[Flasch186]

Aiden got taken to the proverbial woodshed last night in practice. He started to get down on himself on an infield drill and it became evident that the HC was going to try a new tactic with him...toughness. I like it. He had him doing push-ups every time he quit on a ball or half-assed something. He said, "Son, you're either going to give me all you got without negativity or quit half-assing it or you're going to have a bigger chest than me and stronger leg muscles from running poles."

At the plate during a live hitting session against one of the kids, he was tentative, no-load, and stepping out. Eventually striking out looking. He's still scared of being hit so he doesn't load and steps out because he's not committed to hitting. He sulked off to the dugout where he cried.

Then at BP after fieldwork, he was negative about himself and unwilling to give it his all without being challenged. The coach literally sat in his cage and if he didn't swing with everything he had on a swing he had to do 5 pushups. At the end of practice, he gave him another "come to Jesus" talk but this one less loving and more matter-of-fact.

At home, he tried the, "I'm not stepping out." talk so I showed him a video of his ABs and he couldn't argue it but admitted he's scared.

So with temporary fire lit, he asked me to go to the cages with him today after school/work and I'm going to hit him a few times with the ball since others have said that that needs to happen.

It sucks that he's put himself in this position of getting known as tentative and fearful and quitting when that was the opposite of what he was known for on the B team. Even the B team coach (who is a tougher master chief chap) has ventured to me that he can't understand what happened and why this is happening. I don't know either but it's a toxic mix of perfectionism, indescribable fear, and a lack of willingness to 'give up' to the coaching/training and try new things when it counts.

Another day hopefully something will snap free. I told him last night that this is a binary choice in Baseball. He's either going to figure this fear at the plate thing out or quit the game. In some sports there are things that happen rarely that you don't really have to worry about happening but in baseball, you're going to see pitches...every AB. So he's either going to work on this, hard, or he's going to have to truly consider picking up a different sport.