Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Why You Control Your Life’s Narrative | MLB Hall of Famer, Cal Ripken Jr.

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Cal Ripken Jr., baseball’s all-time Iron Man.Cal retired from baseball in October, 2001 after 21 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles.Although he began and finished his career at third base, Cal is still best known for redefining the position of shortstop.On July 29, 2007 he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.Cal received the 4th highest percentage of votes in history, collecting the second highest vote total ever by the BBWAA.His name appears in the record books repeatedly – he’s one of only eight players in history to achieve 400 home runs and 3,000 hits.But most notably Cal broke Lou Gehrig’s Major League record for consecutive games played (2,130) playing 2,632 consecutive games before he voluntarily ended the streak.Think about that for a second – that’s 16 years straight without missing a game.Imagine not missing a day of work for 16 years… imagine the willpower, the mental fortitude required to keep at it.We get into that in this conversation.Cal shares some amazing stories from his career to help illustrate what was really going through his mind during “The Streak,” why he had such a high standard of excellence and cared so deeply about playing the game the right way.We touch on focus, resiliency, motivation, pressure and more…_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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If you start thinking that all the time, then you're just adding layers of pressure, and then you play outside of how you play. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. By trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist. And I just want to take a moment here to thank you if you've already picked up a copy of my new Audible original, and that's titled Compete to Create, and approach the living and leading authentically. And if you found it meaningful, it'd be awesome if you could give it a review on audible.com forward slash compete to create. And if you haven't had the chance to pick it up, I hope you do. And so with that, you know, the whole idea behind what we're doing

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And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right, look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone

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slash findingmastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash findingmastery. This conversation is with Cal Ripken Jr., and he's baseball's all-time Ironman. Cal retired from baseball in October 2001, after 21 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles. Although he began and finished his career at third base, Cal is still best known for redefining the position of shortstop. And then in 2007, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And his name is all over the record books. He's one of only eight players in history to achieve 400 home runs and 3,000 hits. And most notably, as you'll recognize, Cal broke Lou Gehrig's major league record of consecutive games.

And it was 2,130, and he's played 2,632 consecutive games before he voluntarily ended the streak. That's an important note and we talk about that. But just think about it, like 16 years straight without missing a day, without missing a game. And imagine that. Imagine what that's like for you. Imagine how clear his purpose was. Also double click and imagine the willpower and the fortitude required to keep at it at such a high level for such a duration. And so we get into that in this conversation. So that's one of the

reasons I'm not interested in peak performance. I'm interested in sustaining. I'm interested in what it takes to become and be that intersection between the two with this flywheel effect that we keep undulating into different spaces at higher levels. And so it's not about peak. I'm not interested in that at all. And Cal definitely has played the long game of potential. And he shares incredible stories in this conversation to help illustrate what was really going through his mind during that streak and why he had such a high standard of excellence and cared so deeply about playing the game, quote unquote, the right way. So we touch on focus and resiliency and drive and motivation and relationships and pressure and so much more.

Okay, so with that, let's jump right into this conversation with the flat-out legend, Cal Ripken Jr. Cal, how are you? Doing very well. Getting a little stir-crazy, but besides that, I'm all right. Yeah. So how have you, so somebody who has spent their life about consistency and about being, you know, the Ironman where nothing really knocked you off your game from a consistent basis. some videos asking for advice on how to deal with the day-to-day. And it really comes back to a real simple premise that my dad said. You can't play tomorrow's game until it gets here. You can't really replay yesterday's game, but you can learn from it.

So you might as well play the game today. And the secret to the streak was in meeting the challenge of the day um you you have different levels of uh fatigue mentally you're tired mentally you're frustrated physically you got hit with a pitch right here and you can't swing the bat real well um and you come in each day uh and my advice is to try to win the day, whatever those challenges are. Focus on the immediate, what's right here in front of you, what you can do to get through that day. And a lot of times it's convincing yourself that you can.

I'll give you an example. You play 15 innings in Boston. You end up losing the game. You're 0 for 6 in the game, which now runs you to your 0 for your last 20. You're slumping. You're not feeling good about your hitting. And you have a quick turnaround for the game tomorrow.

Roger Clemens happens to be pitching tomorrow. It would be real easy to say, I need a mental day off. Let somebody else deal with the challenge. But the right way to look at it, in my opinion, is Roger Clemens, one of the game's best pitchers, can be beaten. But it has to be the best team that you put on the field to beat him. And you're part of that team. And so you would go out with lower expectations.

And there are many times when I got the game-winning hit. I got a hit and drove in two runs and you knock Clemens out of the ballgame and we end up winning that game. I'm not speaking of a specific story right now, just more generally. But you don't know about yourself what you're able to do unless you push yourself to that point. And to me, it was just focusing on today and not worrying about tomorrow, whether we got Randy Johnson from Seattle in the next series or not, and how do I hit him? All those things are noise. And to me, you eliminate the noise and you just try to meet the challenge right here in front of you. So the science about

what you're talking about is strong, right? Signal to noise ratio. It's an electrical engineering term, but it's also a psychological term as well, or phrase, which is there's internal distractions and there's external distractions, right? There's both of those. And what I'm curious about for you is not how you manage the external, but there is a strategy and a tactic there. But how do you, or did you, you still probably do it, How do you manage the internal noise, which is, you know, we need to characterize it a little bit. What was the noise for you? So when I describe myself, I'm analytical in all regards. And so you take information, data, and then you you help apply it now.

So it's one of your greatest strengths. They've taken all this little information and putting it to use in a positive way. But the noise to me is all that other information that doesn't matter, but you're still analyzing it. So my greatest strength was my ability to analyze and see my job. But my greatest weakness was I could take myself in all different directions. And so you have to constantly talk to yourself or focus what is relevant and what's not relevant. I'll give you an example. In baseball, sometimes you see the other team feels that your pitcher is throwing at them.

You know, a guy's got knocked down. We get two guys that got hit on their team. And you can see something building on the other side. And you know the manager, you know the pitcher, that there's going to be some sort of retaliation. I'm really in tune to that. You know, I'm picking up all these things. So I come to the plate thinking, okay, am I going to get hit this time or are they going to throw at me?

And you start getting it. And then you become passive and then they don't throw at me? And you start getting it, and then you become passive, and then they don't throw at you at that particular bat, and then you waste your bat. There are other guys that are oblivious to that situation whatsoever, and it never affects them. It doesn't cross their mind. They just stay in the box and they get a hit.

I remember a guy by the name of John Shelby was not playing in the game in Texas. And Mitch Williams was a pitcher that was wild pitching for Texas. And he had hit like the first three guys in that inning. And John Shelby's underneath the tunnel getting loose because he might go in for as a replacement. And all of a sudden he yelled down, John, you hit for Al Bumby. I don't know. So John comes running out of the dugout. and all of a sudden he yelled down, John, you hit for Al Bumbrey. I don't know. So John comes running out of the dugout having the guys got hit three times before,

and he has no idea they got hit, and then he stands in the box, hits the first pitch for a double to left center field, and we're all wondering how did you not know that he was wild or that you would take a more passive approach. And sometimes I think being oblivious, we're being so much in the moment that you don't know anything else that's happening around you. I think that's a good thing. And I just always wonder, when you're in the zone, you're able to distract all that away and everything becomes really slow motion and very clear. But my battle all the time was to stop, stop those other things from coming in

that, uh, that could take away from that, from that concentration at that moment. Okay. So strategy and analytics is part of your cognitive strength, right? And the noise was overthinking, overanalyzing, um, over predicting, you know, what might be happening next or what could happen. So that was one of your strengths and one of your maybe limitations, you know, what might be happening next or what could happen. So that was one of your strengths and one of your maybe limitations. You know, it's like a double edged sword. Our most of our skills are double edged swords. OK, so that being said, I would have if I didn't know that about you, but I would have thought that maybe the internal noise for most people is not about analytics.

It's about doubt. It's about self critique. It's about perfectionism. It's about this inner narrative that creates constriction. And like relative to the analytical side of you, did you have, did you wrestle with that at all? Or was that, were you, did you have an immunity to that? You know, that was really special. No, all that, all that was, uh, was part of it, but it was only a part of it in the beginning. The, uh, it's really special. No, all that was part of it, but it was only a part of it in the beginning. It's really interesting. I grew up in a baseball family. My last name, my dad, his last name wasn't

really famous, but I had my dad's last name. And when I went into the Orioles system, there was a great deal of expectation. I was a higher draft pick out of high school and I made 30 some errors in the first year that I played shortstop. Was this in the minors or the majors? Yeah, so I went to the minor leagues. I was 17 years old, turning 18 later that summer. So even the drinking age was 18, but I couldn't go to a bar with my teammates. And so I remember showing up and there was a guy by the name of Bob Bonner. This is an interesting story. Bob Bonner was a star player out of Texas A&M, shortstop, probably four or five years older than me at that time. And I was taking ground balls behind him and I was looking at his skill set. He had the best arm, most accurate arm, the quickest hands. You know,

he was a finished player. And I kept thinking, I'm never going to play. This guy's way better than me. And they immediately sent him to double A because he was too good for that level of classification. And then I assumed the position of shortstop. And so I doubted whether I was a big fish in a small pond. But all of a sudden now I'm a very small fish in this big pond. And I didn't know if I could do it.

I didn't know if I could make it, whether I had the skill set to do it or not. And I called home a lot in the first week when I was making errors and all that kind of stuff, getting reassurance. I needed a lot of reassurance in the beginning. But once you start measuring yourself around and then you start to have success, you start looking around and thinking, I can do this. And the story about Bob Bonner was I caught Bob Bonner in the minor leagues. You know, we played together at AAA, and then I was the one that played shortstop in the big leagues, not him. So it was pretty interesting.

And once you start to get the confidence that you can, then it's not a um it's not a question anymore so the fear of uh so when i got to the big leagues the fear of uh i'm not being good enough in the big leagues i was a pretty a star player in triple a and it blossomed in double a i uh was a triple crown candidate in winter ball i did all these things and now there was expectation to take the next step. I was three for five opening day, and then I was four for my next 63. So if you add it all up, I'm seven for 68. I'm hitting just barely over 100.

It's on the big score board all the time. And I doubted whether I had enough to make it in the big leagues. Earl Weaver was my manager, which he was known for being confrontational and fiery and all that kind of stuff. But he actually kind of put his arm around me and reassured me that, hey, you've done everything in the minor leagues. This is just the next step. And he stayed with me long enough to actually make that step. And once that you establish yourself that you can hit in the big league level, I turned out to be the rookie of the year that year.

I was the MVP of the next year. We won the World Series in my first two years. So I knew that I was capable. But there is a point that you reach that when you're struggling, it's defined as a slump. It's not defined as I can't play it. I can't do it anymore. You first have to prove to yourself, and I guess for me, measuring myself against all the people around me, seeing that I had the skill set and then having the stats to back that up gave me the confidence that any time that I was not performing well, there was a fix to it.

There was a way I could go into the cage. I could work on this. I could change my stance a little bit. I could do that. But I never doubted whether I could play after a certain point. you have confidence, you have awareness, you have a graciousness about you. It's like, you've got these attributes that are obvious and you present incredibly well. And most people at early, some, at some point in the phase, and they never maybe shed this is they do what you've described, which is they look around to see if they're okay. They look at their last result to

see if they're okay, which is what I'm hearing you say, which is actually quite dangerous, right? Yeah. When you need to see, when you, when you look over and say, I'm better, it's really easy to also look over and go, oh, he's better or she's better. And so that mechanism is actually quite dangerous. So you figured it out using that mechanism, which is, you know, for a lot of people, they never get out of it because they're constantly looking at others going, oh, I see what's better about her or I see what's better about him. So how did you do? How did you how did you sort that out? Well, I think when listening to you talk, there's always going to be someone that's better at something than you. So I couldn't steal bases.

I didn't have that sort of skill set, but I didn't measure myself against a base stealer. You quickly realize that I can compete, and I'm not exactly the same as everybody else, but this is how I do it. And that's good enough to be an important cog on your team. So you always had to keep in mind, I was just making notes earlier because I'm in a project that I'm trying to articulate. I was a shortstop, a rare shortstop. I was 6'4", 225. I was a big shortstop. Other players ozzy smith omar viskell um you know some people in the past of baseball have been nicknamed peewee and scooter at the position they were you know ozzy might be five five eight and about uh 150 pounds soaking wet yeah you broke the mold

yeah they camper around so then my my success at the position of shortstop to some had changed that position so you had to actually look at the position said I can't be Ozzy I can't be Omar but I can be the best that I can be there's a skill set that I have that maybe they don't have I have a stronger arm than they do I have a better reach I can stand on a double play because I have size. And so determining what you can do and then trying to maximize that was the challenge. And people were telling me all the time that I was going to go back to third base. I laugh a little bit because when I got moved from third to short in the big leagues, Earl Weaver did it on a day's notice. And it was perceived as a temporary move to kind of

get the offense going and see what happens and that temporary move lasted 15 straight years but it wasn't without challenge every spring training because the way it was presented there was a young whippersnapper shortstop that was going to move me back to third base and so it was almost like an internal competition but i didn't treat that as a negative. I treated that as a motivating force so that if I was taking ground balls with him or doing plays, I would give him the benefit of my wisdom. But at the same time, when we were actually executing the drill, I want to do it better than he did. And I want to do it every single time better than he did just to prove to myself and prove to everybody watching that I was the shortstop. So I think internalizing what you're good at and not changing the expectations, not looking around saying, you know, I wish I could hit more home runs like Eddie Murray.

I wish I could steal bases like, you know, Al Bumby or John Shelby or the greater players. And like, I wish I was a five tool player. Like it all of a sudden became real popular that there's a player like Ken Griffey Jr. that can do it all. And then if you had an ego or that if you thought you measured your success based on I have to be the best player in the league, then that's a losing battle. To me, I just wanted to be the best player that I could be. And I knew I had a good talent base, but let me figure out how I can play the position of shortstop

with my skill set and then have the same success. One of the great sources of pride that I have about shortstop is that, and I believe that this stat is correct, Ozzie Smith and myself are the only two shortstops that had over 900 chances in a season. Now, we're diametrically different. He's got super range, super legs, can cover everything. He can stand in the middle and just catch every ball that's hit.

I had to do it more strategically, position myself better, you know, take into other, how I made the plays. So I still have the assist record for shortstops in the American League for the season. I led the league in assist for many years. I don't get any credit for my defensive stuff because I was more of an offensive shortstop. But to get 900 chances, I had to make the plays that a shortstop has to make. And the likes of Ozzie Smith, one of the greatest shortstops to play the game, I was able to compete with my skill set compared to his. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance,

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Okay, so you are a competitor. like you are scrappy and you take self inventory. So this is where you flipped it on us here is that you take a self inventory, you know, what you potentially could be great at, you know, for your, for your own self. And then you bounce up against others. Like I'm going to do it better. He's, he's helping me pull out my best. Is that fair to say? Yeah. The, um, I was asked to be a speaker, uh, you know, on the speaker circuit, motivational type thing. Uh, in the very beginning, when I retired, I'm thinking, um, they said I had a story to tell and I'm thinking, okay, what is it? But one of the sections of the story that I figured out how to articulate was forms of competition. And forms of competition was internal.

They weren't as obvious. Pitcher versus hitter. Team versus team. We all understand those competitions. But the internal competitions that I mentioned already, like facing a young whippersnapper shortstop in spring training and how I internalized that to compete with him. That can be a healthy one, and it can be a real negative for the team because many players would push the guy away,

not talk to him, not make him feel comfortable, saying, you're not taking my job. To me, it was more embracing the fact that I'm being challenged and then trying to win that competition. And more secretly, too. I didn't say, you know, if we're being measured right now, let's go, let's have a competition. I just did it. And I drew for myself, it was really motivating for all those years that people said I couldn't play shortstop.

You know, at my size, you can't play shortstop. You know, and have that negative sort of feeling over. To me, it was in the offseason, it was motivation to work harder. It was motivation to work on your agility more. It was motivation to work on your precise footwork, because if you're if you're bigger like I am, you can't afford to lean the wrong way. You know, you have to really anticipate. You really have to have that first step quickness. And you can't have Ozzie Smith might make a judgment and misread it for a quick, but he can recover because he's so quick and he could do that. I could not. So I had to be more precise with that.

So I was a perfectionist in the way that I practice things that other people didn't practice. The crossover step in baseball is one of those things that people argue whether it's useful or not. I happen to think that it was very valuable is that you don't know where the ball is going to be hit. It's probably like a guy returning serve in tennis. You're coming up to the line and you don't know which way the ball is going to go but you have to be able to react on either way and as a bigger person I had to be lighter on my feet and be precise with my first step and there were many times I went out to the outfield while batting packs were being taken and tried to time my ready position to when they swung swung the bat and if the ball went to right, I would try to cross over and go that way really fast. If the ball was hit to the other side of me, I would cross over and go that

way. And I was cognizant that I needed to do those things. So there was sort of an internal competition and a perfectionism in me that says, I have to do these things to stay at my position. Okay. So the obvious question is, why did you, this is not meant to be, I don't know, it feels almost aggressive as I'm about to say it in my head, and it's not meant to be that way. But why did you work so hard? What was underneath it for you? There's a couple of things that we can go to that are really interesting to me. My dad used to say, and my dad was in the first 14 years of my life, he was a minor league manager. Then he went to the big leagues as a coach for the next 20 some years.

So we probably got close to 40 years in professional baseball. And he used to always say it's one thing to make it to the big leagues. It's another thing to stay. And so then the first hurdle is getting there. And he used to always say it's one thing to make it to the big leagues. It's another thing to stay. And so then the first hurdle is getting there. And the second hurdle is to stay. And how do you stay? It is that you have to adjust and readjust all the time. That you just can't stand pat.

You have to recognize what's happening. Make the adjustments. I remember reading, who was it? Was it Willie Stargell? I read Sports Illustrated a lot when I was a kid. And I couldn't get anything in. And Willie Stargell said something like, I got to the big leagues on my physical abilities, but I played a long time because you're smart. You got to be smart to be a baseball player and play a long time.

Now, I literally took that as book smart, not baseball smart, just book smart. You got to be smart to be a baseball player and play a long time. Now, I literally took that as book smart, not baseball smart, just book smart. And so I applied myself thinking, OK, if I want to be a big league player, not only do I have to be good, but I have to get good grades. And and so that was sort of an incentive. I don't know if somebody would have interpreted that for me differently, whether I wouldn't have placed the same emphasis on it. But I thought that was good. But now I know that the smartness comes from pitchers are going to adjust to you. You're going to adjust to them. They're going to have different strategies. You have to recognize that.

You have to recognize patterns. And when you recognize those things, you can make the proper adjustment. You just can't stand pat and say, okay, this is who I am, and I'm going to play the same way all the time. Yeah, because you've built your reputation around your ability to be consistent about your ability to weather storms, to live with passion, and to be a smart player. Obviously, you got all the physical tools. So here's another thing, too.

I don't want to interrupt you, but if I don't upend right now, I'll forget. There was something happening, too, in the beginning of my career that shaped my thinking. And it probably shaped my thinking as it relates to long term or even the streak. You know, your opportunity to play the game of baseball. You have a window of opportunity to play the game. When I came to the big leagues, I was a younger person on a veteran type team. We were good. We went to the last day of the season and almost won the pennant my first year. Next year we win the pennant, we win the world series. But then in 84, some of the older players started retiring. And so I was in a position where I'm right in the beginning. I'm learning how good I am and

I'm having good success. And you're sitting back in the back of the bus and I'm asking players, Jim Palmer or Al Bumbrey or those guys that were in the upper part of their 30s, contemplating retirement. And we'd get into discussions. Do you have any regret? When you look back over your career, do you have any regret? you look back over your career do you have any regret and sometimes I'd hear I wish I would have played more I wish I would have taken it more seriously you know I wish I would have taken care of myself all those things that I was hearing in the back of the bus was from people that already experienced it and I kept thinking you only get to play so long if you're lucky you can stretch it to your like i played till i was 41 um which was great but that's a very unusual to play 20 years in the big leagues and so to me the motivation was not to miss an opportunity today you know to play in the game to uh to

experience today and then try to play tomorrow um and so there was sort of an urgency to maximize uh your opportunity and uh and play as much as you can because I didn't want to be in a position at the end of my career to say I wish I would have done that I wish I would have taken it more seriously I wish I would have played more now I sit in a different position now I might say well I wish I would have taken a couple days off because maybe I'd have been better. You can look at it all ways, but I'm content that I maximize. I probably could have made my batting average better by taking 10 days off a year. I probably could have picked the guys I couldn't hit.

And then I would take off a seven for 50 or seven for 60 off my stats at the end of the year. Or maybe my mental frustration wouldn't have reached a point where I prolonged my slump that I would have been able to not have the frustration of facing these guys. And then next day, then I'd get a couple hits. Who knows what would have happened from that. But I didn't want to regret. I didn't want to look back and and waste an opportunity and I don't know why I was driven I wanted to be the best I could be I didn't I

wasn't obsessed with breaking Lou Gehrig's record it was I never set out and said I'm going to be the person to break his record I wanted to be a really good player and find out how good I was I would have rather been known for having more home runs than Hank Aaron or more hits than Pete Rose. You know, all the things that longevity and being good would show up in the stats. But I did feel it was my responsibility to be there for your team every day. And the streak sort of happened.

And then that became, and I had the resiliency and the mental strength to be able to meet the challenge of each day. And it just kind of happened. So I wish I knew why it was so important to me. Yeah. I, you know, I have this sense and this is just complete conjecture at this point is that you were, and you're, you're, you got a high motor and you're, you're serious. Like I'm a serious person too. Like, you're, you got a high motor and you're, you're serious. Like I'm a serious person too. Like, okay. So you got a high motor, you're pretty serious. And dad's a legend, you know, in your eyes and shaped you and you moved around the country with him a bit. I think I have that part, right. You know, in baseball, I try to make him proud, which most sons do.

Yeah. So you, so I do want to understand, do you have, I struggle with this, I think a little bit is sometimes I get so intense that I, I just don't kind of laugh enough. And I, and I know that. So this year was my year to play more, you know, that was like this intention that I had for this year. And so, so that being said, it's like, do you have a lighter side or do you say, no, no, no, dude, I'm really intense. I've kind of always been this way and I just have a big motor. Well, you know, the perception of me is that I was serious and that I played and I didn't. But I had many teammates that the most common reaction to teammates that I played against, I mean, they came over to me. They said, I had one feeling playing against you and totally opposite feeling of being on your team.

So I was playful. I wrestled. I was physical. You know, we laughed and all that kind of stuff. I enjoyed doing what I did. Rain delays, I'd invent games inside the clubhouse to pass the time you know there was always uh different things that you would invent to enjoy the uh experience so you know people looked at me like uh they thought I was careful and that that um like when I'm talking about wrestling I mean you got people that are big and strong and they're jumping you in the locker room um some of them uh would say here's my posse the pitchers over here the guys over there and they'd physically jump you and then you'd you'd uh you'd uh do your thing but it was a way of uh um interacting with your uh i i look at myself as being very playful. Oh, you do? Okay, yeah. And at a certain time when you're serious,

like when you're executing or when you're trying to work on your drills, that you can't be screwing around then. Because if you're screwing around, you're building a wrong habit and you're not getting the timing of the play. And so I would get frustrated in some of the fundamentals that we were doing, whether there's keys to a rundown, there's keys to pick-all plays, there's timings that have to happen. And if you just go through the motions and not do the timings, then you're not going to be able to execute it the eighth inning of the

game. So I would be very serious in those times. And I actually get upset sometimes saying, this is why we can't do it is because when you come up in a set position, you're supposed to be looking at home first, you turn your head here and then you come back. I'm keying off the back of your head to make my move. And so I was a stickler for those sorts of things, being able to execute in those moments. And I think good teams have the ability to, like Eddie Murray, was wonderfully fun. But at the same time, at the eighth inning of the game, bases loaded, 3-1 count on the hitter, and this pitch could be a pivotal pitch,

he's looking to try to pick off the guy on first base to take the pressure off the inning. And the crowd is going crazy. It's hard to hear. The first base coach is trying to yell at the guy that's on first base, saying, wait a minute, be careful, be careful. But he can't hear him because of the crowd. And Eddie would see that as an opportunity to sneak in. But in order to do that, you had to have the confidence to put that play on. And so I learned from him that, and you can't be scared.

You can't be scared to put that play on right now. Cause if you mess that play up, the game would be decided on that play. You had to have the confidence confidence saying we know how to do a pickoff it doesn't matter the highest pressure situation matter of fact it makes it more advantageous because they're they're not expecting it and now i can put this play on and we can maybe get out of the inning and win the game as a result of a pickoff play you know i love that you bring us to that because I would have thought that as I'm listening, that you might've had a, like a silver, an undertone, like a silver lining, an undertone of fear. Like don't miss the opportunities to play a long time.

Don't miss the opportunities to play. And I was kind of picking up that maybe it was a bit of a fear approach underneath. Nothing wrong with that. That keeps us sharp. It keeps us working hard, fill in the blanks. But then I hear you say, you got to take risks. You got to have the confidence to kind of do the unexpected in that way. Do you come from more of a fear approach or do you come from more of a love of the game approach? Do you come from more of a exploratory, you know, frontier gathering from the frontier approach? what what is underneath because let me go one more note oh sorry sorry sorry no no go ahead no no no fear is underneath but it's

a different kind of fear i didn't have a fear of failure i mean i laid myself on the line in front of 50 000 people on tv all the time i changed my stances sometimes i look unorthodox you know and i didn't care what the look was or how people did. So I wasn't fearful of standing there with the bases loaded or saying, don't let it be me. You know, if you're standing on the on deck circle, hope the guy in front of you gets the hit. So it doesn't come on you. I didn't think that way. I was thinking, okay, if it happens to be me, then I'll, I want to be in that situation.'m not rooting against you you know in front of me I'm hoping you get the game when he hit and then I don't have to but I wasn't fear I wasn't fearful

in standing at home plate I wasn't fearful of going out there and playing in a game but I was fearful that if you don't do the preparation that you get caught and you make a mistake and it's embarrassing. You know, it's the fear of being embarrassed or the fear of not looking like you know what you're doing was a driving force. So when you're in Little League and they say, what am I going to do when the balls hit to me? You know, it's a simple thing. What do I do? But as the game gets, as you play the game longer, there's more complications to that game. If the ball hits slow, what do I do? There's a guy on first base that runs fast. A guy at home plate doesn't run fast. We're up two runs. When do you take a chance? When do you don't get caught you know in a high speed moment you're preparing for what happens here what happens there and i always wanted to be prepared and not be caught by surprise in front of 50 000 people on tv i didn't want to make the blooper the blooper real and that fear of making the blooper feel or making a mental mistake the mental mistake probably was physical errors are going to happen it's just going to happen happen. It's part of the game. But if you get caught not thinking about something and then

you react wrong to it, that's embarrassing to me. And so that sort of fear, I guess it's a fear, too, of taking a test without studying is that you all of a sudden you've taken a test and you haven't thought about that. And there's no better feeling than doing the work and preparing and then coming in and taking the test and then knowing that you did well. The same with preparing playing baseball. If you're standing in there in a high pressure situation and you prepared for all the possible scenarios, you have a much better chance of executing. Okay. Where does pressure come from for you? Is it internal, external? And then if you put some color on it? I try to defeat pressure. To me, it is very interesting. When I first started playing in all-star games, I didn't make the all-star game in my first year, but every year after that, I made it. Seriously, Cal, your stats are unbelievable.

There's nobody that has that type of record. Like, it really is remarkable. I think I had 19 opportunities. And when you have 19 opportunities go in, but when the very first part of that is, I thought about it this way. You're representing the whole league. Everybody in the world is watching this game.

Like before, when you're playing during the season, are all over the place you get to pick that person but all of a sudden now it's concentrated all baseball fans are watching the all-star game so my first approach was don't take any chances just don't embarrass yourself you know so you're not taking any risks and then I'm realizing I'm not getting any hits and then you're playing it safe you don't like swinging at a bad pitch people would criticize you for swinging at a bad pitch but sometimes you got to take a chance on looking for a pitch and then being fooled by another one um that's just part of the game but if you wait too long and then you swing late you hit the ball to right field you don't hit the ball with authority you're not playing your game and i I kept thinking, I'm playing safe.

You know, as long as I don't embarrass myself, you know, I can still go back to the regular season and we'll get back to the regular stuff. I don't know if it was a cool factor or whatever else. Just don't embarrass yourself. Don't do something stupid on this game. But I wasn't having success playing it, and I internalized it and said, okay, I want to do well in this game. And so in order to do well, I have to do what I did during the season.

And so that's one mental part of it. The other part of it is defeating the pressure. So you get excited, and you get all strong, and you feel like you've like you got a swing and then you playing outside yourself. I had to talk to myself a lot by saying, okay, you haven't, when you try too hard, you don't do, you don't hit, calm yourself down, see the ball, put a good swing on it and good things will happen. And so I learned that over time. I think I first learned that about the pressure in the all-star games about

how I can, I could get success. If I could control my emotions and try not to uh don't play safe but also don't play out of control and kind of calm yourself and try to say this is this is the same game that you play during the regular season the ground ball is the same the pitches that coming in is the same so let's defeat the pressure that way same way when you play in a world series my play in the world series my second year i'm 22 years old and i'm i'm i'm jacked you know i'm excited yeah your adrenaline's flowing you're running out for introductions you know you feel like you're fast even though you're not fast you feel like you're just strong and every

pitch you're getting ready like it's the end end of the world and then you got to catch yourself say okay calm down you know if the ground and when the ground ball was hit to me the realization the first one i caught it through the ball in first base and i go that's exactly the same play you make during the season so perspective on pressure you know uh um don't get caught up and don't say I got to get a hit I got to get a hit I got to get a hit because when you do that you're just adding layers on yeah it goes the opposite for me is know that you did the work know that you're ready calm yourself in the moment see the ball a long time put a good swing on it and the goal is to hit the ball hard and when you hit the ball a long time, put a good swing on it. And the goal is to hit the ball hard.

And when you hit the ball hard, then something good can happen. It's not that I'm going to hit a home run. I'm going to hit a double. I'm going to, I got to, I got to come through now. If you start thinking that all the time, then you're just adding layers of pressure. And then you play outside of how you play. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new

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better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So what I hear is perspective first, right? And then you go to kind of a self-talk piece and then you use arousal regulation to calm down, to find that sweet spot. Were you skilled at that part? Like finding calm, but so this is a calm focus, see the ball. So sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself, calm and then focus, right? Like see the ball. So that's an elusive state for many people.

You know, calm is elusive when the quote unquote moment feels big. And if like, if I double click on that, I say, listen, there's no big moment. There's this moment and whether you're going to be in it or not is your choice, right? Whether there's people watching or not, whether it's, you know, bases loaded or not, there's just this just this moment you know this is the only moment you and i have we can be distracted internally distracted externally and or we can commit compete to get into this moment so so that calm state with the deep focus is very elusive for people and were you skilled to the question were you skilled at finding that calm focus state it was a learned behavior for sure as it's it's by failing um and knowing when you analyze what you did is that i was too jacked um i was too jumpy i was running out there and then recognizing

that was the cause of you not coming through you You know, you pulled off the pitch. You got out too soon. My tendency was I would want to charge out to the pitcher. You know, and so the secret to hitting is to let the ball come to you. And so when you gather your load as a hitter, you're stalling the process. And then when the ball comes in, then everything comes together when you're anxious or nervous or wanting to do well so well my understanding me was my stride would start to out way too soon and then you get in a position where you can't hit and then and so understanding that then you can come back to saying how do I fix that well I got to calm myself in the moment. Okay. When pitchers, I think I learned this in the minor leagues.

When pitchers threw really hard, it gave me problems. And it was because I was charging and they were charging at the same time. And we were, I wasn't slowing the ball down. So somebody told me, I wish I remember who it was. When they face a hard throwing pitcher pitcher they talk about striding less so instead of going out hard just pick your foot up and put it down you know so it's almost like you take a shorter stride and then you rely on the speed of the ball and the speed of the quickness of your hands for timing so that really resonated with me is that you're you're making an adjustment when a guy throws

hard you want to meet that challenge and then that, that would rise your motor up. And then what I was doing was calming my motor, calming my fundamentals and saying, okay, short stride, quick hands. And then once you started hitting guys, it's really hard that way. Each experience of learning yourself, if you knew you got too excited and you were uh you swung in a bad pitch because when you charge out you don't see the ball you swing in a bad pitch there's all kinds of symptoms that you got yourself out so coming back i learned how to to calm myself and recognize what the why i didn't have success you know sometimes you could be right on the right on the money and everything would be right and you just just make it out. And so you would say, well, my timing was pretty good. I just didn't hit the ball. But there are other times

when you know that you got yourself out because you were too anxious and you were trying too hard. Okay. So let's deal with mistakes for a minute. Resiliency, you mentioned that word. You can get yourself out. You can make a mistake from internal, from physical. You can also just kind of get beat because somebody is more skilled in that moment than you are. Right. And so when we talk about resiliency, there's three components to it. There's the ability to meet challenges, to love challenges. There's the commitment to stay in it. And then there's controlling what's in your control. But if you could just riff on how you would imagine, like for your kids or for any of the young kids that you're coaching, how do you teach resilience? That's a hard one. It's almost like how do you teach awareness you know a lot of times you know um i thought that awareness was something that was innate that uh there wasn't a high speed

moment i could do things on the baseball field where runners coming around here runners coming here balls coming here and you're slowing down all those things so you can make a decision in the middle of a high speed time. And you would try to articulate being aware of the runner coming into your view, the second runner or this runner in the race of the ball coming into third base. You know, those all those things were happening. And I would try to explain that to somebody and they if they can't see it they can't do it um so resiliency how you uh how do you how do you you said something a minute ago that I was focusing on while you were asking the question and so maybe I should come back to that and maybe I'll have a better uh resistance you were talking about control what you can control there was always something that I thought was different in me than other players was when somebody said, when things are outside of your control, you should just accept it.

You should go with the flow. That was counterintuitive to me. It was why can't I put something of control on things that I can't control, that will give me a chance. You know, put some controls on things that instead of just accepting the way it is, put some controls on it. And that always sort of worked with me. What does that mean? Like, practically, what does that mean? So I tried to articulate this in my speeches when I was out on the road, and it was very difficult at first, so I had to come up with some examples. I say I give two examples in my professional life, and I give one in my personal life because it's a hard concept to explain. I played 21 years for the same team, right?

Some people will evaluate me as, you didn't go through any change you didn't get traded you didn't uh have to pack up your family and move to another city or you played in the city that you uh grew up in you know you really didn't go go through any change cal and i look at him i go i go do you know how many managers i played for in that 21 years and they go no and i go nine and i named the nine managers I go okay so change was coming to me each and every year you would you'd be walking in and I learned really quickly that the best way to handle that you could sit back and say okay let's wait to see what the manager expects of me and we'll just you know I can't control him you know just just we'll wait

but I couldn't do that so I learned really early to walk into the manager's office when there was a managerial change shake his hand say congratulations on getting the job and then i would use that as an opportunity to say how do you um see my spring training unfolding so i would ask a question and then generally speaking there was a lot of different managers that you had to talk to they would come back and say well cal you've been doing this for a little while. How do you see your spring training unfolding? So it would give me a chance to tell him, the person in charge, how I want my spring training. And I would say, I used to think the more games I played, the readier I was.

I don't feel that way anymore. Spring training is a little long for a regular player. As I age, I want to work on things in the batting cage. I want to work in the backfield. I need to do things in my routine that will get me ready. I want to peak at the end of spring training. So they would say, why don't you go home and work out a schedule? I go home and write out my whole schedule for six weeks on one piece of paper,

bring it to him the next day, and give it to him. They would thank me for one piece of paper, bring it to him the next day and give it to him. They would thank me for this piece of paper and then they would manage me from this piece of paper. A lot of my patients would say, you know, how do you do that? You know, and I go, I go, you have the same ability to do it as I do. All you have to do is go in and ask, you know, ask the question. And I always look to the audience and I go, you know how many people took me up on that advice over the years? And I wait for a minute. I go zero. And I do not understand. The concept is that most all the other players have to show up at seven o'clock or seven thirty in the morning. They go to a big board. Generally, if your name is circled, then you're on the trip to go play the game that day.

If your game is not circled, then you're doing something else. That drove them crazy. It drove me crazy. But I knew before I came to the ballpark whether I was staying, whether I was going, and how that process was going to work. So I could plan to blow it out in the weight room. I could plan on working on barehand plays in the back field, you know, to work on that skill. I could plan to be ready in a way that I wanted to be ready.

And so that's putting controls on an area that you don't think you can control. I love it because that really is about you being an agent. That's a fancy little word for like you are an active participant in shaping your life, right? So you're able to shape your experience is what, where that comes from. And then you also have this other thing, which is like, you have the ability to believe that you can influence in your life, you know, and there's another fancy word for that. Not, not material to this conversation, but efficacy, like you have high efficacy. So you've got confidence and efficacy. You've got a great awareness. You're able to deal with transitions and setbacks.

So resiliency is really about dealing with setbacks and controlling what's in your control is one function of that. Yes. But can I ask a question before we leave this? Oh yeah. Things that I wrestle with in my life is that if you're smart enough to impact change or influence. Right. There's a positive aspect to that. Right. And I choose to look at the positive aspect of influencing. So influencing is a as long as it's done in a positive way. But if you look at manipulation, that's a negative use of that. Right. So you're using it for the wrong purposes. I'll tell you a story real quick. Rupert Jones hit a double in Anaheim. And I started the season

early in my career hitting home runs, driving in runs. I was a leader of home runs. I was at the top of the leaderboard for average. And normally when I got hot, it would either be power hot or average hot. It wasn't a combination of both. And then all of a sudden in this particular year, it's both. And so the guy, Rupert Jones hits a double, comes to second base, and he goes, Cal, come over here. He goes, you haven't taken a bad swing since you got here, man. He goes, you look so good.

He goes, I like how you're holding your hands a little bit away from your body so i'm thinking to myself i'll walk back to my position i'm thinking that must be it you know uh talk about being uh analytical i'm thinking god i have my answer and i will go to the plate the next at bat the first thing i do is put my hands away from my body and i go down in the twos he got you he got with this i'm going did he do that to me intentionally did he yeah i don't think he did because i know rupert and i think he was making an observation as a baseball player do that but i know that i could do that to every player that came to second base i could go up there and plant a thought in their mind that might mess them up but i didn't

think that was the right way to play the game so i didn't do that i didn't come there and plant a thought in their mind that might mess them up. But I didn't think that was the right way to play the game. So I didn't do that. I didn't come up and plant a thought, you know, if a guy's really hot, I thought that was wrong. I thought that was a wrong use of your intellect is to be able to do that. So you recognize you're competing against them, and it would be good if you didn't get any hits. And if I planted the right thought, I thought that was playing the game wrong. So that to me,

that's a manipulation of something. And I didn't agree with that. So I wrestle with that all the time. Wow. That's super interesting. So that's like a character virtue that you've developed. Like that's not inside of the bounds of ethical play where if you read like some of the the art of war sun zoo stuff there you know that that theory is like oh yeah plant those seeds use deception you know like yeah okay so where did that ethical high ethical high virtue high character stuff come from was that from dad was that from mom and dad i mean dad mostly but yeah mom and dad in general dad used to always say there's a right way to do things there's a wrong way to do it there's a right way to play there's a wrong way to play and the the more entertaining story is that

when you learn about the hidden ball trick as a kid you want to try it all the time right you want to try to deceive the other team and all that i remember coming into pro ball and my we were talking about that my dad said um there's no place in professional baseball for the hidden ball trick he goes that's an amateur thing we don't you know that's not how you compete and how you play and i was thinking what do you mean there might be a really good moment which you can use that you could trick the other team you can win a game um but he was adamant that no um there's no place for a hidden ball trick that's not there's no honor in that you're competing in a fair sense you're not trying to embarrass the other team you're trying to beat them and you got to beat them fairly so i learned really quickly and this was an interesting story is that um i was playing with a different second baseman and the ball goes out the right

center field it's a double stand-up double second baseman gets it I'm waiting for him to throw me the ball so I can throw it back to the pitcher he then looks it looks at me and he fakes the throw to the pitcher and I'm looking at him like this and then he puts it in his glove and he goes and this is a guy on my team and I I look at him for a minute, you know, so he's trying to set up the hidden ball trick. The guy on second base has no idea that the ball did not come back to the pitcher. Pitcher is standing behind the mound. And the idea would be I stay around second base,

and when he starts to take his lead, you make a snap throw where he doesn't know it's coming from, catch it, and tag him out. You know, that's how the play was going to work. So I'm sitting there in a moment of thinking, okay, what do I do? I don't believe that that's the right way to do it. This is a crisis. This is a crisis. Full-blown crisis. I walk up to the guy in second base and I said, stay on the base. The second baseman has the ball. And he looks at me like, the same way you looked at me, like

I can't believe you. And then the ball is revealed because you can't start the inning without doing that. He's looking at it, whatever else. All of a sudden now the second baseman has to throw the ball back. And the guy turns to me and he mouths the word thank you. And so it was a trust that you're developing is you're competing. And I came up to him and I said, nobody needs to be embarrassed on the field. You know, that's not you know, we're trying to play in a certain way and the the value to that is is that you you develop a trust with it with your opponent and there are some times when you when you are asking questions like um you know when did you

start hitting and running with this guy you know because i'm making decisions based on who's going to hit and run or not or cover the base, and I'm sitting there looking at it. Was that a designed hit and run, or was that a guy just swung while the guy was stealing? Is this a play that they normally work? And I need to know that information. So then you walk up to a player like that, and you ask them.

And they would say, no, that wasn't a hit and run. That was the guy just stealing, and this guy never takes for the guy stealing. ask him and they would say not um that that wasn't a hit and run you know that was uh that was uh the guy just stealing and this guy never takes for the guy stealing or you might say yeah the manager sometimes feels this guy gets a little too passive at home plate and he wants him to swing so he puts a hit and run on to make him swing or this manager really likes to hit and run whatever the case may be is you're giving me some information that can be helpful for me to compete against you. And they don't feel that that's a problem. You know, there's a trot of a trust going back and forth.

Ricky Henderson would steal second base. The ball would be fouled off in the middle of the steal. But Ricky didn't know it because he doesn't look at home plate. And he comes sliding into second base head head first, chest hits the bag, and I go, Ricky, it was a foul ball. You've got to go back to first base. He looks at the umpire, and the umpire says, yeah, it's a foul ball. So he goes, damn, that hurts Ricky's body.

And he runs back to first base. So he steals in the same sequence, so I'm covering again, and while the foul ball goes straight back to the screen, I yell, Ricky, stand up, stand up, stand up, foul ball, in the middle of the play. So it stops him from sliding, right? And he doesn't slide, and he stands on the base. And now he's thinking, okay, was he truthful with me? And he looks at the umpire, and the umpire said, yeah, Ricky, it's a foul ball.

You got to go back to first base. And Ricky looks at me, and he goes, Ricky, thank you. You saved Ricky's body. But if you think about it it from a sheer competitive standpoint, do I want Ricky Henderson to slide every single time, wear himself out so he doesn't steal the base? Maybe. But but that's that falls into the hidden ball trick. We're competing against each other, but there could be some courtesy that you give along the way that is uh that is honorable and so there were a lot of those little things so ricky would come to second base and we'd have a rapport and you could talk and i could ask him uh a question like uh you know when you were dead out on that steal and he goes he

goes not i want to steal that was hit and run and i go okay so that tells me what the strategy of the game is it It's confirmed. When you're playing against other people in strategy, I always felt you have a theory on what they're doing, but you have to have it confirmed. So a hit and run is the manager knows, the third base coach knows, the first base coach knows, the hitter knows, and the guy that's on first base that got the sign knows.

So you could get it confirmed by any one of those people, you know, while you're walking on the field or not. And that would be helpful to me in making decisions on the game. Yeah, it speaks to your honor. You know, it speaks to your character, which is one of the reasons probably you had the so well-defined practice standards that led you to be able to deal with difficult moments when they came up, you know, the resiliency piece. I'm still contemplating the resilient thing is that, you know, getting knocked down and having to get back up again, right? The Bob Bonner story I told you earlier, he got called to the big leagues and he made an error at a critical time. And Earl Weaver was in his office and Earl Weaver was screaming out, you know, talking loud like he always did. Like, you know, go, go, shortstop, you know, bull or something like that. And Bobby Bonner heard all the stuff that Earl was saying just outside the offices.

And he could never play for Earl. You know, it kind of affected him so much that he couldn't play. So he couldn't, he didn't get back up off and showcase what he, he was a good shortstop and I played with him at Rochester, but he could never get over the hump to play for Earl. And that, and that created an opportunity for me to play a shortstop as well. There were times when you want to quit. You know, dealing with the failure and the errors and the embarrassment of playing.

I will give you one of the hardest times. After I played, I got over the hump in rookie ball. So I made 32 errors in 60-some games, which is a huge number of errors. But at some point, I started to become a little bit more consistent. We had a pitcher that hadn't had a win all year. And he was a high-round draft pick. He was 0-6 or 0-7. And the first game of a doubleheader, we were playing against the Braves in Kingsport.

And he's got a 2-0 shutout working into the seventh inning. So it's a shortened game. He's still in the game in the seventh inning. The manager says, go back out there. You know, win your game. This is on you. So he gets the first couple outs in the inning pretty quickly. Then gives up a blue pit.

Walks two people. And all of a sudden the bases are loaded with two outs uh and he's in his game and the manager comes out and says you know this is your your game to win or lose and so i go back to shortstop the next hitter hits a two hop ground ball to me it's short i catch it a big hop you know it's not a hard play and i go all i have to do is run over 10 feet and touch the bag bag stand on the bag, and the game is over. He wins the game. He gets his first win.

We all win. As I'm running towards the bag, the second baseman is still coming to the bag in anticipation of me flipping the ball. And he's still coming. So then I'm starting to think, well, instead of me taking it myself, I'll just flip it to him. So I flip it in the ball at the same time he stops and doesn't come to the bag anymore the ball hangs in the air the guy from first base runs into the ball kicks it out into left center field all three runs scored and we lose the game on that play so i wanted to crawl under a rock or wanted to hide someplace and then i had to play a second

game of the double header so you want to just leave and you want to um you feel like you've you've uh harmed everything but because there's another challenge that happens um you can convince yourself is I can't do anything about that and uh pick yourself back up and and try to do well and you do get a redeeming opportunity so I had a really good second game you know, and rose to the occasion. And remembering those experiences helps you, you know, you can come back, you can come back from something that happened really bad. Okay, so let's zoom in right at the moment where you wanted to crawl in a hole. How did you get out of the hole and maybe it's important to to ask like how what were you saying to yourself when you're in the hole like crawling in the hole if you so to speak um you're trying to put it out of your mind there was no hole to

crawl into and there's no place to hide you're in the second game of the doubleheader starts in 20 minutes and you're in the clubhouse with everybody else do you make eye contact with people in those moments or do you avoid eye contact what because you have you have a like a a spark about you right and i'm sure you said that you got these beautiful blue eyes you know like but but you've got a spark behind your eyes like you're switched on and so do you make eye contact with people when you're not feeling good? Well, I mean, I said I was sorry about 100 times to the pitcher to win. And I felt like, hey, my mistake, my bad. And kind of identifying that, that's the first step of getting over it.

And then you don't have time to belabor that point anymore because you got to play and I guess I was always good at compartmentalizing putting that away and saying you know if I don't put it away it's going to affect what I have what I do in the next game and I got to play well now so many times when you make a mistake or made an error and I came up to the plate next, I became more determined and I really hit better as a result of that. So I used that as motivation to prove that I could do it. Who were you proving it to? I guess myself. Was it yourself? To me, my dad used to always say, too, when a ball goes in the outfield and it bounces off the wall and an outfitter goes to pick the ball up and he misses it the first time, you know, and and then then compounds the mistake.

So he would always say, take your time. Don't panic. Pick it up the first time. And so don't compound your mistake. And I always thought that if you make an error and you get your head up your rear end, then you're going to make another mistake and you're going to make another mistake. You're going to compound it. And then that's when you really have to be on your game to say, OK, let me focus. Let me let me concentrate. Let me be into the moment so much where I do not make another mistake. And it wasn't about putting pressure on, but it heightened your awareness and your focus almost to protect yourself from embarrassment or making a mistake again. Yeah, there you go. Okay. So when we talk about drive and motivation, I don't want to make any

assumptions here, but I'll start by thinking or asking you, it feels like you're internally driven. Like nobody's telling you, you got to go do something. Like you come from an internal drive perspective. And then on the reward side of it, are you more interested in the unlocking and figuring out, or are you more interested in the recognition from your peers, from others, from fans, from dad, from mom, you know, or money, or is it, is it something outside of you that you're searching for? No, the, uh, the, uh, I'm really funny is that I got a lot of awards, the MVP awards. How about you, how about you got all of them?

And then you get, you get, but an award is an acknowledgement that you've done something well, How about you got all of them? But an award is an acknowledgement that you've done something well, but it does not replace the feeling you have that you did it. So whether you win the award or not doesn't take away the accomplishment. So I never played for awards or never played for accolades or even never played for money. Money got in the way. One of my worst years in my career was because I let contract negotiations go into a season, which I would have been a free agent at the end of the year. And it was a roller coaster ride mentally the whole time. When you started getting some hits, contract negotiations heated up. Then you went to a slump.

They cooled down. So you were kind of going like this all the way through. And you knew that you wanted to get a five-year deal you wanted to get all this kind of stuff and we were this close doing it before spring training ended and i thought we just let it leak into the season that was the worst decision uh of my life because it made the made the roller coaster go up and down i always tried it when I analyze drive. Why people, some people have drive and some people don't have as much. Is it your hard wiring? Or is it a learned behavior?

And it's got to be a combination of both. It's got to be that you have a need to succeed and you want to do things and you like the feeling that it gets that when you succeed, you know, that fuels your drive. My dad was really cool. I talk about my dad a lot. My dad was really cool in – I used to always say he could fill your chest up with air, with pride by doing certain things. A couple examples. We didn't have a lot of means. We didn't have a, we didn't have a riding lawnmower. So we had,

we pushed lawnmowers to cut the grass. We didn't have an electric edger or a trimmer. So we, we got nails and, and a hatchet, you know, and a string and, and made a straight line with that. But every time that my dad would, would have us do things in the yard after it was all over, he'd call us over and he'd go, okay, look at that line of the driveway that you did with your hatchet. And he goes, look how good that looks. And so it was a connection between you and he goes, you did that. And so it was a connection of you doing it and the pride that you felt that you did a good job.

There's my own kids. You know me. They think that everything has to be perfect. And it doesn't. I said it's a quest for perfect, knowing that you can never get there. So it's doing a good job. If you want to do a job, what was Dad saying? Do it.

If you're going to do it, do it right. If you're not going to do it right, don't do it at all. You know, it's not worth the time. It's a waste of time. So no matter what the task is, it almost seems like you want to do a good job. And I think that definitely comes from so that reward is internal it's it's how it's how you feel about doing something and it could be mundane it could be a small thing I just hung outdoor lighting on a terrace you know got a ladder you

know hooked up a timer hung the things a certain way figured out the plan attached to whatever else and now when I I look at it, it's something that I did. And when you use it, I have a sense of pride that I did that and it makes me feel good. And so it definitely is internal. I don't need an award to say that I did a good job. Okay. Just a couple more questions to honor your time here. How do you finish this like as a quick hit statement? It all comes down to. It all comes down to. I don't think there is one thing that it comes down to. Fair answer.

Fair, fair answer. It's a combination of a lot of things. It all comes down to you. Cool. It all comes down to you. Cool. It all comes down to you. I mean, a lot of times you waste a manager. You can blame things on a manager. You can blame anything else. But in the end, it comes down to you. Success is? all kinds of different definitions of success uh for me um um accomplishing something feeling good about yourself doing something there you go yeah there you go okay and then where do you see uh baseball this year in the midst of a pandemic? Are you seeing it?

You know, it is interesting is and this might be revealing, too, is some people it's how do people react to the pandemic? There are a lot of people that feel sorry for themselves or why this happened to me and how, you know, this is terrible. And it's the exterior factors. And it's not good and it's not fun to be home and all that kind of stuff and missing and missing what you do. But I always think, what is it that we're going to learn from this experience that will make things better when things go back to normal? You know, there's going to be what things are going to carry over that you learn by doing this. Maybe it's learning about yourself or that you have with your friends that might live. Or some of these instructional videos or some of the things you do.

I gave a couple of commencement messages through this. Maybe that lives in your ability to communicate. I don't know. But what's going to be the value that you're going to derive from this experience? And then how are you going to be able to apply that forward? I tend to look at, try to look at the positives and all that. And, and knowing that you don't know what it's going to be until things go back to normal, because you're, you're figuring out how to exist, how to do things. I always say I played on a team that lost 21 games to start the season. We were 0-21.

In the midst of that, they fired my dad. They were 0-6. They fired my dad in the middle of a professional baseball season. We lost 15 more in a row. We were 0-21. The worst laughingstock of the league, the worst attention you can get. Again, you wanted to hide somewhere. But then what came out of that was you felt like it was you against the world.

I mean, you and your team. And I became a better teammate. I became more supportive. I became more understanding. We all clung to each other to get through that times. And almost the very next year, with that same group of guys, we were playing for the pennant at the get through that times. And almost the very next year, we were that same group of guys we were playing for the pennant at the end of that year. So I think there was a value in if I can get through that, and I can learn that then there's not going to be a challenge

out there that you can't get through. So as negative as that was, in, in the context of your life, I was thankful that I went through that. Okay. All right. I think, um, I just, if I could just share a note with you here is that, uh, you know, and I know what it takes to be one's very best. And I get concerned about how well people are going to come through this experience and want to be better. And I think right now people like you are going to be better from this. You're going to be more connected. I just get concerned that people aren't going to put in the work and they're going to go back to retract back to something that is not optimized. And I, that I'm not a pessimist. I'm flat out an optimist and I get concerned. You know, I was down at the beach the other day and I saw like so many people running around without masks.

And I'm like, you know, like, hey, it's still a real virus. You know, like, and, you know, Cal, it's interesting. We're using jail terms. We're using like right angle terms, lockdown, isolation, quarantine. When this is like Mother nature's given us this thing we got to deal with it with nature not like these right angles like as if we're in jail it's a it's a very bizarre dislocation from nature that we're experiencing right now and so anyways that's a whole nother topic thing is important uh doing the right thing and feeling good about the right thing is how you want to look at it.

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Not being penalized or being quarantined. I mean, it's an opportunity to spend time at home, get things done at home. String up some lights. Yeah, string some some lights. Yeah. String some lights out. I've gotten a kick out of open some boxes and you, you discover you have something that you forgot about.

One thing that you'd be really interested in, and I haven't shared this with anyone, you know, physically, I think I've told the story, but on the night that, that my consecutive inning streak stopped. So within that consecutive streak, there was a five year period where I didn't miss an inning, you know, and then people were starting to become really amazed at that. And they were asking me questions. At the

time, my dad was the manager in 1987. So we get blown out by the by the Toronto Blue Jays. They hit home 10 home runs against us. It's a blowout game. It's not fun to be on the losing end of that. And my dad came up to me towards the end, like the eighth inning, and he goes, how do you feel about missing an inning? And I turn around trusting him, and I go, how do you feel about it?

And he goes, I think it would be good for you. And I go, okay. And so he let me take my last at bat, and I was on base. And so I knew I was coming out after that inning was over, so I was on base coming in. My brother Billy was running out with my gloves, you know, because he was the second baseman, and he was bringing my glove out because I was going to play defense for the ninth inning.

And I go, no, I'm out of the game. And the look on his face, you know, like, what do you mean you're out of the game? And I go, I'm out of the game and the look on his face you know um like what do you mean you're out of the game um and I go it's okay um and I went off and I didn't know what to do I didn't know what to feel and all that kind of stuff so I I uh I go through all the interviews and all that kind of stuff and I'm sitting there thinking did I give up did I was I too weak you know what you know should I have done it or not so I went back to the hotel room and I couldn't sleep. And so I took out a legal pad and I wrote like 14 pages. And I found that.

Wow. Found that the other day. And so I laugh at it because it was a perspective and it was pretty insightful because it kind of gave some foreshadowing to what you thought. Wait, hold on. You're feeling so much right now. What, what are the feelings that you're experiencing? Uh, I don't know. It's, it's a little more emotional than I thought I would when I got into the story, just the feeling of your dad. You know, I lost my dad to lung cancer. He's been gone for 20 years now, but, but uh it brings up thoughts of your dad you know

important him the decision that you made the i was really happy and proud of uh what i wrote in in that um in that sense because um it reflected a responsibility or um a desire to want to be in there every day, a sense of responsibility. And it's something that when people look at the streak, sometimes they look at it and say, well, he was the most selfish person in the world. All he cared about was playing these games. And that was the critical side of the streak when there were negative times. And you had to deal with that and endure other people saying that it was, you know, I was hurting the team sometimes, which I don't really know what

the argument was for that um but just kind of go back and kind of confirm how you felt that your approach at that point was the same as it was you know at the end so i thought that was cool is that uh i didn't know where that was yeah look at're there, and you have a moment where you reread. It was September 1987. I put the date on it, and I wrote, and it wasn't for any other purpose, it was for me to go to sleep. I wanted to put my thoughts someplace so I could go to sleep, because I couldn't. The love for your dad is striking.

It's apparent. And the sadness that you have makes sense, you know, losing your dad. And that was an important watershed experience for you guys. Was he right in that moment? He was acting as a dad, not as a manager. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So I guess he saw every city I went into, they were asking questions about, I mean, you don't want to have to deal with the media on a daily basis on things that, you know, did I strike out to end the game? Did I make a play that helped us win the game? You know, what's the story of the game? But to go into all these other things, I think my dad saw it as a distraction and it was a burden that he wanted to take take off um to me it it shows itself to the analytical side of me is the reason i stayed in the game is that there was no real value and there was no mental break and there was no physical break for taking an inning off right you know how much you know i wake up the next day i feel refreshed i got an inning off

um i always looked at it um as if i was swinging the bat really well i wanted to continue to swing the bat really well so give me my last at bat let me let me play in the game i started the game let me finish the game and if i wasn't swinging the bat well which happened a lot of times and you're in a blowout game this is an opportunity to try something new you know let me let me work on something now that may be able to apply to tomorrow and this is a game situation to do it let me stand this way let me uh stand closer to the plate let me open myself up let me wait a little longer let me take a couple pitches whatever the case may be there was some value that i was going to derive from that at bat that i could apply to the next day so it was within the context of the nine innings and so that's how i looked at it and seemed to work but by yeah it seemed to work yeah but ending it uh for the sake of ending it you

know that was the part like okay was, was I wrong to be playing? Because I didn't tell the managers to write my name in the lineup. I didn't tell them to keep me in the lineup. That was the manager's choices. So the streak was created by a series of managers' decisions on a daily basis. How am I going to win the game? And then there were some times when the when managers managed me i guess in the when it was a bigger streak they said the streak is so too big for uh um you know it it's it has a mind of its own that all of a sudden you're absolved from the

responsibility of making the lineup out it's just i gotta put cal in there you know there were some some feelings of that in the middle time, especially when we were rebuilding or when I was when I was struggling. But you you followed in your dad's footsteps there and took yourself out of the consecutive game streak. I ended the consecutive game streak. Yeah, yeah. It was. This is another psychological examination, I imagine. I didn't believe it was the right thing to do, but I wanted to reset it back to the original form that says,

okay, if the manager feels like he wants to put me in line, you're still going to choose me, but now you don't have the pressure to choose me anymore. You know, maybe I'm doing that. And it felt like that the support for the concept had gone. Oh, that's interesting. So there was a reason. I thought was to do it the last day of the season. Oh, the last day.

62 and say, OK. And so you could say I could have done it if I wanted to. But I ended up thinking about it. And the last day of the season was in Boston that year. We were on the road, and I figured that there was a lot of positive things that people saw in the streak, and I learned that from 1995, where everybody was sharing the streak. And I learned that that principle, that value, is important to people. And I thought that was the coolest thing about the celebration, is that that's a thing thing that uh that people are most proud of not missing you know 30 some years without missing a day on the job um going all the way through 16 years of school and not missing a day in school um and and

those streaks that were being told to me was really the magic of that whole celebration is that people were telling me that. So in the end, um, uh, I decided to do it the last day at home so that it could be, it could be, uh, embraced as a positive as opposed to, you know, just ending it. That's amazing. What I'm hearing is a returning of innocence. Like you wanted to return to the innocence of like, and and freedom there was a freedom in it and and again you had agency yeah i always believe the manager sits in that office and i gotta make a decision each and every day and so i was thinking okay um and in subsequent years um they made they chose me they went in the office and chose me for the rest of the year you still you still had a cow they made, they chose me. They went in the office and chose, chose me for the rest of the year.

You still, you still had a cow. I don't know about that, but it's a, it's a, it's the do the right thing sort of thing. Awesome. I always say to myself, I'm a rule follower. And you have a certain standard and that was set by your, your dad. And to do the right thing, we can all rationalize what that is and there's different degrees of what you think is right

and what is wrong. We all have our own morals, I suppose. And so I hold myself to a standard of what I think is the right thing. And I thought, you know, was that right? Was, you know, I thought it was right playing all, you know, coming to the ballpark.

In a simple sense, coming to the ballpark and saying, I'm a player and I'm here to play. And if you think I should play today, write my name in the lineup and I will. That's how I looked at the streak is that it was as a responsibility of one of the guys on the team. You're supposed to come to the ballpark ready to play. It was. Where can we find and follow, whether it's one of your minor league clubs or one of the, I think, eight or nine books you've written?

Where can people follow along if they want to learn more and be part of what you're building? We're in the kids' business right now. There's two things that I'm extremely proud of. We are trying to provide experiences through baseball that the kids have. The realization is that everybody has a dream to be a big league player, but this many of them get to be big league players. So in our tournament business, we try to give that experience of some of the amenities of a big league, the experience of playing on different dimension fields,

a sense of what it feels like to play at Fenway, you know, trying to give those experiences to kids, knowing that only the smallest percentage of them are going to get that experience. So Billy and I, my brother, Billy and I value that, value that move through life, that we had a chance to do that. And so I'm proud of the experiences that we're offering, and we're at an exciting time. We're trying to expand our successful models.

We have four models now that we're trying to expand across the country. Right now, no one's playing tournament baseball, and I'm sure it's killing a lot of people, but it's killing us that we don't have our fields being uh used right now um and our foundation we started a foundation to name my dad um to try to capture what we thought his legacy was was helping kids he helped kids professionally get to the big leagues and uh and and fulfill their dreams but he also used baseball to help um get in front of kids to give them an opportunity of the magic of sports. And so he did that. So we started a foundation and we used baseball to

get in front of kids. We built almost 100 youth development parks. And these facilities are baseball fields or we call them YDPs, Youth Development Parks, because it's like an outdoor classroom in areas that need a place to have a safe place to play. And it costs about a million bucks a pop. And so we're honing in on $100 right now, so that's $100 million. And I think we've raised, we've impacted a million five kids last year. Nice job. So our foundation is a national foundation. It's got a great board.

It's got a great deal of influence. And during this pandemic, what was really uplifting for me was we were sitting around trying to think, okay, what do we do with our events? How do we do our fundraising? What are we doing? Da, da, da, da. But our executive director said, let's focus our attention on some of the issues right now. And the issue, the food insecurity was a big issue. And so we immediately started to focus on raising money for food.

And we partnered with Feeding America, and we had this wonderful outreach, and we really impacted, you know, I think that campaign is dwindling down a little bit, but it gave us a sense of purpose. You know, we temporarily changed our direction of our foundation to our fields and our programming to helping feed kids. And so we've done a really good job of that. So that was really uplifting to me because I was looking for a sense of purpose sitting at home. And I joined a, I'm on social media now for the first time. So I have a Twitter account and it was a way to activate, you know, a bigger population to help out with food insecurity. And so it's kind of fun.

So I put my dog on my Twitter account. I do some video messaging and whatever else. It's an interesting format to communicate. One that I thought I wasn't suited for because to me it looked like it was the extrovert, the person that loved that kind of thing. And that wasn't me. But I always enjoyed the chance to communicate with all the people that love baseball. And this is a chance to do that too. Well, you've got insight and you've got

stories and you've got deep care and compassion. I can't think of a better voice to be on social media right now. So, and I'll put all of those links in the show notes as well as what is the foundation name? Is it calripkinsenior.com? Yeah, the Ripken Foundation, Cal Ripken Senior Foundation. We've changed our logo a couple of times, but it's a dad's silhouette sitting on a fungo, which is a really cool thing. But the Cal Ripken Senior Foundation is the foundation.

Okay, perfect. And it's ripkenfoundation.org. Ripkenfoundation.org. Ripkenfoundation.org. Awesome. I appreciate you, your time, your deep understanding, your commitment to feel as we've been putting words to what we're doing. So thank you. It's a lot of fun to examine. I mean, when you live life, I'll be 60 this year.

You start to look back and look at the meaning of your life. And now there's an urgency to know that you don't have a lot of life ahead of you. I mean, enough, but it's a different time in your life. But going back and trying to pass some of the wisdom that you've learned on to especially your kids is pretty cool. Oh, that is awesome. One book, one of your eight books

that you want folks to go pick up. The last one was called Just Show Up. The Get in the Game book was an interesting one, because that was, that was modeled after the, the first go around in my speeches, trying to deliver a message like, what's the secret of perseverance? And then I'm thinking thinking i don't know uh you know i was challenged to uh to speak about perseverance uh um um and i went out to uh breckenridge early and i boarded myself up in a room for three days of the conference that i was going to speak at and i didn't have the speech and so i figured uh i had to figure out in those three days, how do I communicate perseverance? And I found a way to do it.

And so it gave me an outline in which to attach a couple stories and make a few points. So that's been fun. Awesome. You're a legend. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. All right.

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