The Champion Mindset

Baseball has, and continues to play a massive role in my life. This time of year I always become particularly nostalgic about my relationship with the game, and this year in particular is bringing up a lot of thoughts I have about the sport. I figured, while it might be a different tone than my usual writing, this is a good opportunity for me to process through a lot of those thoughts, and, maybe, contribute to a positive outcome in some way for something I love so much.

Baseball has always been more than a game for me. It is a massive part of the foundation I was raised upon. My dad fell in love with the game and played minor league baseball before I was born. By the time my consciousness came online, I had enough practice with the foundations of the game that it was just part of who I was. I was the youngster (alongside my big brother) in the dugout of an adult league team as the bat boy learning how to chew and spit sunflower seeds before I was in grade school. Beyond our regular practice in the backyard, when competitive leagues started to pop up in grade school, my dad became my (and my team’s) head coach.

I could write a book on the travel team I grew up with, but will try to keep it brief here. My dad and his assistant coaches instilled in us a value that I call the “Champion Mindset”. Baseball is a game where you will fail often. It is a sport, I think pretty uniquely, where you can do so much right and get a negative outcome and can do so much wrong and still get a positive one on any given play. So the Champion Mindset is focusing on what we can control within the process, which overtime results in more success than you would otherwise realize. As my dad always said, there’s a way to act like a champion whether you win or not. These included things like: show up to the field at least fifteen minutes early so you are ready to go on time; practice like you play in the game; sprint on and off the field; run out every batted ball whether you think you will be out or not; anticipate what could happen on each play and be ready; if you are standing still, you’re in the wrong spot; and many more. These principles guided us day in and day out, and not just for a single season. The same core team played together from fifth grade until we graduated high school. In those eight years, we won six championships between travel ball and American Legion, and won our league and went to states our senior year in high school. People said we were not the most talented team, others had guys that threw harder and hit the ball farther, but we were undoubtedly the best team in our area at that time. Being a part of that team is something I will always be proud of. It provided me with lessons and memories I have continued to lean on long after my playing days, and will continue to for a very long time.  

When things were tough for me, baseball was something that I looked forward to. It motivated me to adopt healthy habits and remain active when I was growing up, something that I learned to appreciate more as I entered into adulthood and started my career. I credit baseball with not just being something that I enjoyed growing up, but shaping me in so many ways and perhaps being one of the greatest protective factors I had available to me. 

I say all of this to say that I was quite emotional watching the Brewers win the World Series this week. I got much less sleep than I would have liked to so that I could watch the games. I am a Phillies fan through and through, but felt a certain kinship to the philosophy with which the Brewers played. I rooted for them because they relied on each other as a team, leaned into the fundamentals heavily, and played the game the “right way”. In a sport that can be so heavily influenced by extreme payrolls, to watch two smaller market teams that have developed within and strategically become powerhouses over the last several years, it was fun for me to see.

The fact that the Brewers and Rays were the two best teams in their leagues in both the regular and post season is especially important this season given MLB’s expiring collective bargaining agreement (CBA). There has been conversation that this helps the owners, as a salary cap is certainly in the cards during the negotiations around this CBA. We will see how it plays out, but I wanted to share my thoughts because though I am not directly involved by any means, the worst case scenario will impact me in a meaningful way. I am just one of millions of baseball fans who, for their own reasons, love this game and would be impacted if things get ugly here.

In my Negotiations class at Penn, we read a case study looking at an alternative scenario to the NHL lockout. Forgive me as I took this class a year ago and am going based purely off memory, but the lesson was something along the following lines. Both owners and players lost out because of the NHL lockout that not just lost a season, but also lost fan engagement because of the missed season. A creative solution that was offered that would have better served both parties in the negotiation was to play throughout the negotiation, and to create an escrow account so nobody got paid during negotiations, but money would have been collected as they were earning throughout the season, and if by the end of the season they had not reached an agreement, the money would be donated to philanthropic causes. This would create incentives where an agreement would almost certainly be reached as profits on both sides would not want to be foregone, though there was a real alternative that would do good in the world if no agreement could be reached in time, all while continuing to engage fans and not losing the public interest that impacted the league for years following the lockout itself.

This is not what happened for the NHL, but it is a heck of an idea that should be considered as the MLB looks at its next steps, in my opinion, which admittedly, as you might be able to tell, is only partially informed on all of the nuances in this situation. I feel strongly about a few pieces being negotiated. I am more passionate about a salary floor than a salary cap. Owners who don’t want to spend sufficient money to give their teams a reasonable chance to win should sell their team to people who are willing to try to make teams competitive. It is unfair to the team and the fans who put so much of their heart and soul into their teams. There are teams who have been competitive with low payrolls. As the Brewers and Rays have been proving to us recently, that amount of money can be much lower than the highest payrolls in the league. The Guardians had the lowest payroll in the league yet made it to their league’s championship series. So it is not an absolute that more money is needed to be competitive, but these teams are outliers in the middle and lower tiers of spending. One of the highest spending teams (Mets) this season did not make the playoffs at all, most of the teams in the post season were in the top ten in spending. It is important to make the league as competitive as possible, top to bottom.

The fact that the Guardians were so good despite a low payroll, as with the Brewers and Rays despite their relatively low payrolls compared to the rest of the league, I hope leads to a greater change in the game than a CBA will cover. The launchball revolution has taken away from the game in a lot of ways, I believe. It was so nice to watch the Brewers have their most dominant win without hitting a home run, just guys having good at bats, hitting balls hard, and running the bases well. One theory of offense is power and domination, another is facilitation, and it was nice to see the latter rewarded with the ultimate prize. It was the Champion Mindset. Doing the right thing day in and day out won, and that brought tears to my eyes, in addition to watching a group that really loved each other celebrate their accomplishments in real time. 

As a Phillies fan, this is closer to the offense I have wanted. We are so lucky to have dudes that can absolutely mash baseballs like Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. If they go up to the plate more than other guys in the lineup trying to hit home runs, I understand that. But when every player in the lineup tries to hit fly balls rather than hard line drives, it reduces the sustainability of offense you need to be competitive against the best teams. Beyond the approach at the plate, doing the fundamentals well, including but not limited to baserunning and fielding, are critical to maximize every offensive run scored and minimize defensive runs allowed. I hope that teams find a balanced approach to the game, which I think will make the game better overall.

I won’t go into pitching theory too deeply, but the ways in which the Brewers pitchers largely also stayed in the zone and avoided too many free passes helped as well. It was just all around baseball, a Champion Mindset, that I was so happy to see win the championship. 

As people involved in the negotiations work together throughout the winter, I hope they keep in mind the fans to whom the game means so much. I have no doubt that when the negotiations shake out both owners and players will make a lot of money being involved in the greatest sport I know. I am not as confident that the fans that baseball provides such tremendous value will win out in the same way, though I think it’s very possible that everyone can win this offseason. 

Ideally the season will start on time, though I will not complain if there is a slight delay and we lose a few weeks of the 2027 season because of a later and shortened spring training. But if this lockout gets prolonged, I will be severely disappointed. Look at the Brewers fans, in Milwaukee and throughout the state of Wisconsin it seemed, to whom this World Series meant so much. I know how much the game means to me, and I know it means so much to so many others.

Beyond the game, I will continue to take the lessons learned from it and work to apply that in my career. A Champion Mindset brought to trying to make our world a better place, controlling what I can control and letting the little things stack upon each other. It was a nice reminder watching the Brewers win the importance of what I learned through the game growing up. It reminded me of all the wins I had with my team and my dad. I can only imagine what it’s like to win the World Series, but I am happy for what seems like a really good group to get to celebrate like they did.