The MADEisms: 132 Things I Say to Kids, and Why

There's a list on my phone called MADEisms. I never sat down to write it. It accumulated — a thing I'd said at a lesson that landed, typed in on the drive home so I wouldn't lose it.

It's up to 132 entries.

Reading it all at once for the first time was strange, because I could suddenly see that they aren't one thing. They're doing four completely different jobs, and I'd never noticed I was using four different tools.

1. Reframes — changing what a thing means

"There's no such thing as failing. There is only producing a result that may be undesirable."

"There are two types of players: those who have been humbled, and those who are about to be."

"You can get discouraged or you can get motivated. Always your choice."

Baseball is a game of constant failure and every kid arrives having already decided what failure means. These are for prying that open before it sets.

2. Instructions — do this, now

"Throw strikes." "Pushups are free." "Tie your shoes." "Don't walk on my field." "Be quick, but don't rush."

No philosophy. A thing to do in the next ten seconds. Half of coaching is just this and most coaches over-complicate it.

3. Call-and-response — the one I think is actually original

This is the group I'd defend hardest, and it took writing them out to see it as a category.

"What's your best pitch?" — "Strike one." "How hard do you throw?" — "Hard enough to get you out." "What's the strongest muscle in the body?" — "Brain." "What position do you play?" — "I can play any position." "What are the six tools?" — "Speed, arm, hitting for average, hitting for power, fielding, toughness."

I'm not telling a kid these things. I'm asking him, over and over, until the answer comes out of his mouth without him thinking.

That's the whole mechanism. A twelve-year-old who has said "hard enough to get you out" four hundred times has a different relationship with the radar gun than one who was told velocity isn't everything. One of those is information. The other is his.

It's the same instinct behind building every drill as a game — make the kid do the thing rather than hear about the thing.

4. Standards — the line, said once

"We don't strike out looking. Ever." "It's better to swing at a bad pitch than look at a good one." "The best champions don't get bored with the basics. They master them over and over." "Discipline is doing what you know you need to do, when you need to do it, whether you want to do it or not."

The ones that sound mean, and aren't

Three entries on that list need explaining, because written down cold they read badly.

"Meat biscuit." Baseball people have said "figure it out, meat" forever — it's ordinary dugout language. At some point "meat biscuit" came out of my mouth, the kids laughed, and it stuck. It's what I say when somebody isn't paying attention. It's a polite way of saying wake up.

"Mayor of La La Land." Same job. He's in La La Land right now.

"Don't be a dink." Also same.

Here's the part that makes them work, and it isn't optional: I say them about myself. I'll admit to a room of twelve-year-olds that I was in La La Land, that I missed something, that I was being a meat biscuit. Out loud, first.

That's the licence. A coach who only ever points those words outward is just a guy who insults children. A coach who uses them on himself has built a shared vocabulary, and the kids start using it on each other — and on me — and it's affectionate every time.

Baseball also requires thick skin, which is its own entry on that list, and you don't build thick skin in a room where nothing is ever said. You build it in a room where everything is said with obvious love.

Anyone who has been around my program knows the difference instantly. I understand it doesn't survive being written down without this paragraph, which is why I've written it.

"Shake it to break it"

This one is not a joke at all.

It means a firm handshake. Obviously we're not breaking anybody's hand — the phrase is a mnemonic for mean it.

A handshake is very often the first thing a person learns about you: a coach, a teacher, a scout, an employer. A limp one costs you something before you've said a word. So we practise it, on purpose, the same way we practise a crow hop.

It sits in the same family as "Gotta look good, to feel good, to play good" and the one I'd put a hundred dollars on:

"If you ever see a big leaguer with their shirt untucked, or no belt, or their shoes untied, or hair showing under their hat above their forehead — on purpose, during a game — I'll give you $100."

No kid has ever collected.

The ice cube

The first entry on that list is "Remember the ice cube." It appears again further down as "Ice cubes… remember the ice cubes… 1° at a time."

It isn't mine. It's from Atomic Habits by James Clear, and I want to say that plainly because I've been using it with kids for a while and it deserves the credit.

The idea: imagine a room at 25 degrees and an ice cube sitting in it. Warm the room a degree. Nothing. Another degree. Nothing. 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 — the ice does not move, and by any observable measure you have wasted your time.

Then 32, and it melts.

Every one of those earlier degrees was doing the work. None of them looked like it.

That is exactly what the sixth week of rehab feels like, and the fourth month of a swing change, and the second year of a business. It's what happened to me between a surgeon telling me at nineteen that I was finished and a professional contract at twenty-one — a long stretch where nothing visibly improved and I kept going anyway.

Kids get this immediately, which is why I use it. Nine-year-olds understand ice.

And it's the honest counterweight to everything else on the list. "Pushups are free" and "don't be last" are about today. The ice cube is the reason today matters when today produces nothing you can see.

What the list is actually for

I've written about what MADE stands for — Motivation, Appreciation, Dedication, EVEryday. That's the frame. These 132 lines are what the frame sounds like at 4pm on a Tuesday with a nine-year-old who just struck out looking.

A philosophy nobody can repeat isn't a philosophy. It's a poster.

The reason I keep the list is that I want the thing a kid carries out of my lesson to be something he can say. Not a feeling about me. A sentence he owns.

Ten years from now he won't remember the drill. He'll remember that his best pitch is strike one.