#ICYMI - Baseball: Brain Training

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/playingwithscience Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/baseball-brain-training/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Today, we return to an American favourite, 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 favour?

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I know what that is.

• 0:33Gary O'Reilly?

  No chuck, not roids.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  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, someone who already has a list of happy hitters sprinkled around the major leagues.

• 0:50Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. And finally, we're going to hear from Ned Coletti, former manager of the LA Dodgers and current Major League Baseball analyst on tune-ins at the plate. So, once again, man, we're looking at a full show.

• 1:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. First up on the plate, Dr Bill Harrison, a vision trainer.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Dr Bill, how are you?

• 1:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, man whose company, Slow Down the Game, should give you a clue as to where we're going to go with this. So, doctor, welcome to Playing with Science.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to join you for a few minutes.

• 1:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's great. Great to have you. So, please tell us exactly what it is you do with the athletes, and in particular, the hitters.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  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...

• 2:22Speaker 02

  A few great hitters like Ted Williams, apparently, 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 nineteen seventy, that's a few years ago.

• 2:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  On a lifetime of search on better ways to see a ball in any sport, but particularly in baseball, because it's so challenging.

• 2:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. So you you've you fixated, I want to say focused, but that just seems an obvious pun. You you worked with foveal vision in the eye.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, it's something that will 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?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh huh.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 3:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  But within that retina, there's one little point, and that's called the fovealis or foveal centralis, it has a few different names.

• 3:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  That's where all the great high four K quality, high definition vision takes place.

• 4:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  And most of us really don't use it to our to our max.

• 4:06Gary O'Reilly?

  How how do you go about training?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:10Gary O'Reilly?

  A hitter's foveal vision? So, as you say, it's it's something that naturally underused, so how do you develop it to make it, I suppose, stronger, more more of a use?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  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 they were sound, but we just didn't quite have the full understanding. Today, fast forward, we actually ended up creating stereoscopic images.

• 4:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  And what happens is, uh, usually we use it in the form of two cards or we have it on a video screen or on a, uh, smartphone as well or tablet. But these two images are slightly different, uh, 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, uh, when they're, when they merge together, then all of a sudden they become more clear, more distinct and, uh, and a lot of, uh, three dimensional vision. So we really train three dimensional vision, uh, and the only that way that can occur is

• 5:26Speaker 02

  with the foveas pointing exactly at these images.

• 5:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Is, uh, if you, if you go back to the nineties, the mid nineties, there was 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.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:43Gary O'Reilly?

  This other, this other picture emerges. Is, is that a similar thing?

• 5:47Chuck Nice?

  Is it an old woman with a giant nose or a young woman wearing a brooch like you?

• 5:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, something like that.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Well, the magic eye images from Japan and, and they're kind of fascinating. There's no question about it. Uh, but, uh, they didn't require exact foveal vision. They were more general.

• 6:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Foveal vision, let me give you an idea. Uh, foveal vision, uh, would be looking at a, at a spot out, say at a picture being about sixty feet away.

• 6:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Uh, it's really about a six to nine inch, uh, window.

• 6:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, wow.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  It's a very small window.

• 6:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Now, up close, uh, it's even like the, the size of a, of a fingernail, uh, if you're looking, uh, uh, at about three feet. So it's a very tiny area. Now, the rest of the vision is, is a form of peripheral vision and, uh, peripheral vision and what we, 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. Uh, let me just mention briefly, if one uses peripheral vision, a ball looks faster,

• 7:08Speaker 02

  it looks smaller, it actually appears to move more, and, uh, rarely are the seams visible.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  As one sees their, a ball with their central vision, they see the seam spinning. Not only the direction of the seams, but the, it, it, they can be 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, uh, it's a hard thing to do. It's doable, and the great hitters do it more often.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  But it's not easy, that's for sure.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  How long does it take, sorry Chuck, how long does it take to train a major league hitter? And you've, and you've worked with several, I know.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  It doesn't take too long. Uh, a- and I say that, I've, I've had, uh, results in a day, within a few days, within a, with, particularly within a couple of weeks.

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:12Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  So it requires like a hundred percent focus, and if they're calm and, and capable of doing that, then it lasts indefinitely.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  So, this is really not just about the physical seeing, it is also co- complimented by a mental state of being?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the eyes are an incredible tool, but we actually see with the brain.

• 8:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  So, the brain is, is really the overriding issue, and, uh, you know, regarding the brain, uh, the brain can be wound at a high pace, and therefore, uh, uh, fo- uh, foveal vision is rather fleeky. But uh if uh one is calm and in the so-called uh flow state, then the eyes are much steadier and the foveal vision is much better.

• 9:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Dr. Bill Harrison, thank you so much for your time and explaining uh 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.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure. Nice visiting with you gentlemen.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, thank you so much.

• 9:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. Right, we will take our first break. Thank you to Dr. Bill Harrison and the explanation of foveal vision training. Uh, when we come back, Professor Aaron Seitz, who's a neuroscientist. Yeah, we're gonna go inside the brain, people. Welcome back. I am Gary O'Reilly.

• 9:45Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 9:46Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Thanks. Happy to be here.

• 10:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you very much.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Happy to have you. So you're the founder of UCR Brain Game Center for Mental Fitness and Wellbeing, Brain Training and Research Orga- it's a Brain Training and Research Organization, right?

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Hmm. That's correct.

• 10:18Chuck Nice?

  And so, um, what is, what's your purpose? Um, let's talk about that with respect to um, uh, sports.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  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, um, 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.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  And then to test them in serious ways. And then to get them out into the world so that people could use them.

• 11:02Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  So I think the analogy is similar to physical training. And 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 act, 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.

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  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 like single, you know, 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?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  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 that I've been using with athletes, I've been using with people who have low vision.

• 12:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, interesting. So it's, 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.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow. That's a, first of all, that's a 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. And I would suppose that that's about creating new neural net pathways. How important is that concept when it comes to hand, eye, visual coordination in something like hitting a baseball?

• 13:32Speaker 03

  So I think that first off, most of it is not involving creating new pathways.

• 13:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Most of it is actually strengthening existing pathways.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  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 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. Um, 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.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  Right. You're sounding a lot like my dad right now, Doc.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Sorry about that.

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I'm trying to picture a brain right now. Uh, something that, uh, you know, people question whether or not I have to begin with. But, uh, 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?

• 14:56Speaker 03

  It's actually a good question, and my answer is going to have to be a guess. Um, because there have not been a lot of cases where people have been in an MRI while hitting baseballs.

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Mm-hmm, so true.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  But, 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 attentional networks to brain. So the frontal cortex and parietal cortex. Um, 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 that will respond to motion when animals expect that motion to be there, even when there's no visual stimulus indicating that motion.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  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 occipital 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.

• 16:39Gary O'Reilly?

  So we're playing into the magician's hands.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely fascinating.

• 16:42Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  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. Gotcha. I think what's going to happen over, you know, 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 that are going to help different populations. And so I think that one thing which has been interesting for me working with sports is

• 17:38Speaker 03

  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.

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 18:05Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  And so it sounds to me, I mean, it it sounds to me that you're gonna have athletes becoming more even more and more specialized. You've seen specialization actually take over sports for the most part. It sounds to me like you're gonna get even more specialized. Uh, because there may be athletes that are selected to do things, you know, better than others.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  So I think it's gonna go two ways because on one hand, um, there's going to be that type of selection. At the same time, the thing which is really interesting, so the thing that is really interesting about this vision training is that the people that's gonna 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 gonna make it so more people are going to be able to come able to overcome the hurdles.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  And to be able to do that.

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  That's fascinating.

• 19:05Gary O'Reilly?

  It is.

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  That is fascinating.

• 19:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, thank you.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Thanks. This was fun.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 19:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 19:10Chuck Nice?

  That was, that was great stuff, man. That really fascinating stuff.

• 19:14Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I'm glad we've, uh, we've chosen to delve into this field of, uh, of sport, which is, is, uh, up and coming because it's, 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?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  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, you know, serious games. As opposed in the U S, there is, um, a little bit of distrust of anything that has the word game in it.

• 19:51Gary O'Reilly?

  How interesting because normally it's the U S that leads the way in embracing new thinking and, and new ideas.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  Not since Trump.

• 19:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, dear. You started again. Oh. 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 G M of the L A Dodgers, Ned Colletti will be our guest. Stick around. That should be interesting.

• 20:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back, I am Gary O'Reilly.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 20:27Gary O'Reilly?

  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 Coletti.

• 20:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 20:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Major League Baseball analyst at The Plate on TuneIn. And of course, if you're familiar with the LA Dodgers, the former GM.

• 20:48Chuck Nice?

  Ned, welcome to the show, my friend.

• 20:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, thank you, Ned.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Thank you. It'll be very interesting to have a conversation with you guys.

• 20:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:53Gary O'Reilly?

  You say that now.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  And before we get going, what do you, what do you, exactly. What do you, what do you think of your Dodgers right now?

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Well, Dodgers going through a little bit of a downward turn. It's a long, long season, but they've been, they've had a really a historic, about four months' time where they, their record was so good and they were so dominant that I think they, 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.

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Towards this stage of the season, with any sport, if you're, 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?

• 21:42Speaker 04

  That is a tremendous question. And I think that it's, it's, it's one of the facets of, 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.

• 22:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  And those days you're off, most of those days you're not playing a game, you are travelling. Like tomorrow, the Dodgers do not have a game, but they'll be travelling from San Francisco to Washington. Okay, so a lot of the off days without a game are used to travel. So the, the grind of a season, not just physically.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  But the the mental approach and the focus piece of it is really what separates the good from the great, or the great from the good.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Hey, let's switch gears for a second and talk about some, you know, brain training. Um, you know, as a GM, you know, you're responsible for, uh, you know, uh, so many parts of the operation, but, uh, one of it is, of course, talent. And what are you looking for in in a hitter? Like, uh, when you're looking for somebody to help you at at the plate? What what what kind of player are you looking for in terms of, is it a technical thing? Is it a gut feeling? How how do you go about assessing talent that way?

• 23:05Speaker 04

  Well, I think there's a lot of different things you have to look at, and and players develop at different stages of life. I would really look for somebody who, and it didn't have to be a, um, a Harvard graduate or a Stanford graduate. They didn't have to have intellect of of a of a book sort, but they they needed to have intellect of a execution as a physical activity.

• 23:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Had a baseball intelligence.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  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 that's sixty feet six inches from you, throwing a ball ninety-five, a hundred miles an hour, or making it spin or making it drop and doing all these things. The best hitters I have found are that their minds work like computers where they reset after every pitch.

• 24:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, they go back to zero. And they don't they don't crowd their head with the others, the the previous pitch.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  Exactly. But they take every every piece of information they've they've gathered. Up until that moment, maybe it's the third pitch of the at bat, maybe it's a two and O count, that they reset, okay, I've seen this pitcher thirty-five other times, I've seen him throw me a hundred and fifty 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, and that happens within twenty seconds.

• 24:36Gary O'Reilly?

  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, you'd brought into the clubhouse and the, the players were working with, or did you just not show any interest in that?

• 24:51Speaker 04

  No, we always, we always look for every, every edge, including bringing in, in specialists who could help, uh, help players understand, provoke thought, do studies, um, put them in a certain situation where they could see different things, and train their eyes to pick up different things on charting and, uh, visual, visual machinery that would, would, would, uh, provide them with different views of different things, not baseball necessarily, but the same, uh, interrelated, uh, visuals that you would need in order to pick up a ball at a hundred miles an hour.

• 25:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  If you wanna know how much time a hitter has to react to a pitch, from the time it leaves his hand till 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 from the, when the book leaves your hand until you hear the book hit the floor, that's how long a hitter has to react.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  Hey, let me ask you something, uh, along those lines, okay? Is there, now, when you, when you talk about like a linebacker playing football, there's, you know, the, he's reading the quarterback's eyes, or he's looking at the running back too, and there's like a lot of anticipation. Same thing happens in tennis, you know, uh, there's a lot of anticipation, you get to know your opponent, you, there's kind of certain tells. Can that happen in baseball at the plate, looking at the pitcher?

• 26:23Speaker 04

  Oh, no doubt.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  Do pitchers have tells?

• 26:25Speaker 04

  Oh, no doubt.

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah?

• 26:27Speaker 04

  No doubt. You'll see, you'll see some that their facial expression changes.

• 26:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  You'll see some, and you'll be able to see it from the, the distance away.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  That's fascinating.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Sweating. You'll see anxiety, you'll read body language, you'll read confidence levels coming and going. What? 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.

• 26:50Gary O'Reilly?

  So Ned, do you work with the guys? Do you work with the guys, the hitters? Because in the end, that's they're the guys that are gonna 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?

• 27:14Speaker 04

  You, we did, and you, you, you did it, but you had to be careful too that. Cause teaching is a very interesting, um, activity.

• 27:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, agreed.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  And not everybody learns the same. And I've had, I've had players that had 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, and talk to twenty five or fifteen hitters, fourteen hitters.

• 27:58Gary O'Reilly?

  You had to do it one by one?

• 28:00Speaker 04

  All the same way, yeah. You couldn't do it like that. You, you had to do it. You had to do it one on one. And I tried to also have coaches, especially in the minor leagues. And while I was, 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, my, my player development coaches. You have six or seven minor league teams. To, if they, if they didn't know how to teach, that they would learn how to teach. Because it's so much about teaching and taking, taking science and putting it into

• 28:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  So you've got six or seven days to kind of regroup and, and figure out what you're gonna do the next time you compete.

• 29:03Chuck Nice?

  Sure.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  You compete every single day.

• 29:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and now, speaking of that, I mean, you know, we're, we're, 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, you don't get to regroup over the course of a week.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  No.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  You gotta 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, I'm not good, man. I, it, it stays with me.

• 29:48Speaker 04

  Go ahead.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  Like, I'm like, I'm devastated. Like, I gotta get a victory in order for me to, to, to be made whole again. And if I don't, I could see myself going into a slump.

• 29:59Gary O'Reilly?

  So, so as an athlete, you, you grow, and I think Ned might back me up on this, you grow a thicker skin. Right? So...

• 30:06Speaker 04

  You have to. You have to have a very short, you have to have a very powerful memory, but a very short memory.

• 30:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And, and, and as you said, look, no matter what the pitch is, you've, you've, you've, 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, with the pitcher.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:24Gary O'Reilly?

  But you've shaken off all the negativity. It re, this is why they're called the major leagues.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  That's why I'm a comedian and not a major league baseball player. That's exactly why I'm a comedian and not, because I can't do that.

• 30:35Gary O'Reilly?

  No, that's, but that's it.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Well, there's how many people play, play, play sports in, in all, all levels of life, but how many play at the top of their profession?

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  That's the, that's one of the great separators, which you just pointed out. That separates people who get paid to ma, do it as for a living versus those who watch it or... Played it and stopped playing it.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, cause see here's here's how it goes for me. I'm I'm 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.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  And then I'm leaving and I'm leaving the park. I'm leaving. That's it.

• 31:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Ned, he's a G he's a G. Yeah, he's a GM's dream, right?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, as a comedian, yes. Come in and entertain the players.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  That's funny.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  But think about this.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  I love what he just said Chuck. You got a future in baseball as a comedian.

• 31:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, he's he's worked you out. Sorry Ned, you were saying.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Think uh think about baseball and think about what you just said, that the mindset of the athlete.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  If you fail, if you do ten jokes and seven get no reaction.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, it's over. Are you kidding me?

• 31:39Speaker 04

  You're a hitter.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  I would kill myself.

• 31:41Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no. What are you saying?

• 31:42Speaker 04

  And in seven out of ten at bats, you fail, they will build a statue of you outside the ballpark when you're done playing.

• 31:49Gary O'Reilly?

  You see?

• 31:50Speaker 04

  That's how hard it is.

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  That's how hard it is.

• 31:52Gary O'Reilly?

  See, that's the the whole thing is the angle at which you approach the numbers.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  Hey, um, let's do two things real quick, uh, cause we gotta talk about your, uh, your book.

• 32:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Something people should want is the big chair.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  The big chair.

• 32:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Which, of course, is Ned Colletti's new book.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the smooth hops and bad bounces from inside the world of the acclaimed Los Angeles Dodgers. Uh, let's, uh, let's talk about your book, man. What's what's going on with it?

• 32:20Speaker 04

  It's it's really, it's about twenty percent memoir. I had a 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, to 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 li- a little bit of the people you meet along the way. Like, I I was honored to be in the presence of Frank Sinatra a few times and people of that ilk. And I find it a little bit interesting as time goes on and people know obviously who Frank Sinatra was and but they, you know, they'll hear a story or two and how it relates to baseball, cause Frank and Tommy Lasorda were obviously

• 33:01Speaker 04

  tremendous friends, a long, long time Hall of Fame manager of the Dodgers. And then the rest of it is really the job and and what you go through. And, uh, it's 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.

• 33:18Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  And the different challenges you have.

• 33:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Ned, who is the biggest character you came across in Major League Baseball?

• 33:25Speaker 04

  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.

• 33:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  He is, he was, I would, 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 worked. 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.

• 33:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Huh.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  Knowing that in a key spot later in the game, or later in the season, the pitcher would come back with the same pitch.

• 34:05Gary O'Reilly?

  And then he'd tear the cover off of it.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  He'd hit it out.

• 34:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Nice.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  And I would look at him after the game and I'd say, "Bee, 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.

• 34:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Nice. So he's like a squirrel burying a nut and he's gonna come back to it X amount of weeks, months later?

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Yes. So Barry, Barry was the greatest hitter I've ever been around.

• 34:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  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 at Edmonton Oilers and then L.A. Kings.

• 34:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, okay.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  And I would talk to his teammates about him, a huge hockey fan, and I would talk to guys on the Chicago Bulls about Michael Jordan.

• 34:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 34:50Speaker 04

  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.

• 35:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Okay? It just keeps flowing, right?

• 35:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Gretzky could skate at thirty, thirty-five miles an hour, probably. So we watched 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, teammates told me, he saw the game like none of us saw it. Magic Johnson, who was 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.

• 35:47Gary O'Reilly?

  In the mind it slowed, but the body is at full tilt. So that people is the big chair from Ned Colletti. Um, if what Ned has told you has whetted your appetite, I'm gonna go find this book.

• 36:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, get the book, get the book.

• 36:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Please, by all means, in October, it's out there on the shelves. Go grab it before it disappears completely.

• 36:07Chuck Nice?

  Hey Ned, man, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. Please, please come back, please come back and do it again.

• 36:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, look forward to that. Thank you, Ned.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Gentlemen, have a great day.

• 36:17Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 36:17Gary O'Reilly?

  You too.

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  Man, that was awesome.

• 36:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Wouldn't it? We started off by how you can work by training your vision.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Gary O'Reilly?

  How you fire synapses and neurons and, you know, you get an awareness and a game intelligence.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:31Gary O'Reilly?

  And then we finish up speaking to a guy who's having to bring all of that.

• 36:35Chuck Nice?

  Right, bring it all together. And then, and then combine it with the psychological nature of all that.

• 36:41Gary O'Reilly?

  And then, then you realise, 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.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Gary O'Reilly?

  And you've got a GM who is basically herding cats, trying to get them to do what he wants, win games. Uh, I mean, and then you, then you get the realisation 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.

• 37:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Between the ears. Unbelievable.

• 37:22Chuck Nice?

  Great stuff. Oh, man, what a good show, right?

• 37:25Gary O'Reilly?

  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.