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What mental toughness means is being able to overcome adversity, being able to be honest
and truthful with yourself during failure. At the end of the day, you as a player want
to be successful. You as a parent want to give your child the best opportunity to be
successful. The best thing you can do is prepare them with building true confidence. If I were
to change anything, I would be focusing more on building my own confidence than caring
about what other players or coaches thought about me. At the end of the day if I have
confidence, then I will be successful. If I had confidence in '98 when I had the
issues with the Chicago Cubs, Lester Strode, Jim Henry, the scouting director who signed
me, I would have asked them, "Why are you raising your voice?" I would have asked them,
"Where is this coming from? You signed me, you paid me really good money, three quarters
of a million dollars, so why all of a sudden do you not value where I am coming from and
are you are attacking me?" I would say the most important thing that
players and coaches should know when talking to scouts, is that these are the people you
are going to be negotiating against at the end of the day. Their organization is trying
to gather as much information. For the player, when you are out there on the field and you
see five or ten scouts that have their radar guns up, at the end of the day they are there
to find talent. If you have talent, just be who you are, be yourself, and don't over throw.
In 2001, I threw a 91 mph fast ball and it came back to hit me in the knee at 103 mph
and that directly affected my balance, my coordination, my timing, so my mechanics were
all thrown off. The next year I worked real hard in the off season and the following year
I led AA strike outs and did real well. In 2005, I started having some balance issues
again. The seed from the injury was in the back of my head, so while I was in the gym
after one of the bullpen sessions, I had a 20 pound sandbag on my shoulder and I leaned
to the right side. I immediately felt my glut, which is what my coaches were trying to get
me to feel. Shortly after that in September of 2005, I
created the balance pro sport belt, which was to help athletes with balance. About a
year later, that application was found to help children that have sensory disorders.
A lady out in California called me, her name is Catharine Behan. She worked at the time
at a school called the Sierra Academy, which is a school for autistic children. She called
out of the blue and said, "Hey! I have one of these belts and it has been helping to
calm me down." She has ADHD. She took it to the school and she tried it on some of the
autistic children and it helped reduce self-stymie sensations in the children. "Wow! I put the
belt on and it really helped to calm them down." Today it has helped about 10,000 children.
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