Latest / The Layback Podcast / Corey Muscara, Duke University Head Baseball Coach (Ep. 76)

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Corey Muscara, Duke University Head Baseball Coach (Ep. 76) · The Layback Podcast

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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lay Back Podcast.
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Joining us today is the head coach of the Duke University
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Blue Devils, Cory Muscara. I've been trying to nail this
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guy down for a while. Thankfully, I can get him on
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text and on the phone here and there, usually at 7:00 AM or at
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9:30 PMI think when most of the world is asleep or trying to
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wind down, that's when this guy's cranking.
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But thankfully, we finally got him on here for a little
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recording. Looking forward to chatting with
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him today a little bit about what he's looking forward to
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this year, how he's running his program.
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And then, of course, selfishly, as many of you know, I've got a
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child on the way and this man has been raising a family and
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just doing his best to be a family man while he has climbed
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the ladder of college baseball. So I look forward to using this
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really selfishly so I can get some life advice in the process
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while we continue to grow Flex Pro Grip.
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So Corey, thanks a ton for coming on and I look forward to
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this conversation. Yeah, I don't know if I'm like
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the perfect guy for this, but I'll do my best to be
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transparent, authentic about how to help you navigate being a
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father and still juggling life. You can talk to anyone about
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these things. I mean, I've got my dad and
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obviously he and I are very close to be running a business
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together, but it helps to have the outside perspective.
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You sometimes you can only go to your own dad so much.
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So I figured I'd go to someone that really lives a life that I
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think is very enviable from my position.
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I, I love baseball. I love college baseball.
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And really, I mean, I eat, sleep, drink, breathe, dream
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these things. And you're obviously doing it
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every day with a loving family at home who has been on a wild
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roller coaster in itself this summer.
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So I mean, we, we can even go into that right away.
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Where'd you meet your wife? When did you guys start having
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kids and how My. Wife and I met.
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Susie, sign up for this process. Yeah, this is, this is funny.
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So I met my wife in college at Siena College.
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So at Siena College, they have a really beautiful library called
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the Standish Library. And she had on the 3rd floor,
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she had this cubicle study area that she would go to every day
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and it would look down on the baseball field.
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And so she knew me by my number because she would look down at
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the field all the time. And by chance we were at a party
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one day, one of my friends wanted to be introduced to one
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of her friends and he was too shy.
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So I went up to introduce a friend of mine to one of her
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friends. And she intercepted the the
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interaction and put her hand out and introduced herself.
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And at the time she was wearing a shirt that said single and
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fabulous. She had just broken up with her
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boyfriend. And she said hi, you're #18 and
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Susie or Sir. And I said, hi, I'm Corey.
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I'm also newly single. And so from then on, we've been
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together really ever since. So you asked the question about,
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like, how do you navigate this? The truth of the matter is you
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can't do anything without your wife.
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She is the glue to everything. My wife is a rock star.
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When I started in coaching, like all coaches, I made no money.
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And I'm a little bit of a psychopath.
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So I go, go, go all day long and when I first started I wasn't
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making any money. I was working non-stop.
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She was the breadwinner. She put up with a lot of my
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grief, but ever since she met me, I said I want to be a
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college baseball coach. Even when we're dating in
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college. That's what I've always wanted
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to do. I don't think she knew the
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depths of what she was getting into.
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The first, I would say 7 or 8 years were very challenging.
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I didn't make very much money and I worked tirelessly.
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She had to support us, so we made a lot of sacrifices along
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the way. At the time when we got married,
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we were living in New York and the cost of living was very high
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and we had a really cool apartment, one bedroom apartment
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in White Plains. It was outrageously overpriced
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and on the salary I was making and all the money she was making
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as a teacher, we really had no business living there.
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We weren't saving any money and my wife has always been super
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financially responsible. So we made a bold strategy and a
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bold move and we moved in with her parents.
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Yeah, wild. And so I drove an hour and 20
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hour and a half without traffic every day to work.
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And we lived rent free with her parents.
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And because we did that, we did that for two years.
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So we, we were married for two years and we had our own place
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and two years in a marriage, we moved in with my in laws.
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Luckily for me, I get along with my in laws very well and I was
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always working so I would get up and leave the house at 5:00 AM
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and I'd get home at 8:30 or 9:00.
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So I was never there and I would work seven days a week.
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My wife was happy as could be because she was with her mom and
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dad and she's she's part of a big family.
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She's one of nine. So most of her siblings were in
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the area. You hear about literally your in
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laws and you think it's going to be like not good.
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It was actually great because I get along with them very well.
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They're awesome and they really changed the trajectory of our
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family because we didn't pay for rent and we saved everything.
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So then from there, when I got the job at Maryland, we were
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able to buy a townhouse and that was huge because we couldn't
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have afforded it if we hadn't done that.
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You know, We were able to sell the townhouse when I went to
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Wake, and we did well on that. We were able to get a really
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nice house in Winston and we just sold that.
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So that move was kind of scary on the outside looking in, but
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it was probably the best move ever.
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It was like we hit the lottery and it worked out really well
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because it it honestly probably saved our marriage because I was
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never home. I mean never like I did not.
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I was like, is she got married to me and I was like not even
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there ever once. And we didn't have kids the
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first two years. So we had a baby in year 3 of
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being married and that was like my 6th or 7th year coaching.
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And then right away when our, our, our oldest, Theodore was
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around, I'm trying to think of how old he was probably like
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just shy of a year old. I think I want to say he was
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like 7 or 8 months. I took the job at Maryland.
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We moved down to Maryland. We had our second child when I
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was at the University of Maryland in our townhouse.
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And then we had our third child, Anna, who's 20 months now when I
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was at Wake. So that's kind of the trajectory
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of that. And probably the entire time I
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was at St. John's, I think she hated me
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being a baseball coach because it robbed her of time with me.
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And me being around the living at home was very helpful.
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And the first year or two at Maryland were super tough.
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I moved her away from her family.
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We had to make a lot of sacrifices.
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And eventually when we had our second child, she decided that
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she was going to stay home because we were going to pay
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more in childcare that we were for, you know, for her work with
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her working. And so that was tough too,
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because she loved her job and she worked so hard at it.
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So she made a major sacrifice there.
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And the last year that we were at Maryland, she started getting
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into radical acceptance and she started to do like all of these
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like self help things during COVID.
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We got close and we both worked really hard on who we were as
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individuals. We both read a lot, we went on
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family walks. And you know, COVID was a tough
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time for a lot of people. They lost a lot of jobs.
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There's people that got sick and people, a lot of bad things
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happen from COVID. For our family, it was kind of a
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blessing because we got to be around each other every day and
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we got to work on each other and our relationship and we had to
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be around each other every day for the first time.
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So that was actually pretty helpful.
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What was born out of that was she became totally invested in
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being a baseball wife and now my wife is like as ride or die as
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it gets. She goes to every game.
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She knows, like when kids go on the transfer portal, when we're
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not playing, she's watching other teams play.
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She's like dialed. She knows everything and she's
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super locked in and she wants us to do well.
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She hit me with this. She's like, you know, I finally
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realized that when you win, I win, so you need to win.
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So we're going to make sure that happens.
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And that's when things started to go really well.
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She's really understanding. She manages everything in the
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house from like our bills to the kids to everything.
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She's the boss. Number one rule is happy wife,
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happy life. So if you make sure mama's
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happy, you have a shot. You're not going to be perfect.
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You're not going to do everything right.
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But if if mama's happy or Mama's at least like able to be OK,
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then you got a chance. The second mama's not happy,
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you're, you're in trouble. Like you're not in a good place.
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So whatever you do, make sure your wife is happy because she's
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going to run the show a lot and your job is to make sure that
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you don't upset her, OK? So whatever you need to do to
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make her happy, you do. And I'm telling you right now,
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that is the best advice I can give you.
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I'm not doing, I don't do it right all the time.
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I'm not perfect. She might listen to this at some
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point and be like, he's full of it.
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But I can promise you that the number one goal every day is not
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to make mom mad. So that's number one, as far as
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the kids, if you're really getting aggressive with your job
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and you're trying to chase success, working a lot and it's
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tough on the kids. So the the biggest thing, and my
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wife's really, again, the one that makes this happen, the
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biggest thing is trying to get the kids around as much as
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possible. Try to get them at games, try to
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get them to the field to practice.
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But we're renting a house here because we're trying to find the
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right fit in the right house in the right neighborhood.
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But it was pretty essential for us to be super close to campus
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because if I needed to run home for like 2 seconds, I can.
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If I need to run over to their school for something, I can.
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Our house here is only four minutes away from the field.
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So like just yesterday for example, I took the kids to
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school and I forgot to take the car seats out of my car and they
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she needed them in her car. So I was in the middle of like
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100 things at work, but I sprinted home to try to get the
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car seats home. Again, I didn't get there in
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time, but the attempt to get there was what mattered, you
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know? And so it's little things like
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that that are really important. My kids, obviously, they play
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soccer, they play Little League baseball, and it's hard.
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I miss a lot of their games. Any chance I can get 2 to go?
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You got to go. And I gotten this advice from a
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lot of my coaching friends. You know the worst thing, Like,
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you know, everybody has egos in this business and they chase
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winning and they chase personal accolades.
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And, you know, our jobs are all predicated on winning.
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But if you win and you make a lot of money but your family
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hates you, then you really have nothing.
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The most important thing is that your kids get to see you.
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And when you're around, be present.
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I'm always on the phone recruiting.
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So one of the things that I need to get better at, like when I
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was at Maryland and I was at Saint John's, Maryland, we were
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about 45 minutes from home and we had there was traffic.
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So sometimes it'd be an hour. At Saint John's, I was an hour
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and a half and there was always traffic.
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So it was usually like 2 hours. So I used to use that time at
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Blightmeyer actually told me this like every time you're in
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the car, just be on the phone. So I use those that time to make
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all my calls. What's what was harder when I
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got to wake was we were only 12 minutes from campus and there's
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no traffic. And now I'm 4 minutes from
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campus with no traffic. So you got to be really
11:28
organized with your scheduling. So one of the things I had to
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learn was I had to make sure that I got, I could put my kids
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to bed every night and at least spend an hour with them at
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dinner and, and putting them to bed.
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And then I would start my recruiting phone calls after
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that, which again, it eats away at the time they get to spend
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with your wife. So you have to like allocate
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certain nights of the week that you're going to try to be
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present for her. So that's important.
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I think scheduling is, is vital. Like you really have to try to
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schedule your time. You hear the phrase that like
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time is money, but it really, really is like you, you got to
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manage every day, every second. Plan it like way out in advance.
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Make sure my advice there is like try to plan like the
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weekends you're going to be off the line offline.
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Try to plan vacations, try to plan family events as far out as
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possible. So when you're trying to do
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deals and you're trying to like grow your business at you have
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like blocked out periods of time with college baseball, we have
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dead periods, quiet periods, some things like that that help
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facilitate that. We have to make sure that like
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during that time we're being a dad.
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The last 45 or 50 days I've been anything but that.
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It's been probably the craziest 45 to 50 days of my career.
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There's literally not enough time of the day.
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I wish there was for me to do all the things like even in this
12:46
call right now, I'll probably have 50 text messages and 25
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emails that I need to get to ASAP.
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If you're a competitive person, you feel like you need to get to
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those things always right away. But the truth of the matter is I
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don't really follow this advice very well.
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I have a hard time with this, but you can always get to
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another day. I I need to take that advice
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better myself. But it is a challenge at the end
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of the day, like you want to be really good.
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You want to, you want to meet everybody's needs, but it's not
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possible. The last thing I'll say that's
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super important and I have not done this at all, but you need
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to make sure that you have time for yourself.
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When I'm performing at my best is when I get up in the morning
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and I do my morning routine and I do my breathing when I
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meditate and I journal. In order to do that, you got to
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go to bed early. So you got to get up early and
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you got to do it before the kids get up.
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I have not done that at all since like probably the end of
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our season. And I, I don't think I've done
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it one day. It's probably the longest
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stretch I've gone in five years without doing that.
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And I need to because if you don't feel yourself and you
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don't allow yourself to have clarity and focus, then you're
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going to have like a shorter fuse.
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Your bandwidth isn't going to be as strong.
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So it's important you hear this a lot, but it's very important
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that you try to make time that you can keep yourself focused
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and centered so you're not as stressed out.
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You got to be adaptable, right? So like another thing I'll say
14:17
is like when you have a new baby, the baby's always, I don't
14:20
know if your wife's going to breastfeed or if you're going to
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do. That's the goal.
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Yeah. So here's what I'll say to that.
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It's great for the kid and everything like that, but it's a
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lot of the mom and she's always up like feeding the child and
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everything like that. And there's only so much you can
14:35
do in that. So my best advice there is like,
14:38
if she says get up, get up. Like do whatever you can,
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whether it's like, you know, cleaning the next bottle,
14:45
helping her get a towel or whatever, like anything she
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needs, just do it because you're not going to be up nearly as
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much as she is. So make sure that you think
14:56
about it from this lens, like, yeah, you're tired and you're
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going to be. And yeah, it's hard, but it's
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not as hard as it is on her because the other thing is like,
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when when a woman has a baby, like, they have to go through
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all the hormonal changes as well.
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And that's a lot that us as men can't even fathom.
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We get really caught up in, like, our own lives and like
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what we're doing. And they have to deal with so
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much more. It's like an affirmation.
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You have to like, tell yourself, hey, like, don't complain here.
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Don't roll your eyes again. I'm saying that I do those
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things. I'm feeling guilty now trying to
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give advice because I sound hypocritical and I'm not great
15:32
at it. But luckily my wife gives me a
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lot of grace and forgives me when I'm not acting to the
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standard that I'm telling you to act like.
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So yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is just have
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grace. I'll give you this.
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That's. Man.
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Last piece of advice, right? So you ask anyone when they're
15:50
leaving the hospital with their first child, it's so scary.
15:53
And you, you're like walking so gingerly with the car seat and
15:57
the baby in the car seat. And you're almost like moving in
16:01
slow motion because you're think you're dealing with like an egg
16:03
that you don't want to break. And you're very timid and you're
16:06
very nervous. And you're driving home from the
16:08
hospital and you're going like 5 miles an hour because you're so
16:11
nervous. And everybody can sense it and
16:14
everybody can see it. And we were leaving the hospital
16:17
with our first child and a nurse also like, oh, you guys are
16:20
first time parents, aren't you? Like she knew right away because
16:24
it just you just reeks of like, you're so nervous.
16:27
And we're like, yeah, yeah, we like, probably look like
16:29
petrified. And the nurse said, here's a bit
16:31
of advice. There's 6 billion people on this
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planet, and most of them are probably not as equipped to do
16:39
this as you guys are. So if you think about the 6
16:42
billion people on the planet, there's many people that don't
16:46
have your bandwidth to do this job and they survived.
16:52
So kids are more resilient than you think.
16:55
And you don't have to be perfect.
16:57
You just have to have the intention to be as good as you
16:59
can with what you can. And if you do that, you're going
17:02
to be fine. And that actually was like, of
17:04
all the cliches you hear, that was the thing that helped me the
17:07
most because I was actually petrified.
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And that helped me like breathe a little bit.
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And it's funny, I'm telling you all this, my recruiting
17:15
coordinator, Will Craig, just had a baby two days ago, so.
17:19
Congrats to Will. Yeah, he just had a new boy.
17:22
He's back in Nashville. Crazy time for him.
17:25
He's changing jobs. They're selling their house,
17:27
they're moving, or they just had a brand new baby boy.
17:30
So it's exciting. It's a lot.
17:33
And, you know, sometimes you feel like you're missing out on
17:35
things you're supposed to do at work, but you can always get to
17:38
it at another time. That's kind of the perfect
17:41
segue. Well, first and foremost, before
17:43
I even get into that, I want to say thank you for all the
17:45
advice, everything you've been through.
17:47
I I know you kept saying you feel hypocritical.
17:49
Maybe this can serve as a little bit of a reminder of all the
17:53
things that are important. Maybe, maybe Susie will be proud
17:56
of you for at least bringing this up.
17:58
Or at least fingers crossed that's all she's.
18:00
Probably just going to say it like, you know, I just.
18:03
You're full of it, bud. That's not actually how you
18:06
operate. That's how I want to operate.
18:09
I can tell you that you know I don't always do what I want to
18:12
do. Like you said, it's about the
18:13
intention, though, a piece that I really want to get into, and
18:18
it's probably very congruent with what you have to work with
18:24
in the coaching world as well. How did you get to the point of
18:29
setting pride aside and relying on others and trusting others to
18:34
help? You obviously moved in with your
18:36
parents and that was, I mean, they were there for Theodore in
18:40
his birth. From what it sounds like
18:42
timeline wise, and I'm sure your wife hasn't been able to do this
18:46
alone. You've needed to rely on others
18:48
while you're on the road chasing jobs or recruiting or at
18:52
tournaments or trying to win in Omaha, different things like
18:55
that. And I know that that can be
18:58
tough to set aside the things you care about, what you want to
19:02
do, the goals you have or the plans that you have in trusting
19:06
that someone else can carry that out for you.
19:08
Yeah. So I'm not really, I don't think
19:12
I really did a great job with that until I got to Wake where I
19:15
started to trust more people with work.
19:17
As far as things at home, my wife's had to do the lion's
19:20
share of it by herself because we really haven't had any family
19:23
or friends around since we moved to Maryland.
19:27
So the last eight years, so the majority of our kids lives,
19:31
she's been solo and had to do everything by herself.
19:35
So I have to basically trust her with everything with the family
19:38
as far as like development and stuff like that.
19:42
When I got the wig, I had a little bit more help with the
19:44
recruiting with Billy Cilento and then player development
19:47
stuff. I started to trust guys a little
19:49
bit more, like Mike Mcferrin and Sean Fisher with some things,
19:52
and then the analytics team was pretty helpful.
19:54
Now, as a head coach, like Coach Walter said this to me a while
19:58
ago about how when you're a head coach, you're not going to get
20:01
to sit there and do as much with the players as you normally
20:05
you're used to. I haven't quite experienced that
20:08
yet because the kids aren't back on campus, but I can tell you
20:11
that the 1st 45 to 50 days have been madding.
20:14
So I think you have to surround yourself with good people.
20:16
You have to set expectations and standards, and you have to try
20:20
to give. Them the ability to work.
20:22
I think when you're running a business, you have to
20:24
prioritize. I've had to sacrifice plenty of
20:26
things. I have a great group of friends
20:28
that I grew up with that I love and they probably think that I
20:32
I'm not as engaged because I'm literally never around.
20:35
I haven't seen some of them in years and that part stinks.
20:38
I don't really love that. I'm not proud of it, but for me
20:41
it's always been my immediate family 1st and then my my team
20:46
2nd and I've never really thought about anything else.
20:49
So I think if you want to be successful and you want to be a
20:52
good father and husband and you want to have, you want to excel
20:55
your job, you have to really minimize what your focuses are.
20:59
So you can't really get worried and get caught up and like going
21:03
to concerts or like going and hanging out with the boys and
21:07
going golfing and playing poker. Like you don't have the means.
21:12
If you want to run a successful company or a successful, you
21:15
want to be successful at work and be the best dad you can be,
21:19
you have to sacrifice some things, right?
21:21
Like you can't do everything if you want to be really elite.
21:24
Now you could do things like on the surface level and do
21:28
everything, but if you want to be the best, you can't do
21:31
everything. I think you kind of have to like
21:33
really narrow your focus and prioritize what matters to you.
21:37
And that could even mean just like even watching TV, right?
21:40
Just like simple things like if you want to be really great at
21:43
it, Maybe that's because I talk too much.
21:46
Maybe that's because I'm not as gifted and smart as most people,
21:51
so for me, I have to fully immerse myself and whatever it
21:56
is I'm doing. So I have to narrow my focus
21:59
dramatically. And I really don't have anything
22:01
else I think about other than my kids, my wife and my team.
22:07
Very much aligned with that line of thought.
22:09
It's something that I've struggled with immensely.
22:11
Part of what I think has enabled me to get to where I'm at with
22:16
Flexpro now. I, I struggled with it for a
22:19
really long time when I was coming off of my own shoulder
22:22
injury way back when I was playing and I had this weird,
22:26
what I thought was weird at the time, identity crisis of I'm not
22:31
what I thought I was. And really it took years of self
22:37
reflection and work and conversation to realize that
22:42
yes, I, I thought I was a baseball player.
22:43
I thought that was my identity. But what enabled me to even get
22:47
to that point was that I identify as an all in person.
22:51
There are only so many things that I have bandwidth for.
22:56
And if it is in my one to five things that I will even consider
23:02
on a daily basis, that is getting my 100% focus.
23:06
So it's it's going to be my wife.
23:08
It's going to be baseball now. Just the vehicle for baseball
23:12
has changed a little bit for me. Now it's focusing on elbows
23:15
rather than trying to have the perfect swing or throw as hard
23:20
as I can or something like that. And I know that I, I think or I
23:25
say no, one of the things that I think I'm going to struggle with
23:28
is I know the sacrifices are going to come now that I have
23:33
something else in life that I have to be all in for.
23:36
And it's not like I don't want to be, I want to be all in for
23:39
my daughter. But I guess I'm scared of what
23:42
I'm going to lose because I have something else and I know I can
23:47
only handle so much at a time. So I'll give you some other
23:50
advice on that. I remember it was like August
23:54
ish and my son was born in November.
23:56
So I was in Georgia recruiting at Lake Point and I was at a
24:01
game and the, the hitting coach of the time at Virginia, Kevin
24:06
McMullen. Kevin probably doesn't even know
24:07
we had this conversation. So it's very good insight to say
24:12
that you never know when you're going to say something to
24:13
somebody that's going to make an impact.
24:15
But I remember it vividly. I was sitting there and I was
24:18
like really stressed out and I said to McMullen because he had
24:21
like 3 or 4 kids. I, I don't remember the number.
24:24
He had three kids maybe. And he's been a really good
24:26
hitting coach for a long time. And I was like, Kev, like, I'm
24:29
like really nervous. Like how, how am I going to be a
24:32
great college baseball coach and be a great father?
24:35
Like, how do I do all this? And, you know, you don't realize
24:38
what you're capable of. And he said to me like, oh,
24:41
you're you're going to be a better coach now that you're a
24:43
parent. And I was like, really?
24:46
Why? He's like, because you're going
24:48
to start to coach kids like they're your kids.
24:50
You're going to start to understand what it is to be a
24:51
parent. You're going to have a better
24:52
understanding of it. And I was like, oh, OK, that
24:57
makes sense. And here's the analogy I'll give
24:59
to you. Like I remember when I first got
25:02
to college and we had study hall and lifts, and it was the first
25:07
time I was lifting regularly. And I lived on the third floor
25:11
of my freshman dorm. And we didn't use the elevator,
25:14
so we had to walk up the stairs. And I felt like I couldn't even
25:16
walk up the stairs because I was so tired.
25:19
We had class and we had practice.
25:21
And I just remember being like, it was the hardest thing the
25:24
first semester freshman year, so hard.
25:28
I remember going home for a break and telling our family
25:30
chiropractor he's like, how's school going?
25:32
He was like, so excited to talk to me.
25:35
And I was like, busy. I'm so tired.
25:38
He's like, life's only going to get busier.
25:40
And I remember like, you don't know what you're talking about.
25:44
I remember thinking it was like the hardest thing ever at that
25:46
time. And then, you know, by the time
25:47
you become a junior, you feel like you have so much free time
25:51
because you start to understand all the little things and it's
25:54
not that much of a big deal anymore.
25:56
And then it's the same thing when you first become a parent,
25:58
you feel like you have no time. You feel like you don't
26:00
understand how you're ever going to get anything done.
26:02
And then all of a sudden it's not that big of a deal and you
26:05
can, you can manage it. Then you have a second child.
26:07
Oh my goodness, it's so hard. Then all of a sudden it becomes
26:10
3. And then like you're an
26:11
assistant coach and you think you're so busy.
26:14
Then you become a head coach. And then it's like, there's even
26:16
more. So the point of what I'm saying
26:18
is life always gets more challenging.
26:21
There's always more stuff on your plate, and whenever you do
26:24
something new for the first time, it seems daunting and you
26:27
don't know how you're going to do it.
26:30
But then you figure it out. You figure out your schedule,
26:33
you figure out your systems, you figure out your routine, and you
26:36
become more efficient with them. And then you can have a greater
26:39
audacity to do more. And that's life.
26:42
That's evolution, right? Like you keep in taking more.
26:45
I sent this out to the team the other day and I'm going to mess
26:48
up the how how it was said, but it was like a foolish doer will
26:53
outperform a smart thinker any day of the week.
26:58
And essentially what it's saying is by doing, even though you
27:01
might not have the right plan, you're going to figure out more.
27:05
You're going to iterate your process, you're going to get
27:07
creative, you're going to learn how to do things, you're going
27:10
to adapt, you're going to create new skills.
27:12
And as long as you have the right perspective and the right
27:15
mentality and you have the right navigational beacon, for me,
27:19
it's, it's always, I'm always about wise.
27:21
So when you can have that understanding of why you're
27:23
doing things, it allows you to get through a lot and you
27:27
realize what's important and you prioritize it and you attack
27:31
those things first. You don't have to be the best at
27:34
it. You don't have to be perfect at
27:35
it. But as long as your desire to be
27:38
great is there, as long as you're self reflecting and
27:42
iterating your process, it's going to get better and it will.
27:46
And in fact, just like player development, you need to make
27:49
those mistakes and learn so you can grow.
27:53
That's ultimately the essence of it all.
27:57
Yeah, I just, I just wrote a mission statement for our
27:59
baseball program the other day and I'll actually read it to you
28:03
here. So the the mission statement I
28:05
wrote the other day was to build an environment that drives
28:07
personal growth, develops grit, cultivates gratitude and
28:12
achieves greatness in all aspects of life.
28:14
For me, like that's kind of like the essence of everything I'm
28:18
trying to do, right? And that with my family, that's
28:22
with my team for a while, my personal why in my profession
28:26
was that I wanted to use baseball as a vehicle for my
28:29
players to be the best version of themselves.
28:31
And it's kind of the same thing. It's always building, it's
28:34
adapting. Like I started at the bottom of
28:37
college baseball. We were the worst division two
28:38
team in America. Like that's where I started and
28:42
I as a player, I wasn't very good.
28:43
I was a average player, a below average player at best.
28:47
I thought I was good because I was pretty decent in high school
28:50
baseball in New Hampshire. But in the spectrum of things,
28:54
it's really not much. And so you talk about the
28:56
identity crisis. Like I went to college and I
28:58
thought I was going to be a major leaguer.
29:00
Then I learned real quick that I was so far from that.
29:04
So I had to figure out like where, where were my passions
29:07
going to be best suited and best focused?
29:09
And about halfway through college, I realized I wanted to
29:12
be a coach. And ever since then, that's
29:15
where I put my attention. Where you put your intention is
29:19
what will grow. So what you think in your mind,
29:21
you can hold your hand, whatever you see, whatever you believe
29:25
you can do, it's just going to take time and you're going to
29:28
have to figure it out. Like you're going to have to
29:30
roll with the punches, so to speak.
29:32
Now maybe this is a time for you to go back and reflect a little
29:36
bit and trust me, this is going to help me as well.
29:40
You talked about how much introspection has helped you in
29:44
taking the time for yourself. Obviously things have gotten
29:47
busy with the job shift, so he you've had a lot less time for
29:52
yourself lately, but when did you really start taking that on?
29:56
Where did it start? And are there things
30:00
specifically that you can really like, go back to and say like
30:05
this, in my mind, never would have happened if I didn't take
30:10
the time to myself to step away and think and write and really
30:16
just be the best version of yourself, not for the others,
30:20
but for you. Everything, literally
30:24
everything. Yeah, I would say that like the
30:27
self help and the growth and the thinking started to really take
30:32
fold around my maybe my third year at St.
30:37
John's. Blankie was really into reading.
30:39
And so I started to read a lot of books and I kind of went
30:42
through a period of time where I was just devouring books and I
30:47
was trying to learn as much as I could.
30:48
And that segwayed into I was like probably my last two years
30:52
at St. John's and probably like my
30:54
first two years in Maryland. I just was a voracious reader
30:59
and I was reading every book on culture, leadership, Gill
31:03
acquisition I possibly could. And then when COVID hit, I
31:08
started making a lot more about personal development.
31:13
Ty Blankmeyer, blankie son actually gave me a book called
31:16
Breath by James Nestor. And then we had a little group
31:19
chat with my one of my best friends.
31:21
I grew up with a scout that was a friend of ours.
31:24
Mike Mcferrin honestly was in this group chat as well.
31:27
And Ty and the five of us would have this accountability chat on
31:33
breathing and we started to share a lot of like videos and
31:37
things on breath work, meditation, visualization.
31:42
I got really deep into that stuff.
31:44
I started to really focus on it again.
31:47
That was also another thing that was presented to me for the
31:49
first time again from my wife was like the law of attraction.
31:55
I started to like look into that when we were actually made my
31:59
first year coaching. I started to look into the law
32:02
of attraction. And then as that started to
32:04
happen, I started to look a lot more into the science behind it
32:08
and how the brain works. Started to study, like watch
32:11
podcasts and listen more of like Doctor Andrew Huberman and
32:15
things like that and start to understand like the neuroscience
32:19
behind it. And I've gotten really into
32:21
energy frequencies. And so it's just like always
32:24
evolving. And then the more you
32:26
understand, the more you're exposed to, the more you can
32:28
process information. And you know, I'd say the entire
32:31
time I was at Maryland, it was all about like personal
32:34
improvement. That's why I try to help my
32:36
players with was the mental game, habit formation, managing
32:40
of your time, how you speak to yourself, what you think, what
32:44
you say, your affirmations. That's, you know, I worked on
32:46
some things too, like from a pitching development side, but
32:49
like I wasn't, and at the time that there really wasn't a lot
32:52
like track man was just kind of coming out like there wasn't
32:55
like a ton of facilities. Like the only facility at the
32:58
time was like driveline. It wasn't like today where like
33:01
pitching Ninja was just starting.
33:03
There wasn't like all this information that's out there.
33:06
So I was kind of coming up while all that was happening.
33:08
And towards the end of my time at Maryland, that's when like
33:12
this whole data analytics and bio mechanics started to like
33:16
really become a thing. We were kind of early adapters
33:20
because we didn't really have it at Maryland.
33:21
But again, Tom Walter was kind of on the forefront of putting
33:25
that in at Wake when I had the opportunity to go there.
33:27
They had all these this technology and resources.
33:30
And I would say I kind of shifted from like primarily like
33:34
self help, leadership, culture building, mentality, psychology,
33:39
how the brain works, energy to starting to focus a lot more on
33:43
like skill acquisition, player development, things of that
33:47
nature. But I don't think you can
33:49
actually like really focus on those specifics unless you
33:52
understand the personal piece. The other benefit I had to a lot
33:55
of this was I coached baseball from the lens of like not having
34:00
technology for a long period of time.
34:02
And I was blessed to be around some really great coaches that
34:06
knew how to win and knew how to see the game from kind of a old
34:10
school lens, if you will, where you can pay attention to the
34:13
game. I think one of the problems that
34:16
like you see in player development is a lot of this
34:19
stuff is new age and cool and new.
34:21
But like you're hearing it for the first time and you want to
34:23
use the lingo and you want to understand it.
34:25
But a lot of times like you don't really know what those
34:28
numbers mean and how they actually like transition to the
34:32
game. And so for me, again, like I
34:36
felt very anxious about not understanding that stuff and I
34:38
felt like it was a priority. And then I was thrown into like
34:41
the epicenter of technology and data in baseball.
34:44
And I didn't have that background, but I think it was a
34:47
blessing because I had to learn. I had to do.
34:49
I'm going to mess this quote up, but this is a General George
34:52
Patton quote, and it's definitely wrong.
34:54
So don't quote me on it, but I'll give you the gist of it.
34:57
But basically, he says a bad plan executed with aggression is
35:03
better than the right plan executed timidly.
35:06
And again, it's about doing, like, just go do.
35:09
There's this really good speech by somebody.
35:12
I forget what his name is, but Matt Westinger said it to me
35:15
years ago. And this guy talks about doing
35:18
just do it. Like you have this.
35:21
Just do it. Because if you go ahead and
35:23
business, if you go out and you're aggressive and you do and
35:26
you're decisive and you're quick acting, yeah, you might make a
35:29
mistake. But think about the skills you
35:31
just learned by doing something. I think so often times people
35:34
sit on the sideline waiting to get involved, and they don't
35:36
take the initiative to be aggressive to do something,
35:39
whether it's right or wrong. If your intention is to be the
35:42
best, you're going to figure it out.
35:43
So just do it. Stop trying to wait for the
35:45
right time, you know what I mean?
35:47
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I mean, that's, that's
35:51
massive. I think I'll take the time for
35:54
one more question because I know both you and I have a few things
35:57
holding us back right now from really getting super deep in the
36:01
weeds. We can do this another time too.
36:04
For sure, I appreciate that and probably have some additional
36:08
offline texts and calls for you just when I'm really in the
36:12
thick of it because I know if someone else is up at 4:30 AM
36:15
trying to solve a problem, it's probably going to be you,
36:17
whether that's for good reason or bad reason, but just trying
36:20
to figure it out. So this last one, I think is
36:24
another one that's very connected to both coaching and
36:28
parenting, which is why I'm so curious about it.
36:31
When and how do you manage solving a problem for someone to
36:38
make it easier versus letting them learn the lessons along the
36:42
way? Wow, that's deep.
36:46
OK, so I've tried to bulldoze a lot of scenarios for players
36:50
over the years and we'll go back to my When I first got to
36:54
Maryland, we had like 8 pitchers and we had a pretty good run at
36:58
the end of my time at Saint John's where I really started to
37:01
dive into a lot of this mentality stuff and it started
37:04
to work. And so when I got to Maryland,
37:06
we only had eight pitchers. We didn't have the talent, we
37:09
didn't have the depth. And I was like, I'm going to
37:11
will these guys to be good. And my first year at Maryland, I
37:15
think we completely out kicked our coverage even though we had
37:18
a mediocre year as a team pitch far better than we should have
37:21
for what we had. And then year 2, I got some more
37:24
players and we're going to be even better.
37:26
But I was relentless. Like I was texting guys at 536 O
37:31
clock in the morning, text them at midnight like I was non-stop.
37:35
I had this idea in my mind that if I texted them every single
37:40
day as soon as I woke up and every day before I went to bed,
37:44
something impactful like I was going to will them into having
37:47
this mentality. I really believe that.
37:51
And what I did was I turned off a lot of guys.
37:53
They tuned me out, didn't work at all.
37:56
They were like, this guy's too much, like he's over the top,
38:01
like I can't stand this guy. And it was hard for me to
38:03
swallow that. It was really hard.
38:06
But it was a lesson I needed to learn and I was a little bit
38:09
more flexible with how I gave information when I got the wake.
38:15
So I think if I hadn't done that in Maryland, then I don't know
38:19
that I would have gotten the buy in that I did when I went to
38:22
Wake. And again, it's like constantly
38:24
trying to find the happy medium of what's too much and what's
38:26
too little. I do know this though, that no
38:30
matter how good you think you are as a coach or a teacher,
38:34
there's no greater teacher in the game.
38:37
Because at the end of the day, if you're not really being
38:39
tested when the bullets are flying, you're not really being
38:41
tested. The real truths, the matter is
38:44
the greatest development you can have is again, by doing, by
38:47
figuring things out on your own. And you need to learn how to
38:51
exhibit patience as a coach, which sometimes is hard for me.
38:55
And you need to understand that there's a fine line between
38:58
allowing them to fail a little bit and putting them down to
39:01
them too soon, right? And I think that same thing goes
39:04
for being a parent. I think the same thing goes for
39:07
cultivating a workforce if you're starting a company or
39:10
building a team. And, and that's honestly one of
39:13
the problems that we have in college baseball today.
39:16
This is a really interesting juxtaposition that we all are
39:19
facing. And nobody likes to talk about
39:22
the elephant in the room, but it's the truth.
39:24
And I'm guilty of this too. So I don't want to sit back and
39:27
be throwing rocks at others and like, I have all the answers.
39:30
I don't, I want to be clear on that.
39:33
But this is an issue that we're all dealing with.
39:34
And here's the issue that I'm going to talk about.
39:37
We all scratch and claw. We're the best high school
39:41
recruits in the country. And then they get to school and
39:44
only a couple of them really get to play right away.
39:47
Very few, especially at the higher levels.
39:49
And then what happens because everybody's so enticed into
39:51
getting the older guy, that's already proven.
39:54
A lot of guys get pushed out. And what's really ironic about a
39:57
lot of this is a lot of these power for schools.
40:01
We fight, scratch and claw for these top 150, top 200 players
40:05
out of high school. But, you know, the top 25 or 30
40:09
of them, they sign and they go to professional baseball.
40:12
The next 50 or 60 of those that are pretty good, maybe they play
40:16
at their schools, maybe, but the lion's share don't.
40:19
And what happens when they're not playing is they get
40:22
disgruntled, they feel like they're lied to, they lose
40:25
confidence, they feel pressure, they're not able to perform.
40:29
And so they're asked to leave and they have to transfer.
40:32
And then ultimately people all fight for those kids from the
40:35
low level division ones and mid majors that have performed and
40:39
they want to grab those guys, which is so ironic because they
40:42
were all passed on a year or two prior.
40:45
But that's what everybody's going after right now.
40:47
And the truth of the matter is they were given the opportunity
40:50
to fail. They went to a place where they
40:52
could iterate their own process and they can learn and they can
40:54
grow. And then ultimately, they got
40:56
confident and they acquired skills.
40:59
So the real fine line in all this is like, how do you blend
41:02
the two? And I don't think anyone has the
41:04
exact answer on this yet. It's a problem that as educators
41:09
and teachers, everybody faces this right now.
41:12
But it's kind of the problem with college athletics.
41:14
I think college athletics and college baseball in particular
41:19
for a while surpassed pro ball and player development.
41:22
But now that we had this new age that we're in, they're not
41:25
giving kids enough reps to be able to actually learn and
41:28
iterate their process. And that's how in some ways pro
41:30
balls starting to catch up and pass college again.
41:32
And so it's again, finding that fine line of like teaching and
41:36
providing information while also giving people the, the chance to
41:41
go out and do and make mistakes and learn and learn some
41:45
accountability and learn how to deal with failure and learn how
41:48
to overcome things. And that's what pro ball gives
41:50
you. You play 162 games, like you got
41:52
to go out there every day until eventually they fire you or you
41:55
move on to the next level, right?
41:57
Like you just play so many damn games.
41:59
And, and the sad part about pro ball is it's not about winning
42:01
as much as it is about personal development and player
42:04
development. That's one of the things that
42:05
college does do is it teaches you how to win more and be in a
42:08
team environment a little bit more.
42:10
But there's just so many layers to all of these things, right?
42:13
There's so many layers to all of it and every piece that matters.
42:17
I don't think there's any one person out there that has all
42:20
the answers and thinks they have it all right perfectly.
42:24
And I don't know that anyone ever will.
42:27
But I think that if you, if you have a desire to figure that
42:30
out, you're going to get closer to having a good processing
42:34
system that hits on it more than it doesn't.
42:37
I appreciate you stepping in for this conversation today, Moose.
42:40
I know this is likely different than a lot of the conversations
42:44
you're having right now when you're trying to put a team
42:46
together and compete for an ACC championship and make a run to
42:50
Omaha. But it means the world to me
42:53
that you're willing to take the time to talk about parenthood
42:55
and talk about life and really just what goes on in your head
42:59
the the other world outside the lines.
43:02
So this has been awesome, man. I really do appreciate it.
43:06
Thanks for having me. We'll get in touch soon about
43:10
getting some flex pros over here at Duke in Durham, but we could
43:14
talk about that at some later dates.
43:17
For sure, man. Yeah, look at looking forward to
43:20
continuing to work with you. It's been awesome at Wake and I
43:24
can't wait to bring that to Durham as well.
43:26
But to everyone out there, thanks for listening to Moose
43:30
and I Babble a little bit. You might have tuned in to hear
43:32
about planes of rotation or developing an elite staff and
43:37
arms around the clock and things like that.
43:40
But no, you, you got to listen to fatherhood, making your wife
43:43
happy and helping me feel a little bit more confident in a
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couple days when my baby girl arrives.
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So Moose, once again, thanks a ton.
43:53
Go Blue Devils. Best of luck with everything
43:56
that you're juggling right now. And to all the listeners, thanks
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for laying back with us.