This is not limited to baseball, but even top-notch players sometimes experience sluggish performance.
Even when he stands at bat like he used to, he doesn’t get hits. A strong hit that was definitely a hit until last year was blocked by good defense. If he is a pitcher, he can throw a similar pitch and still get hit. At first, I thought it was just bad luck, but as my poor health continues, my grades may become stagnant or even worse. This is generally called a “slump,” but today we will talk about slump.
As a caster myself, during the five years I spent live broadcasting “Warspo x MLB” (NHK BS1) five days a week, there were several times when I thought, “This might be a slump.”
I listen to what my co-stars say while watching the VTR, process it in my head, and then speak about it myself. However, no matter how hard you try, there are times when things just don’t work out, and if something goes wrong, things start to fall apart. Slump is a vicious cycle.
Even if the trigger is something trivial, you can’t keep up mentally and become anxious, which leads to atrophy. If you think, “Don’t repeat the same mistakes from last time” in the next broadcast, you may end up repeating your failures. I don’t have a specific reason for my slump, but I now think it was a combination of lack of sleep and poor health.
Returning to baseball players, if a top-class player has a prolonged period of not being able to hit, it will be reported that he is in a slump, and he will become the center of attention. No one considers it a “slump” even if a rookie player doesn’t hit for a long period of time, so perhaps it’s an honorable(?) title reserved for top players who are expected to produce results.
On the other hand, from a player’s point of view, if the slump continues for a long time, his annual salary will decrease during the off-season, and in the worst case scenario, he may even be fired, so he must want to get out of his slump as soon as possible.
It seems that the cause of an athlete’s slump cannot be definitively determined, but it seems that many of them are mainly due to their mental state. Some problems may be due to technique; for example, when Masanao Yoshida of the Red Sox continued to hit poorly against high fastballs, an assistant coach analyzed the problem and discovered that there was a problem with his posture while batting. After fixing that, the good sound seems to have returned. Perhaps this coach’s advice also lifted Yoshida’s mental burden.
Only a few left this year. I hope next year will be a healthy year as well.
One way to get out of a slump is through mental training. Cubs player Seiya Suzuki seems to have improved his performance in the second half of the 2023 season by strengthening his mental health.
In the United States, the importance of staff managing mental health is so recognized that it is said that there is no team without a mental coach. This culture has been imported to Japan, and many high school baseball teams now have mental trainers.
The baseball team at Keio High School, which won the summer Koshien for the first time in 107 years, also had a mental coach who taught the players what to do in times of crisis. He gives young high school students tips on how to approach practice and how to overcome themselves during potentially upsetting situations during games. How much courage did that give the players?
By the way, the mental coach at Keio High School apparently has no baseball experience. When it comes to professional coaches, most of them are successful players as well, but objective analysis by a third party may be more accurate in many cases.
One of the roles of a mental coach is to stabilize the player’s mental health, but he is also required to encourage the growth of the player. Set high goals, work backwards to figure out what you need to do to achieve them, and clear them one by one. Achieving simple goals leads to self-confidence.
As I was writing this manuscript, I realized once again that I had lived my life letting myself be carried away. I didn’t have a specific goal of what I wanted to be in life. However, with “Warspo x MLB,” I was able to set a goal of “I want to go to America to report,” and I felt happy when I achieved that goal.
That’s why I don’t aim for great heights right away, but first I try to do what I can do every day. When you’re in a slump, the first thing to do is reevaluate your life. Now, eating delicious food every day keeps me healthy.
When my husband announced that his duo was disbanding, I was also very depressed both mentally and physically. However, my husband made me a delicious soup with lots of vegetables, saying, “I can’t afford to get sick at a time like this.” It had a really gentle taste, and I thought that delicious food can give people energy.
If someone you care about is feeling slumped or depressed, you want to make them a delicious meal.
Please let me know how you overcome your slump. See you next week.
★Shuko Yamamoto
Born October 2, 1996, from Kanagawa Prefecture. Free caster. He grew up in a family that loved baseball, and before he knew it, he became a baseball freak.
For five years starting in 2019, he served as a caster for “Warspo x MLB” (NHK BS1).His cat’s name is Valentin
★Hagiko Yamamoto’s “Waiting for 6-4-3” is updated every Saturday morning!
2023-12-23 01:02:29
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