By Jonathan Massey-
I recently re-watched the movie Moneyball. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, it is the story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics and their use of a data-based evaluation process, now known as sabermetrics, to create a championship caliber team. It’s one of my favorite movies because I am a huge numbers guy and obviously a baseball guy. So, it merges two of my favorite things.
Anyway, there’s a scene in the movie that gets me every time I watch- it pretty much sums up why I kept coming back to the Texas Baseball Ranch. In the movie, the A’s get off to really rough start to the year. Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, is having a difficult time completely implementing his idea because he and the manger are not on the same page about who to play at first base. Billy wants Scott Hattiesburg and the manager wants Carlos Pena.
In an effort to take control of the situation, Billy decides his only recourse is to trade Pena. While discussing the trade, Jonah Hill’s character turns to Billy and says, “If you make this move, and it doesn’t turn out the way we think it will. This is the kind of move that gets you fired.” To which Billy responded, “You’re asking the wrong question. The only question you should be asking yourself is do you believe with Hattiesburg at first base we will win more games?” To which Jonah Hill’s character said, “It’s close, but yes we should win more games with Hattiesburg over Pena.” Billy trades Pena and as we know, the A’s set the American League record by winning 20 games in a row on their way to winning the American League West Division Title.
But when I heard that line it home for me because when I transferred home after getting cut for the 3rd time, people were constantly questioning why stick with the Ranch training program. Which honestly is a fair question, from their perspective, I was spending all this time, energy and resources at this one place and I wasn’t improving. What they didn’t understand and what most people don’t understand is that the Ranch is constantly evolving. If you haven’t been back in the past 6 months, you are working with outdated information.
So, the reason I kept coming back year after year after year was because I believed without a shadow of a doubt that Coach Wolforth was in it with me, and that we would eventually figure out how to unlock my potential. I was 100% all in. And that is the reason I kept coming back.
Every now and then a kid will come to us extremely frustrated because he hasn’t gotten the results he has desired. If anybody can relate to being frustrated with the process, I can. I was stuck on 88.6 mph for over 3 years and 89.8 mph for 4 months, so I understand the feeling of being stuck. But the only question you should ask yourself is, “Do you believe that this program is going help you get to the next level?” If the answer is yes, then know we will turn over every rock we can to help you achieve your goal. But that can only happen if you are all in.
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We’d love to have you experience the Ranch difference.
We have our last two winter Elite Pitchers Boot Camps, December 27-29th and January 13-15th. December is sold out but a few slots remain in the January Camp. More information is available at http://www.texasbaseballranch.com/elite-pitchers-bootcamp/
Our Ultimate Coaches Boot Camp is under way this weekend. You can still order DVDs of the event by going to www.PitchingCoachesBootCamp.com.
