StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Baseball: Brain Training

Episode Date: September 28, 2017

What happens inside the brain of a great baseball hitter, and can it be taught? Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice explore the subject with baseball vision trainer Dr. Bill Harrison, neuroscientist Prof. Aaron Seitz, and baseball analyst and former LA Dodgers GM Ned Colleti.Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on:TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscienceApple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjqSoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-scienceStitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-scienceNOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/baseball-brain-training/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

today we return to an american favorite namely baseball and specifically focus on baseball brain training to ding a 95 mile an hour fastball is said to be one of, if not the most difficult thing to execute in elite sport. Many have tried, few have succeeded. But what if there was a way to improve the odds in the batter's favor? Oh, I know what that is. No, Chuck, not roids. Oh, damn. Okay.

Well, listen, helping us see our way to the home run glory and hall of fame is baseball vision trainer Dr. Bill Harrison, and Gloria and Hall of Fame is baseball vision trainer Dr. Bill Harrison, someone who already has a list of happy hitters sprinkled around the major leagues. And helping us get inside the mind of a major league hitter and helping improve our overall game is neuroscientist Professor Aaron Seitz, a man who is about to get his work cut out with Chuck and I. Absolutely. And finally, we're going to hear from Ned Colletti, former manager of the LA Dodgers and current Major League Baseball analyst on TuneIn's At The Plate.

So, once again, man, we're looking at a full show. First up on the plate, Dr. Bill Harrison, a vision trainer. Hey, Dr. Bill, how are you? Yeah, a man whose company Slow Down The Game should give you a clue as to where we're gonna go with this so doctor welcome to playing with science well thank you

it's a pleasure to join you for a few minutes yeah that's great so please tell us exactly what it is you do with the athletes and in particular the hitters? Well, I'll give you a little brief background. I grew up playing all sports and I played college baseball and I ended up getting injured and my aspirations of being a Major League Baseball player ended because back in my day there weren't very good medical training and treatments for sports injuries. But I was always interested. Well, I became an optometrist as a result. In other words, I couldn't pursue baseball, so I became an optometrist.

But in so doing, I was at the University of California at Berkeley. I was fascinated by why a few great hitters like Ted Williams apparently could, well, they had great success as a hitter, and there was some talk by Ted about how well he could see the ball. So I started in 1970, that's a few years ago, on a lifetime of search on better ways to see a ball in any sport, but particularly in baseball because it's so challenging. Yeah. So you fixated, I want to say focused, but that just seems an obvious pun.

You worked with foveal vision in the eye. Now, it's something that our listeners, if they don't already know, will need to have a little bit of a better handle on. So if you could explain exactly what foveal vision is for us. Well, let me express it this way. First of all, it's very natural that most of us aren't very aware of our eyes. We don't even think about how our eyes are designed or constructed or how they work.

And, you know, we like to see, obviously, we're in a visual world now, particularly in this day of graphics and photos and everything all over the place. But there are a lot of limitations and strengths of what an eye can do and what eyes can't do. Now, if you think of the inside of the eye, there's a retina that covers the majority of the inside of the eye. Yep. But within that retina, there's one little point, and that's called the fovealis or foveal centralis. It has a few different names. Okay. That's where all the great high 4K quality, high definition vision takes place.

Ah. Most of us really don't use it to our max. How do you go about training a hitter's foveal vision? So as you say, it's something that's naturally underused. So how do you develop it to make it, I suppose, stronger, more of a use? Yes. Well, let me just say that back in the early days, we did a variety of things, not knowing exactly what we were doing, but knowing that they were sound, but we just didn't quite have the full understanding. Today, fast forward, we actually ended up creating stereoscopic images. Right. And what happens is usually we use it in the form of two cards

or we have it on a video screen or on a smartphone as well or a tablet. But these two images are slightly different. And there's a way to learn how to merge the two together. And this is with a

sort of a conscious effort of moving the eyes in a certain way. And when they merge together, then all of a sudden they become more clear, more distinct, and a lot of three-dimensional vision. So we really train three-dimensional vision. We really train three-dimensional vision. And the only way that can occur is with the fovea pointing exactly at these images. If you go back to the 90s, the mid-90s, there were things called magic eye pictures, where there was a picture in front of you, but if you stared at it and focused at it in a different way,

this other picture emerges. Is that a similar thing? Is it an old woman with a giant nose or a young woman wearing a brooch? Like, yeah. Yes, something like that. Well, the magic eye images from Japan, and they're kind of fascinating. There's no question about it. But they didn't require exact foveal vision.

They were more general. Foveal vision, let me give you an idea. Foveal vision would be looking at a spot, say at a picture being about 60 feet away. It's really about a six to nine inch window. It's a very small window. Now up close, it's even like the size of a fingernail if you're looking at about three feet. So it's a very tiny area.

Now the rest of the vision is a form of peripheral vision. And peripheral vision and what we sometimes call foveal vision, central vision, they function differently. They function differently not only in the eyes, but in the brain and the output of what someone sees is different. Let me just mention briefly, if one uses peripheral vision, a ball looks faster, it looks smaller, it actually appears to move more, and rarely are the seams visible. As one sees a ball with their central vision, they see the seam spinning. Not only the direction of the seams, but they can even get to where they see the rate of the spin. And so in central vision, the ball looks slower and larger, and it doesn't appear to move as much.

And it's a hard thing to do. It's doable, and the great hitters do it more often. But it's not easy, that's for sure. How long does it take? Sorry, sure. How long does it take? Sorry, Chuck. How long does it take to train a major league hitter? And you've worked with several, I know. It doesn't take too long. And I say that.

I've had results in a day, within a few days, particularly within a couple of weeks. Wow. But what happens is there's so much going on. It's distractions get in the way. And once they're distracted and their attention goes elsewhere, then they lose their foveal vision. So it requires like 100% focus. And if they're calm and capable of doing that, then it lasts indefinitely. So this is really not just about the physical seeing, it is also complemented by a mental state of being.

Well, you know, the eyes are an incredible tool, but we actually see with the brain. Right. So the brain is really the overriding issue. And, you know, regarding the brain, the brain can be wound at a high pace, and therefore foveal vision is rather fleeting. But if one is calm and in the so-called flow state, then the eyes are much steadier and the folio vision is much better. Dr. Bill Harrison, thank you so much for your time in explaining a hidden science behind the art of hitting in Major League Baseball. So thank you for your time, Doctor. It's been an absolute pleasure.

It's my pleasure. Nice visiting with you, gentlemen. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's my pleasure. Nice visiting with you, gentlemen. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Right. We will take our first break. Thank you to Dr. Bill Harrison and the explanation of foveal vision training.

When we come back, Professor Aaron Seitz, who's a neuroscientist. Yeah, we're going to go inside the brain, people. Welcome back. I am Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this, of course, is Playing With Science. And today, as you are aware, we are talking about baseball and in particular, brain training. And joining us now is neuroscientist Aaron Seitz of the University of California, Riverside. Aaron, welcome to Playing With Science, sir. Thanks sir thanks happy to be here thank you very much happy to have you so you're the founder of ucr brain game center for mental uh fitness and

well-being brain training and research organs it's a brain training and research organization right that's correct and so um what is what's your purpose um let's talk about that with respect to sports. So our general purpose is that there's a lot of excitement in terms of how our understanding of neuroscience and psychology can be translated into coming up with procedures that will make us see better, hear better, remember things better. And that what we're really trying to do is come up with approaches that are really taking advantage of what we know about the brain and then to test them in serious ways and then to get them out into the world so that people could use them how do you go about working with athletes at

elite sport where you get them to create the neurons and keep them viable and not allow them to just dissipate and fade away so i think the analogy is similar to physical training and that what you need to do is you need to understand something about the systems that they rely upon in order to be able to do those tasks. And so, you know, for instance, if you're doing physical training, you want to do, you know, some circuit training to exercise the muscles that are going to be involved with the sport. And then also, you know, focus on, you know, conditioning so that they'll be able to do it for a long time. Right. focus on, you know, conditioning so that they'll be able to do it for a long time. Right.

So with the visual system, the key thing that we've done is try to figure out, you know, what are the basic processes of vision? And then what are the best tasks that you could perform that are going to strengthen those? And that a lot of it has actually come from understanding from single-unit recording studies, where people stick an electrode into the brain and record from individual neurons to figure out what those neurons like. And then we take this knowledge and we say, okay, well, if these are the processing channels of the visual system, how do we present people with the types of stimuli that those neurons like and train them in such a way that those neurons will strengthen responses? And so actually, most of the approach isn't really focused on understanding sports per se.

It's really understanding, you know, how do we see in general? And in fact, a lot of the same approaches I've been using with athletes, I've been using with people who have low vision. Oh, interesting. with athletes, I've been using with people who have low vision. Oh, interesting. So it's kind of like if you can improve a person's low vision, then those same principles would apply to somebody who needs to improve the acuity of their vision for a particular task. Exactly.

Wow. First of all, that's an ingenious approach. Let me just congratulate you on that because who would have thought that? I mean, that's wonderful. Secondly, I'm interested to know, you know, there's a there's a saying in neuroscience that neurons that fire together wire together. net pathways. How important is that concept when it comes to hand-eye visual coordination in something like hitting a baseball? So I think that first off, most of it is not involving creating new pathways. Most of it is actually strengthening existing pathways all right and so the idea is that you know we start looking at the perspective from the brain has to read out information from the eyes and that you want it to do it as efficiently as possible and the assumption i hate to say it is that essentially everything about the

human is kind of lazy so if we don't exercise as much, you know, you see what happens to our bodies. Same thing with the brain is that if we don't do specific things to strengthen those circuits, that they'll kind of go to a just good enough level. Right. You're sounding a lot like my dad right now, Doc. Sorry about that. I'm trying to picture a brain right now. I'm trying to picture a brain right now, something that, you know, people question whether or not I have to begin with.

But I'm trying to picture how the brain is engaged during that process and which centers are. So here's my question. Instead of me working this out on the air like this, if you were to put somebody in an MRI, okay, while they were actually hitting a baseball, what would be lighting up in the brain? It's actually a good question. And my answer is going to have to be a guess because there have not been a lot of cases where people have been in an MRI while hitting baseballs. For obvious reasons. So one thing that I think is really important for a task like this is that one essentially has to develop some focus and prediction

of what's going to happen before the task starts. And so that these are the types of things that you see in intentional networks to brain. So the frontal cortex and parietal cortex. In fact, there's even some studies that were done by my postdoc advisor, John Assad, who's at Harvard Medical School, where he found that neurons that process motion, where he found that neurons that process motion, that will respond to motion when animals expect that motion to be there, even when there's no visual stimulus indicating that motion. And so what this shows is that a big part of being able to do these tasks is having a template of what is supposed to be happening.

And this template interacts with the incoming visual information so that the back of the brain, the central cortex, will be responding to the incoming information and that this will be combined with the expectations to give rise to what we actually perceive. And so sometimes this allows us to do really well when we have minimal visual information. At the same time, when you look at visual illusions, this is why sometimes we'll see things that aren't there, because our expectations are giving us the wrong answers combined with what incoming information is. So we're playing into the magician's hands. Absolutely fascinating.

Professor, before we let you go, and I'm afraid we must at some point, where do you see the future of cognitive skill training leading you, leading us? So I think right now we're kind of in the awkward teenage years of cognitive training. So there's a lot of excitement. People are trying a lot of different things.

It's not really well understood which things are really working well and which things are, for lack of a better term, snake oil. I think what's going to happen over the next five to 10 years is that we're going to develop a much clearer understanding of which things work and which things don't and why. And that we're going to have increasingly better tailored training approaches. clear understanding of which things work and which things don't and why. And that we're going to have increasingly better tailored training approaches that are going to help different populations. And so I think that one thing which has been interesting for me working with sports is that sports is really not used to neuroscience. And I think what's going to happen is that they're going to start

appreciating that the more that we understand how the circuits in the brain work and how to improve those, the more we're going to be able to come up with specific training approaches that are going to make it so that the athletes will be better scaled in the task that they need to do. That's awesome. All right. And so it sounds to me, I mean, it sounds to me that you're going to have athletes becoming even more and more specialized. You've seen specialization actually take over sports for the most part.

It sounds to me like you're going to get even more specialized because there may be athletes that are selected to do things, you know, better than others. So I think it's going to go two ways, because on one hand, there's going to be that type of selection. So the thing that is really interesting about this vision training is that the people that's going to help are the people who are really good at everything other than some particular visual skill that is holding them back from their best game. And so if we come up with better training, we're actually going to make it so more people are going to be able to overcome the hurdles and to be able to play better. That's fascinating. It better. That's fascinating. It is. That is fascinating.

Professor, thank you. Thanks. This was fun. Hey. Thank you. That was great stuff, man. Really fascinating stuff. No, I'm glad we've chosen to delve into this field of sport,

which is up and coming because it's become quite a boom industry, I think, around. You're probably finding it in Europe right now. A lot of the soccer clubs, the big soccer clubs, are very keen to develop cognitive skill within their players. Is that right? Are you finding that? Yeah. In fact, actually, I find that in Europe, there's a little bit more of an acceptance of this type of training or in general of serious games.

As opposed to the U.S., there is a little bit of distrust of anything that has the word game in it. How interesting, because normally it's the U.S. that leads the way in embracing new thinking and new ideas. Not since Trump. Oh, dear. You started again. Professor, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. It's been really, really interesting to talk to you.

So we are going to take a short break. Another one when we come back, former GM of the LA Dodgers, Ned Colletti will be our guest. Stick around, that should be interesting. Welcome back. I am Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. And today we are taking, as you are well aware, a look at baseball and brain training.

And joining us, we're pleased to say, is Ned Colletti. Yes. Major League Baseball analyst at the plate on TuneIn. And, of course, if you're familiar with the LA Dodgers, the former GM. Ned, welcome to the show, my friend. Yes, thank you, Ned. Thank you. It'll be very interesting to have a conversation with you guys.

Yeah. You say that now. And before we get going, what do you think of the Dodgers right now? Well, the Dodgers are going through a little bit of a downward turn. It's a long, long season, but they've had a really historic, about four months' time where their record was so good and they were so dominant that I think they took a breath and stumbled for a minute, but they had a big win last night

and they're getting ready for a pretty big October coming up. Yeah, yeah. Towards the stage of the season with any sport, if you're lucky enough to be in the mix, how confident are you in the mental ability of this group to take it across the line in first place? That is a tremendous question, and I think that it's one of the facets of any sport,

and I'm a little bit partial to baseball because I've been in it for more than 35 years, but the daily grind of playing 162 games in approximately 183 to 186 days, and those days you're off, most of those days you're not playing a game, you are traveling. Like tomorrow the Dodgers do not have a game,

but they'll be traveling from San Francisco to Washington. So a lot of the off days without a game are used to travel. So the grind of a season, not just physically, but the mental approach and the focus piece of it is really what separates the good from the great, or the great from the good. Hey, let's switch gears for a second and talk about some brain training. As a GM, you're responsible for so many parts of the operation, but one of it is, of course, talent. so many parts of the operation, but one of it is, of course, talent.

And what are you looking for in a hitter? Like when you're looking for somebody to help you at the plate, what kind of player are you looking for in terms of is it a technical thing? Is it a gut feeling? How do you go about assessing talent that way? Well, I think there's a lot of different things you have to look at. And players develop at different stages of life. I would really look for somebody who, and it didn't have to be a Harvard graduate or a Stanford graduate.

They didn't have to have intellect of a book sort, but they needed to have intellect of an execution as a physical activity. They had a baseball intelligence. Yes, and the ability to really understand the science of hitting and the science of pitching, because you need to understand what the thought process is on the person at 60 feet, six inches from you, throwing a ball 95, 100 miles an hour, or making it spin or making it drop and doing all these things. The best hitters I have found, their minds work like computers where they reset after every pitch. Well, they go back to zero and they don't crowd their head with the previous pitch.

Exactly. But they take every piece of information they've gathered up until that moment. Maybe it's the third pitch of the at-bat, and maybe it's a 2-0 count that they reset. Okay, I've seen this pitcher 35 other times. I've seen him throw me 150 pitches. He just threw me the last two. I've seen this pitcher 35 other times. I've seen him throw me 150 pitches. He just threw me the last two. I've watched him pitch against my teammates. I've watched him earlier in a bet against myself. This is what I expect right here, right now. And that happens within 20 seconds.

So, Ned, with this in-game intelligence that you're looking for on your hitters, did you ever find that you were able to develop that with sort of cognitive skill training that you'd brought into the clubhouse and the players were working with, or did you just not show any interest in that? We always look for every edge, including bringing in specialists who could help players understand, provoke thought, do studies. Put them in a certain situation where they could see different things and train their eyes to pick up different things on charting and visual machinery that would provide them with different views of different things. Not baseball necessarily, but the same interrelated visuals that you would need in order to pick up a ball at 100 miles an hour.

If you want to know how much time a hitter has to react to a pitch, the time it leaves his hand, the time it hits the hitting zone, take a book, put it in your hands, stretch your arms out, and drop the book. It takes as long as when the book leaves your hand until you hear the book hit the floor. That's how long a hitter has to react. Hey, let me ask you something along those lines, okay? Is there, when you talk about like a linebacker playing football, he's reading the quarterback's eyes or he's looking at the running back.

And there's a lot of anticipation. The same thing happens in tennis. There's a lot of anticipation. You get to know your opponent. There's kind of certain tells. Can that happen in baseball at the plate looking at the pitcher? Oh, no doubt. Do pitchers have tells? Oh, no doubt. Do pitchers have tells?

Oh, no doubt. Yeah? No doubt. You'll see some that their facial expression changes. Wow. You'll see some, and you'll be able to see it from the distance away. That's fascinating. Sweating.

You'll see anxiety. You'll read body language. You'll read confidence levels coming and going. What? You'll read frustration. You'll read confidence levels coming and going. You'll read frustration. You read it all. I mean, a good hitter is taking all of these things in all the time. That's amazing.

So, Ned, do you work with the guys, the hitters? Because in the end, they're the guys that are going to get you to where you need to be and put runs on the board. To say, look, this data is in front of you. You've got to understand how to bring it in, process it, and through repetition. So did, well, I mean, reaction times and data processing. Did you get the guys on that sort of program? We did.

And you did it, but you had to be careful, too, that, because teaching is a very interesting activity. Yes, agreed. And not everybody learns the same. And I've had players that have gone to the best universities in the country and graduated with engineering degrees. And I had players who had never been to college. And I had players who had really, in some Latin American countries, had very, very limited education. And so not everybody is going to learn. So you couldn't get yourself into a lecture hall, for example, a clubhouse,

and talk to 25 or 15 hitters, 14 hitters. You had to do it one by one? All the same way, yeah. You couldn't do it like that. You had to do it one-on-one. All the same way. Yeah, you couldn't do it like that. You had to do it one-on-one. And I tried to also have coaches, especially in the minor leagues.

And, well, the last couple of years of my GN tenure, and as I was thinking about going forward with that tenure, and if I ever do it again, I would do it this way, I would almost require my player development coaches. You have six or seven minor league teams, to, if they didn't know how to teach, that they would learn how to teach. Because it's so much about teaching

and taking science and putting it into play and understanding not just how to hit, but how to understand what scientists, what people who can understand vision and reaction time and how the brain works, to put all that into use in an athlete that plays every day. This isn't a sport where you play once a week. So you've got six or seven days to kind of regroup and figure out what you're going to do the next time you compete.

You compete every single day. Yeah, and speaking of that, I mean, you know, we're kind of looking at, you know, how neurons fire and wire and, you know, create a certain type of hitter and their visual training. But you just brought up something that I think has got to be very daunting psychologically. And because you said it, you don't get to regroup over the course of a week. You got to play again the next day. So how do you coach a player to recuperate from a terrible showing the day before?

Because I could see that would, me personally, let me just say, I fail at something, I'm not good, man. It stays with me. Like, I'm like, I'm devastated. Like, I got to get a victory in order for me to be made whole again. And if I don't, I could see myself going into a slump. So as an athlete, you grow, and I think Ned might back me up on this, you grow a thicker skin, right? You have to have a very powerful memory, but a very short memory. Yeah.

And as you said, look, no matter what the pitch is, you've reset your brain, but you've retained the information of the last few pitches and history that previously you may have with the pitcher. Yes. But you've shaken off all the negativity. This is why they're called the major leagues. That's why I'm a comedian and not a major league baseball player. That's exactly why I'm a comedian, because I can't do that. How many people play sports in all levels of life, but how many play at the top of their profession?

Yeah, that's true. That's one of the great separators, which you just pointed out. That separates people who get paid to do it for a living versus those who watch it or played it and stopped playing it. Here's how it goes for me. I'm at my fifth at-bat where I've

struck out again, and I'm just like, I hate you guys! I hate you! And then I'm leaving. And I'm leaving the park. I'm leaving. That's it. Hey, Ned, he's a GM's dream, right? Yeah. As a comedian, yes.

Come in and entertain the players. That's funny. But think about this. I love what he just said. Chuck, you've got a future in baseball as a comedian. He's worked you out. Sorry, Ned, you were saying. Think about baseball, and think about what you just said,

the mindset of the athlete. Yeah. If you fail, if you do ten jokes and seven get no reaction. Oh, God, it's over. Are you kidding me? You're a hitter. I would kill myself. No, no, no.

What are you saying? Seven out of ten at-bats, you fail. They will build a statue of you outside the ballpark when you're done playing. You see? That's how hard it is. That's how hard it is. See, the whole thing is the angle at which you approach the numbers. Hey, let's do two things real quick because we've got to talk about your book.

Something people should want is The Big Chair. The Big Chair. Which, of course, is Ned Coll talk about your book. Something People Should Want is The Big Chair. The Big Chair. Which, of course, is Ned Colletti's new book. Yeah, the smooth hops and bad bounces from inside the world of the acclaimed Los Angeles Dodgers. Let's talk about your book, man. What's going on with it? It's really about 20% memoir. I had kind of an interesting childhood growing up

i lived in a garage till i was five and first in my family to go to school go to college and stuff like that so my my walk was not a typical walk perhaps and so it's a little bit of an encouragement a little bit of a motivational story at the outset but it really gets into a little bit of the people you meet along the way like i was honored to be in the presence of Frank Sinatra a few times. Nice. And I find it a little bit interesting as time goes on and people know, obviously, who Frank Sinatra was, but they'll hear a story or two in how it relates to baseball because Frank and Tommy Lasorda were obviously tremendous friends of long, long time Hall of Fame managers

at the Dodgers. And then the rest of it is really the job and what you go through. And it's not a revenge book or a kiss and tell book. There's nothing in there like that. It is just really how your mind works on a daily basis. Alright, Ned.

Who is the biggest character you came across in Major League Baseball? Wow, the biggest character you came across in Major League Baseball? Wow, the biggest character. Well, tough to say character. I hadn't really thought about character. I tell you that the greatest hitter I was ever around, I was around him for a long time, was Barry Bonds.

Wow. He is. And go back to one of our earlier topics, and I'll come back to the book for a second. But I would see him, this is how his mind works, he's a genius at hitting. He would let a pitcher throw him a pitch that he would look foolish on, almost on purpose,

if not on purpose, knowing that in a key spot, later in the game, or later in the season, the pitcher would come back with the same pitch. And then he'd tear the cover off of it. He'd hit it out. Nice. And I would look at him after the game, and I'd say, B, I said, interesting, you know, he threw you that pitch back in April, and you looked a little foolish on it. And he'd just look at me with this little smile.

Nice. So he's like a squirrel burying a nut, and he's going to come back to it X amount of weeks, months later. Yes. So Barry was the greatest hitter I've ever been around. Wow. Something else that I learned, and I'm getting off the book here for a second, but as we talk about how the mind works, I spent a little bit of time with Wayne Gretzky when he was an Edmonton Oiler and an LA King.

Okay. And I would talk to his teammates about him. I was a huge hockey fan. And I would talk to guys on the Chicago Bulls about Michael Jordan. And I obviously knew guys on the Giants with Barry. And they all told me almost the same type of story about how they saw their mind work. Now, these are their peers. And they say, it's the best description I could give you guys is when we watch a sporting event,

it's like we're watching a movie. It just keeps flowing, right? Gretzky could skate at 30, 35 miles an hour probably. So we watch that. We're watching this movie go, him skating up and down, taking shots, making great passes. The way he would see the game would be frame by frame. So his mind could slow it down while he went at game speed. And the greatest athletes, Jordan, did the same thing.

Teammates told me he saw the game like none of us saw it. Magic Johnson, who is one of our owners of the Dodgers, saw the game like nobody else saw it. They played it at a rapid pace. Magic was always running up and down the court, but he saw it in slow motion. In the mind, it's slowed, but the body is at full tilt. So that, people, is the big chair

from Ned Colletti. If what Ned has told you has whetted your appetite, I'm going to go find this book. Yeah, get the book. Please, by all means. In October, it's out there on the shelves. Go grab it before it disappears completely. Hey, Ned, man, it's been such a

pleasure talking to you. Great talking to you guys. Please come back. Please come back and do it again. Yeah, I look forward to that. Thank you, Ned. Gentlemen, have a great day. All right. You too. Man, that was awesome. Well, Ned, we started off by how you can work by training your vision, how you fire synapses and neurons and, you know, you get an awareness and a game intelligence. And then we finish up speaking to a guy who's having to bring all of that in one bundle. And then combine it with the psychological nature of all that. The logical nature of all that. And then you realize you can't just stick the team in a room and go, this is today's lecture. Because everybody learns in a different way, at a different speed, at a different time in their career.

They're receptive to these messages, these thoughts. Yeah. And you've got a GM who is basically herding cats, trying to get them to do what he wants, win games. trying to get them to do what he wants, win games. I mean, and then you get the realization that, yes, you might be a major league hitter or pitcher, but there are some guys out there who, although they're in the same uniform playing the same game, they're on a completely different level,

and it's all up there between the ears. Absolutely. Great stuff. Oh, man, what a good show, right? Yeah, absolutely. Right. Hope you've enjoyed it as much as Chuck and I. We look forward to your company soon. This has been Playing With Science and Brain Training in Baseball.