Chicago White Sox

Do your discernment abilities pass the test?

April 6, 2022 by C.J. Stewart

April is my birth month. I remember as a kid that it would rain a lot in April. Thus the phrase, “April Showers.” For this April, I hope it rains down things on you, including the following:

Discernment
Grit
Focus
Self-efficacy

For this week’s blog, I want to focus on discernment. Stay tuned for the next three topics over the next three weeks.

Discernment is the ability to judge well. Discernment happens to be one of my Spiritual Gifts, which has been granted to me to serve God for the common benefit of his people and the church.

I am imperfect and life is complex, so discernment allows me to know what I should and should not do. It allows me to be an effective coach.

I regularly think about the process of being drafted twice by the Chicago Cubs, and how God was with me every step of the way—guiding me through discernment.

Playing for the Cubs was my childhood dream. I watched them play a lot on television in the early 80s during the summer time when I would stay at my grandparent’s house in Atlanta while my parents were at work.

At school, when teachers asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say I wanted to be a Chicago Cub.

I maintained that conviction as a freshman at Westlake High School. Community coach and advocate, the late T.J. Wilson helped make it happen. He landed me an invitation to work out for the Cubs in my high freshman year.

Subsequently, I continued to work out with the Cubs my sophomore through senior year of high school, developing a strong relationship with them.

Along the way, I received good coaching for life on and off the field from my high school coach, Dave Whitfield, and my Travel Ball coach, Derek Stafford.

It was discernment that allowed these men to believe in me. They advocated for me despite a lot of the character flaws I had as a teenager.

How is your judgment when it comes to choosing coaches to lead you?
What’s more important to you, winning games or being well coached?
Why is it important to have Spiritual Gifts?

Remember: Intelligence tops being smart.

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.

Why respect is better than being popular — and why that should matter to you

March 30, 2022 by C.J. Stewart

According to Wikipedia, respect—also called esteem—is a positive feeling or action shown toward someone or something considered important, or held in high esteem or regard. It conveys a sense of admiration for good or valuable qualities.

Is respect earned or should it be automatically given to people when you first meet them? Should being disrespected cause you in turn to be disrespectful toward others?

As a young baseball coach, I oftentimes was very disrespectful toward my players and their parents. My coaching strategy was to use fear to get my players and parents to do what I wanted them to do so that we could win games.

In most cases, it worked and we won a lot of games. But in all cases, I was not respected.

There are millions of boys who aspire to play Major League Baseball for the fame, fortune, and or fulfillment of purpose. Trying to accomplish that goal can expose the bad sides of people because it is a competitive process to be among the best in baseball.

As Babe Didrikson Zaharia once said, “If you win through bad sportsmanship that’s no real victory.”

Respect is such an important part of achieving personal goals, winning baseball games and winning at the game of life because respect leads to trust. And when people can trust you, they will advocate for you.

Coaching is one thing and advocacy is another I would argue supersedes coaching. Because what good is good coaching if you don’t have the right person saying the right things about you to the right person at the right time.

And what good can be said about or do for a person that is disrespectful.

Listen to the good doctor, aka, Julius “Dr. J.” Erving: “I firmly believe that respect is a lot more important, and a lot greater, than popularity.”

Remember: Intelligence tops being smart.

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

Why making loyalty part of who you are is important

March 23, 2022 by C.J. Stewart

We continue to march on in the month of March. That said, here are your marching orders for the previous weeks. We will end the month discussing the power of being respectful.

I define loyalty as doing the right thing even when it is not popular. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of loyalty when it comes to baseball—starting at the rec league level all the way to the Majors.

Loyal people are trustworthy. When someone is trustworthy, it is much easier to partner with them in an effort to accomplish goals. In my moments of not being loyal, it often is as a result of me not being confident in my ability combined with laziness.

Lack of confidence can deplete work ethic causing you to want to take the easy route.

There are some baseball teams that have a losing record, but are led by a quality coach. A “winning-is-everything” mentality can cause some people to leave a good thing to experience what seems to be a better thing, only to miss an opportunity to improve their character.

Your character is how you act.

How do you act when the going gets tough?
Do you stay and get going on the field?
Do you get into another situation?

I am all for making sure I am in the right place to be successful, but I have to also remind myself that everywhere that I go, there I am. So, if I am a toxic person, I will be toxic everywhere I go.

Loyalty starts with me being loyal to myself. That’s why I continue to work with a therapist to keep me from being toxic.

How about you? Are you toxic? Are you loyal to you?

As Charles F. Glassman once said, “The most effective pill we can swallow for overall health and vitality is self-honesty.”

Remember: Loyal people are trustworthy and when someone is trustworthy, it is much easier to partner with them in an effort to accomplish goals.

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

Why being agile is the key to staying the course

March 16, 2022 by C.J. Stewart

Dreaming of the Big Leagues. That’s C.J. Stewart in the back, second from the left.

One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou, who said, “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

There are five weeks in March, so here are your weekly marching orders if you want to be successful on and off the baseball field.

Be honest
Be courageous
Be agile
Be loyal
Be respectful

This week’s focus is being agile. Being agile is being able to move quickly and easily. Consider your most recent night and/or daydream. As a child, I dreamed of playing professional baseball with the Chicago Cubs.

In 1984, I was eight years old. The Cubs won the National League East Division. I watched a lot of their games that summer while living in Atlanta. I would watch the game and then go outside to practice in the Hotlanta weather by hitting rocks with a stick and working on my pitching accuracy by throwing rocks at trees.

I had my first workout with the Cubs when I was 14 thanks to my mentor, the late T.J. Wilson. I was drafted by the Cubs at age 18 while I was a senior at Westlake High School. Instead of signing, I attended Georgia State University as a student-athlete (baseball).

Due to a lack of commitment and discipline, I was academically ineligible at the end of the season and transferred to Dekalb College where I experienced the same fate.

Everyone you go, there you are.

I was drafted again by the Cubs in 1996 and this time I signed only to play two years because of a lack of discipline and commitment. I define commitment as making and keeping a promise starting first with yourself. Discipline is doing things you need to do even when you don’t want to do them.

Because I lacked the strong character traits I needed in order to be agile early on in life, I experienced a lot of heartache and disappointments.

For the 20-plus years since my professional baseball playing days ended, I have been regarded among the top professional hitting coaches in America. That is largely due to my commitment and discipline.

Commit and discipline yourself to being agile so that you can win at the game of life.

As Redd Foxx once said, “Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid.”

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

Why you shouldn’t fear fear

March 9, 2022 by C.J. Stewart

As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Courage is a noun. A noun is a word used to describe a person, place or thing. Courage is a thing. So is fear. When I feel fear, I remind myself to respond with courage. Oftentimes, the fear I feel is rooted in my not wanting to fail. That’s why I have begun to look at failure as learning rather than losing.

Brittany Carr wrote a book titled, “F.E.A.R.” The acronym stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. On my first high school, collegiate and professional at-bats, I remember feeling fear. For a brief moment in the dugout before each of the monumental at-bats for me, I had to remind myself that I have earned the right to be here.

I had to quickly respond with courage in spite of my fear in order to get through the at-bat.

When each of them were over, I had a sigh of relief realizing it was not as bad as I thought it would be. In my future at-bats in high school, college and the pros, while I felt fear, I reminded myself of how I overcame that first at-bat to get me through future at-bats.

Our confidence in our courage grows as a result of us using it.

Fear is a real thing. So is courage. Choose courage when you feel fear so that you can experience success.

This reminds of Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron and Martin Luther King, Jr., three men who were faced with fear and built up courage muscles so they could keep stepping up to the plate.

How do you handle fear?
Do you experience fear when it is your time to step up to the plate during a close game?
Do you fear rejection from college coaches and professional scouts?

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

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