An online commonplace book
Be humble. This is a hard game. The players who succeed are the ones who learn from their failures and then toss them aside. Don’t dwell. Move on. Focus on the next play.
– Señor Molina
Señor Molina’s final lesson is the mental one. What game embodies failure more than baseball?
Life?
Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan, Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). pg 21,22
Watch it all the way into the glove. Play the ball—don’t let the ball play you. Bend! Put your glove in the dirt. Stay low. Set your feet.
Señor Molina’s final skill lesson. Curious he waited till the very end to teach fielding.
Stateside kids are fielding grounders from day one. But like Bengie said, Señor Molina had a program for teaching them baseball.
Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan, Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). pg 21
Rest your glove on your chest. Pick a spot on your catcher. Leg high. Push off. Throw it hard. Down the middle of the plate. Right into the glove. Throw strikes. Keep it simple.
Often Señor Molina’s advice was keep it simple.
Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan, Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). pg 21
9 tips from the evergreen, baseball super mensch, Coach Ballgame. I added the Sandlot bit to number three.
Every sport should have a Coach Ballgame.
Baseball is so back!
coachballgame. “9 tips for Opening Day”. Instagram, 27 Mar. 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DHtVb3HpBhq/?img_index=10&igsh=MTNzcDltZHhzZTY2NQ%3D%3D. Accessed 28 Mar. 2025.
After Cheo and I could catch the ball almost every time, he taught us how to stand in the batter’s box. Get balanced. Feet apart, knees bent nice and light. Lift your hands. Be ready to hit. See the ball, hit the ball. See it, hit it! C’mon!
We were ready to swing for the fences, the way we’d seen Pai and the other men do. No, he said. You learn first how to bunt.
He showed us how to hold the bat so the pitch wouldn’t hit our fingers. Here’s how you drop the bat to meet the ball.
Finally we got to swing.
Eyes on the ball. Let the ball come to you. Wait for it. See it. Then hit it hard somewhere. As hard as you can. Keep your hands on the bat. Keep your body straight, straight, straight. Okay, you’re turning away from the ball. A lot of players make that mistake.
One. Skill. At. A. Time.
You won’t see this hitting training progression on YouTube. Teaching bunting before hitting?
Never that. But Senor Molina was up to something special.
Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan, Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). pg 21
Pai had a system for teaching us baseball. He introduced one skill at a time, making sure we mastered it before moving on to the next. First, he taught us how to catch a ball. For days and weeks, we did nothing but play catch. Two hands. Get in front of the ball. He didn’t yell. He talked. He was loose and comfortable. He talked more in one afternoon on the baseball field than in a week at home.
These passages alone are worth the cover price.
Pai breaking down the complex game of baseball to one skill at a time. T
The Bengie Molina method reminds me of Jiro Dreams of Sushi – rice first. You master the rice first before moving on to the next skill.
Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan, Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). pg 20
“Good grief the bodies are piling up.”
“Good grief the bodies are piling up..” Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron. Directed by Kaku Arakawa, NHK, 2024.
(*translated from Japanese)
Best movie, documentary or otherwise I’ve watched this year. It lingers in the mind after each viewing.
There’s a Dante reference.
Miyazaki works at the same type of desk as the rest of his team.
COVID-19 is brisked over – Miyazaki kept working.
The field they keep next to the studio is for the neighborhood kids. It has an abandoned soccer goal on one end. At one point the grass finally grows in and Miyazaki overhears a group of kids playing sandlot baseball.
Realizing a dream doesn’t make the suffering go away. Miyazaki suffers over thousands of binned sketches.
The longer you live the more you experience the death of friends and colleagues.
This is inescapable.
Haddix felt clarity that day. He didn’t overthink things. He stuck with his fastball, mixed in his slider rarely, and pitched precisely where he was aiming. When Haddix later found out that the Braves were stealing signs, he shrugged. There was nothing they could do against him on that day.
– Joe Posnanski
Shota’s marvelous and underrated season ticks on.
Posnanski, Joe. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments. United States, Penguin Publishing Group, 2023. pg 131
“The easiest way to catch the knuckleball is to wait for it to stop rolling and then pick it up.”
– Bob Uecker
Further proof magic exists.
Posnanski, Joe. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments. United States, Penguin Publishing Group, 2023. pg 17, 18
Floodlights and Goalposts 