batting stances

Why—and how—ASSESS-ing is the way forward

August 16, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

Assessment before teaching is like a baby learning to walk before running. With more than 25 years of experience developing some of baseball’s top players, I have learned a lot of great lessons the hard way.

I’ve wasted time throwing batting practice to hitters who couldn’t take two consecutive good swings using a tee.

I’ve talked too much to hitters who are dominant visual learners.

I have operated my business on the trite “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard” mantra because I didn’t have a proven coaching philosophy or methodology.

I am no longer that rookie “faking it until I make it coach.”

My coaching philosophy is that practice prepares you for performance and performance prepares you for practice. My time tested and true A.T.B.A.T.S. Methodology starts with a thorough assessment of my hitters ensuring that I tap into their mind, body and soul.

As I was recently on a flight at 30,000 feet, I started thinking about the word assess. The word has been on my mind because L.E.A.D. Center For Youth is now partnering with Minority Baseball Prospects (MBP), which will help us win championships on the diamond and continue helping our boys win at the game of life.

On Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023, LEAD is sponsoring 100 slots for baseball players in Atlanta Public Schools (2024-2028 classes) to get evaluated by MBP’s proprietary, signature Swaggy Chain rating system. Select baseball players will be invited to join LEAD’s Ambassador Program which includes year round baseball training, development and competition as well as college and career support, all at no-cost to families.

I struggle with ADHD and I am high functioning. Because of this, acronyms are a Godsend for me.

A – Adaptable
S – Sluggish
S – Safe
E – Energetic
S – Stress-conqueror
S – Skilled

“Success is not for those who want it, nor those who need it, but for those who are utterly determined to seize it–whatever it takes.” — Darren Hardy

People that want to become Major League Citizens in Atlanta and/or Major League Baseball Players must be adaptable rather than being sluggish and playing it safe. Their energy needs to be on 100% especially when there is stress because skills pay the bills.

“Words are potent weapons for all causes, good or bad.” — Manly Hall

adaptable – The ability to adjust to new conditions.
sluggish – Slow moving oftentimes as a result of lack confidence in your ability to do something.
“playing it safe” – To be careful and not take risks to avoid failure.
energy – The strength required for sustained physical, emotional and/or mental activity.
stress – There are two types of stress, eustress and distress. Eustress is moderate or normal psychological stress and interpreted as being beneficial. Distress is extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain and is interpreted as being detrimental.
skills – Talent is what you do well and habits are things that you do well repeatedly without thought. Skills are things that you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

C.J. Stewart has built a reputation as one of the leading professional hitting instructors in the country. He is a former professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization and has also served as an associate scout for the Cincinnati Reds. As founder and CEO of Diamond Directors Player Development, C.J. has more than 22 years of player development experience and has built an impressive list of clients, including some of the top young prospects in baseball today. If your desire is to change your game for the better, C.J. Stewart has a proven system of development and a track record of success that can work for you.

Being and building the best ‘you’

August 9, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

As Jay-Z once said, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”

August is “National Black Business Month.” My wife, Kelli, and I have been business owners in the baseball industry for over 25 years. We are innovators and trendsetters taking seriously the calling that God has for our lives.

We have helped develop hundreds of players who have excelled at all levels of baseball, including the Major Leagues. For two years, we even represented 10 clients in the MLB Draft—six of whom reached the Majors.

We did this through our for-profit, Diamond Directors, while at the same time establishing our award-winning, sports-based youth development organization, L.E.A.D. Center For Youth.

Being a Black business owner is not easy because oftentimes, we do not receive the benefit of the doubt, respect or trust from varying races of people.

My success as a coach is rooted in my spiritual gifts, life experiences, my partnership with Kelli, my core values, my mentors and coaches.

Having these six things protects me from wearing myself out. I am not trying to be 10 times better than others.

Speaking of the number 10, I have a list of 10 Black owned businesses who have inspired me to be my best self.

Know Your Truth?
iSmooth Media
Humble Beginnings
Cruvie Clothing
Minority Baseball Prospects (MBP)
The Players Alliance
Rodney Scott’s BBQ
Slim + Husky’s Pizza
Be the Bridge
404 Coffee

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

Why L.E.A.D.’s partnership with Minority Baseball Prospects matters to you

August 2, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

#earntheA is a part of the rebranding of L.E.A.D. Center For Youth, a sports based development organization that uses the sport of baseball to help Black boys overcome three curve balls that threaten their success: crime, poverty and racism.

When L.E.A.D. started in 2007, we served Black boys citywide, attracting some of the top players from Dekalb, Rockdale and Fulton counties to play baseball for us proudly wearing the Ambassador “A” on their jersey and hat. They put into action our core values of excellence, humility, integrity, loyalty, stewardship and teamwork on and off the field. They weren’t perfect but they were our L.E.A.D. Ambassadors and we protected them and their need to dream.

In 2010, we committed to exclusively serving Black boys, grades 6-12, from Atlanta Public Schools where I received my foundational education. We continued to have success on the baseball field competing in national tournaments.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the quality of our play on the field to suffer. The boys in our program possessed the spirit of competition, but lost the opportunity to receive thousands of reps and hundreds of in-game at-bats needed to compete at the national level.

L.E.A.D. now is partnering with Minority Baseball Prospects (MBP) to help us win championships on the diamond and continue helping our boys win at the game of life.

On Sunday, August 20, 2023, L.E.A.D. will sponsor MBP signature evaluations for 100 high school baseball players attending Atlanta Public Schools.

Using MBP’s proprietary, signature Swaggy Chain rating system, select players will be invited to join L.E.A.D.’s Ambassador Program which includes year-round baseball training, development and competition, as well as college and career support, all at no-cost to families.

Quincy Carter is a friend of mine and former teammate in the Chicago Cubs Minor Leagues. In high school, he was the top quarterback in the country but delayed getting on the football field because he was our second round draft pick for the Cubs. He later went on to be QB1 at the University of Georgia and the first Black quarterback to start for the Dallas Cowboys. I remember talking to him one night after he had a long day of Cowboys Training Camp. He told me that he was working really hard to earn his Cowboys Star.

I was confused–he was their second round pick and the heir apparent to the recently retired Hall-of-Famer, Troy Aikman. Well, apparently, the Cowboys didn’t just give you a Star because you were on the team.

Starting this year, the Ambassador “A” will be earned in a new way.

August through October, our boys will compete in baseball games and national tournaments for L.E.A.D. wearing our signature red jersey and hat with a number on the back. However, the front of the jersey and their hat will be blank until our 2023-24 Ambassadors are announced in November.

At that time they will have worked to #EarnTheA.

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

9 skills you need to win at baseball—and life

July 26, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

I was recently in Jamaica for a vacation with my wife and two daughters. I was able to work out and read every day. I also was able to swim in the pool and/or the ocean every day.

As a child, I learned how to swim at the Adams Park Summer Camp byway of Atlanta Parks and Recreation. As an adult, I have not had much time to swim, but swimming in Jamaica made me feel like a kid again.

I have never used a float device until Jamaica. I had to laugh at myself because I have a hard time trusting people, and there I was trusting this float to keep me up. The float was longer than my 6-foot 2-inch body, but it couldn’t have weighed less than 5 pounds.

I saw other people floating, but I was trying to figure out how this thing was going to hold up my 235 pound body.

I finally got relaxed and I was able to enjoy it for over 15 minutes until my ADHD took over and I needed to do something more stimulating.

But while I was floating, I began to think about coaching. Coaches can be the ones who help a player get from one place to the other. Yet, there are some players who have too much weight for any float or coach to handle.

I have been coaching professionally for more than 25 years. I am a thought leader when it comes to sports-based youth development (SBYD), which is a theory and practice model for direct youth service.

According to CASEL, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process by which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

Some of the SEL capacities people need in order to live a good life as a citizen, but definitely required to be an elite baseball player include:

Contribution
Goal orientation
Positive identity
Self-confidence
Self-efficacy
Self-management
Social capital
Social connections
Social skills

I have coached hundreds of baseball players. Lots of them begin lacking most and sometimes all of these SEL capacities.

Angela Duckworth said it best, “Mindlessly ‘going through the motions’ without improvement can be its own form of suffering.”

Like trying to win at the game of life, baseball is a complex sport that requires strategy and skill. I define talent as what you do well, while skills are what you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.

May God bless those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn because in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the unskilled will suffer.

How good do you want to be in baseball? What support do you need that you don’t have that will help you be the best baseball player you can become?

Do you have mental, emotional and/or physical issues that make it difficult for you to be properly coached?

They are important questions to ask.

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

Finding what works—and how and when to use it

July 19, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

Noted author Alfie Kohn once said, “Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.”

I just love this quote. It is so timely since so many hitters are having tryouts now to make teams for the 2024 summer Travel Baseball season.

Excellence is one of the core values I live by. For me, excellence simply means to meet expectations. Since meeting expectations is so important to me, I have to ask questions of people who are expecting things from me so that I don’t get caught up doing things I am not supposed to do with people I am not supposed to do with.

Before hitters can train with me, they must start with a thorough two-hour assessment, which begins with me asking the questions that must be asked—or should ask questions (SAQs).

The questions include:

What is your purpose for being here today?
What is your short-term (one to five years) baseball goal?
What is your short-term (one to five years) life goal?
How does your family define success?
What’s one thing your family needs to stop doing to help you be successful, according to your family definition of success?
How will you handle an assessment from me that you do not agree with?

After I get their answers, we move to a visual assessment followed by a physical swing assessment.

When the auditory, visual and physical assessment is complete, I determine my mental and emotional capacity to coach them.

My time is more important than money and being excellent is a vital part of my legacy.

During my 26 years of being a professional baseball hitting coach, I have had several hitters—some as young as 5—expect me to help them become collegiate hitters. And we have accomplished it. I have had hitters as young as 10 expect me to help them become Major Leaguers—and we have done that, too.

Carol Ann Tomlinson once said that “assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instruction. Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.”

Social media is full of how-to baseball drills. I view and love lots of them. Often, I see viral hitting drills I started doing in the early 2000s.

For me, recognizing the root cause of the problem is important. It is the reason we do a drill. When to do it supersedes how to do it.

It is like taking medicine. You shouldn’t use eye drops to help you with a headache just because your eyes are in your head.

This is important because so many hitters and their parents fall in love with drills because it worked for someone else. What works for Ronald Acuña and Peter Alonso may not work for you because of different learning styles, aptitude, mental, emotional and physical strength.

Before starting hitting drills, answer these questions for yourself:

Why am I playing baseball?
What problem am I having as a hitter?
Is it mental, physical or both?
What drill do I need to do to fix my swing?
Why am I doing this drill?
When do I need to start doing the drill?
When do I need to stop doing it?
How do I do it?

Make a commitment to yourself this fall to try new things to see what works and what doesn’t. You owe it to yourself. And don’t get caught up in comparing yourself to others because there is no comparison between the sun and the moon. They shine when it is their time.

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

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