about.
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Our Elite Pitcher’s Boot Camps at the Ranch have become the Gold standard for Pitching Camps all over the world and this year is going to be better than ever. We recently set the Summer Dates for the Elite Pitcher’s Boot Camps and many of the weekends are filling up in incredibly fast fashion, which is understandable given the increased buzz. In fact, the first date is already over 60% full. The dates for this summer are:
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If you have a weekend that works for you please do not delay in registering. We have sold out every camp for the last 5 years and we wouldn’t want you to miss the opportunity to workout with our Coaches this summer. You can find out more information on these camps by visiting our site: www.texasbaseballranch.com/elite-pitchers-bootcamp/
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