From Mike Stud to Pitching Ninja to Driveline Baseball: A Journey of Self Discovery
"I made a couple dreams out of bad breaks" -- Mike Stud, Shine
"It's fitting that life threw me a curveball, Pops told me to work til you make it man, then work more" -- Mike Stud, Closer
"Momma called said remember why you started, Pops taught me when shit gets hard to just go harder" -- Mike Stud, Real Friends
"Ya Neva Know, Ya Know?" -- Mike Stud
This may sound cheesy, but I love using lyrics as inspiration. I mean how often do you listen to music while working out? All the time. So it makes sense to include songs that make you want to work even harder. For me, I found myself listening to Mike Stud more often than not. That's where my journey began.
First off, if you don't know who Mike Stud is, here is a little bit about him. Born Michael Seander, he was a standout pitcher and hitter in Rhode Island during high school. He had so much success that he was named that state's Gatorade Player of the Year and went on to play at Duke. During his freshman year at Duke he was earned Freshman All-American honors and served as the teams closer. He compiled 9 saves and 1.61 ERA that year. Shortly after his stellar freshman season disaster struck. Arm troubles and eventually a Tommy John surgery later, he was forced to hang up his cleats. During rehab and recovery, Mike Stud was born. Making music as a joke and to pass time, it turned into more than just a hobby. He now has four studio albums and multiple mixtapes released as a independent artist. His story alone is an inspiration and one of the reasons I started following and listening to him.
This isn't a story about Mike Stud though. This is a story about my journey to fight through depression and find the passion I wanted to dedicate my life to. Mike Stud is just where it starts.
At Duke, Mike Stud had Marcus Stroman as his teammate for a short time. During their time there they became great friends. So on Stud's third studio album, Stroman raps a verse on the remix of "These Days". It took me more time then I am willing to admit to realize it was the (then) Toronto Blue Jays pitcher. Easy to say it made me like Mike Stud even more. I put that album and all his other music on repeat. During that time though, I was battling depression and learning that I was bi-polar. Finding inspirational lyrics in his music was what kept me going.
When I finally could admit to myself I was depressed, not happy, and needing to change for the better, I had to make a leap of faith. I had a great paying job with amazing benefits, but I worked 50-55 hours a week at something I didn't really like. I had early mornings that sometimes ran into the evening. At one point I thought this job was my future, but it was now contributing to my depression as it always had me stressed out. I was killing myself for a job that wasn't my passion. It was just that, a job. Not a career.
So I took my leap of faith and applied to go to school at Montana State University-Billings. I lived in Bozeman at the time where the main MSU campus is located, but I needed to get out of town. If I stayed in Bozeman, I could theoretically stay within the company I was working for, but in a different position. This could leave me with a fall back plan and I was going all in.
With a major of Secondary Math Education and a coaching minor, I was on my way to Billings. At this time I thought I had a handle on my depression and bi-polar and was ready to take college on. Little did I know, heading somewhere where I knew no one was going to make things harder. Self-conscious because I was older than everyone, not knowing where to fit in, or how to really make friends; I started to feel like an outcast. When I wasn't working, I spent most days in my dorm alone. Sometimes it was a struggle just to get myself to class. Luckily, I only failed one class while I was out there, but I know my grades definitely could have been better.
During this miserable time at Billings, a couple of things happened that kept me going. They both go back to Mike Stud. First, Stud released a new single called "Shine", with the opening verse done by who else, but Marcus Stroman. I instantly fell in love with it. If you were an athlete at some point in your life, this song can't help but fire you up. So because of this song I decided to give Stro Show a follow on Twitter. This is when I started using Twitter a little more. That also lead me to the next thing, finding a tweet by Mike Stud: "We're allowed to have bad days, months, even years. Don't allow that to define you. Have trust in the PROCESS." I had this made into a poster I still have to this day. It hangs up in my office as I write this. It helped keep me going and push through, knowing Billings was temporary. Little did I know, those couple things on Twitter would help guide me to the path I was destined for. I hadn't beaten my depression, but I was starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Next fall I stayed in Bozeman and attended school here. Things were looking up. It was hard to be depressed during the summer when the weather is nice and I can play baseball. So here I went again, back to school thinking I was good to go. Once I hit a snag though, it all came crashing down. I somehow missed a chapter between Calculus I and II when I transferred. That sent me into an anxiety spin, I am honestly not sure how long it lasted. What I do remember freaking out during my Physics lab because of an anxiety attack I was having relating to a Calculus exam I had to take. I chose a math major because I was always one of the best in the class and I had finally hit the point where I wasn't. I felt like I was out in right field and we were playing basketball. Nothing made sense.
So I dropped my Calculus II class. Anxiety started to lift, but I had to take this class at some point though. I was also struggling with Physics, and I was going to need to take Physics II for this degree. This is another subject I was good at yet nothing was making sense at the time. During this stressful time, I was starting to come to terms that this, like my former job, wasn't the major for me. I felt like a failure. I was 25 at the time and thought I had really screwed up. It was time to self evaluate and figure out to go from here.
While all of this was going on in my head, I started scrolling through Twitter more and more. I kept seeing the retweets from Stroman from this guy called "Pitching Ninja". Boy, did I fall in love with this Twitter account. He was posting videos of pitchers' pitches into short GIF form, highlighting the ridiculousness of what MLB pitchers are capable of throwing. This definitely increased the amount of time I spent on Twitter and starting looking up to Pitching Ninja. So when I had to self evaluate and figure out where to go, the answer became clear: Baseball.
Now, I fell in love with baseball at a young age, but as I got older I was told to be more realistic about what "I want to be when I grow up". So when it came time, I started working instead of playing college baseball. That's okay though, I wanted to make money instead of spending it on school. Everything since then has been calling me back to the game, though. I played adult league baseball in Montana where my arm felt good and I dominated. When I first made the decision to go back to school, I chose my math education major so I could not only teach high school, but more importantly coach baseball. I thought that was the only way to be able to coach. Become a teacher and coach at the school that hired me. Pitching Ninja was showing me there was a different path and way to go about things. So I started looking into Kinesiology and Exercise Science majors because I figured out what it was that I wanted to do. I was going to combine being a pitching coach with strength & conditioning and Personal/Athletic training. I thought I was being a trailblazer, no one is doing this. Then Pitching Ninja retweeted something from a company in Kent, Wa. That company was Driveline Baseball.
I can't remember the exact tweet and it did take a few of them before I started following Driveline, but once I did, it wasn't long before my pitching coach/trainer idea grew even more. Here was a company that wasn't just training the athletes in the weight room and on the mound, they were redefining the whole process. This was about 100 steps ahead of where I was, but they gave me an outline to follow. Not only was there an outline, they were a resource to study and provided research on the best ways to train. I always had a fear as a coach I was leading someone astray because I was just repeating things I have been told. I wanted to know I was teaching the right methods. Driveline shares this philosophy with me as they believe in testing everything before implementing it. This is possible because beyond the training floor they have their own Research & Development department. This place had everything I dreamed to have one day.
I followed Driveline, the founder Kyle Boddy, and a number of other Driveline employees. I started reading as much as possible; their blogs, research articles, and even their tweets had valuable information. I learned more in a short amount of time then I did my entire life. I was even looking beyond Driveline as that opened the door to so much more information. My vision of what I wanted to do with baseball and my Kinesiology degree was becoming more clear than ever.
When I reached the next fall and was deemed ineligible to play club baseball because of my age, I decided to start applying everything I had been learning. I was now the volunteer pitching coach for MSU after serving as their closer the year before. It's tough being told you're not allowed to play, but I took this new challenge in stride. By this time, I had acquired a few different pieces of Driveline equipment; Plyo Balls, weighted balls, wrist weights, and J-bands. So I started scheduling throwing days for the pitching staff where we could make use of the equipment. Since this is club baseball, getting super committed players is difficult. Luckily, I had two kids who were willing to put in the work. That allowed me to start to get an idea of how to program the weight room and throwing programs. One kid went from 67-69 MPH to 72-73 MPH. I might have been more excited than the kid when I saw this. I had some proof I wasn't crazy and had an idea of what I was doing.
The season wasn't super successful, but we had a young staff. There were also quite a bit of up and downs when it came to practices and weather. To me though, this was all promising, but everyone had to leave for the summer. They were on their own for summer development, and so was I. My development, though, was to learn more and become a better coach. One way to do this (besides reading, which I was already doing) was to start writing. This would allow me to work on my communication skills, and reassert what I know while also helping fellow coaches.
My first series of articles were about radar guns; how they work, common mistakes and errors, and a validation experiment. This stemmed from on going questions I kept seeing on Twitter. Since I had three different radar systems myself, I thought of this as a good challenge to start writing. I was also able to get a couple of Stalker radar guns loaned to me to help complete this experiment. While I was writing the series, I started to think about what other articles I could write. That's when I decided to document the whole assessment process I had been building for the MSU pitching staff, which you have also seen on this site.