Heads-Up Baseball 2.0: 5 Skills for Competing One Pitch at a Time

by Ken Ravizza, Tom Hanson

Who Else Wants a Competitive Edge? "This book teaches the mental skills you need to gain a competitive edge." -- Joe Maddon, Manager, Chicago Cubs Join over 145,000 players and coaches, from World Series Champions to youth levels, who have found that playing Heads-Up Baseball helps them overcome the failure, frustration and fear the game throws at you each day, and instead play with confidence, consistency and composure under pressure. Talent, strength and great mechanics don't matter if you can't compete in games. Developed by working with elite players and coaches over the past 40 years, the strategies and tools in this book (an "upgrade" to the classic 1994 edition) arm you with the approach you need to find out how good you can be at baseball.

Genres: Sports, Baseball

464 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 10, 2017

Reviews

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Giving 100% of what you got to win the next pitch.” This book does a good job showing the mental skills needed to win. I like that the authors, Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson, display different techniques showing how to compete. However, I don’t like how repetitive the book is. I like the visual aspect of the book and the quotes from Major League Baseball players. Lastly, I like that athletes can relate to the book; I like that the book talks about overcoming challenges, mental blocks, or other things like injuries. Overall I like this book and the lessons it teaches.

[John Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had great thoughts on the mental game. They have tips on how to improve your mental game that I have found very helpful to practice. This book has many ideas that coaches talk about but, it goes into more detail and it is easier to understand. They had a lot of ideas that I have heard before but never truly understood. This book even can be used for life. For example you can ask questions about why you play the game? You can use this for anything when you are getting stressed about anything. You don't have to be a baseball player to listen to the advice given in the book. This book can even teach coaches on how to teach the mental game. This book contains a lot of information that is very hard to explain and sometimes ignored. I suggest any high school baseball player read this book because it will make you a better player in spot that high school players usually lack in. This book won’t improve your skill but will improve your results on the field and make you more positive when you are playing. When you are having a bad game listening to this advice is very helpful.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish I knew about 1.0 ~20 some years ago while I was still playing ball!!! I think I had a decent grasp of the head game to be green more often than not while pitching but was the BP slugger that couldn't touch anything in games. I would think about the pitch selection so much at the plate that I barely swung even if I knew what was coming. Eventually I lost confidence in my swing outside of practice and never had any idea how to get it back.

My experience with ball eventually led me to get a masters in sport psych and I can't recommend this enough

[James Millikan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real page turner, with just the right blend of theory and practical examples from big league players and coaches. It's geared towards baseball, but the lessons are widely applicable to other sports as well. The book became a little repetitive and lost steam in the later chapters so I dropped my rating from five to four stars, but this is still a very good read. Recommended.

[Mark Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every baseball player has been told to "compete one pitch at a time." As Brian Cain says, "the past is history; the future a mystery." The only pitch that the player influences is the next pitch. Many players, however, lose their focus on the next pitch because they are thinking about something that happened earlier in the game, or off-field issues, or about what they're going to do after the game. Players find it hard to live the "one pitch at a time" mantra. Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson's goal in writing Heads-Up Baseball 2.0 is to provide players with techniques that can help them to "give 100% of what you've got to win the next pitch".

This book is a cousin of H.A. Dorfman's outstanding The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance. Dorfman's book, however, can be a hard slog, especially for a youth player. In contrast, Heads-Up Baseball is written to be accessible to middle-schoolers. Dorfman discussed a broad spectrum of mental considerations; everything from goal-setting to visualization to dealing with pain. Ravizza and Hanson are laser-focused on competing from pitch to pitch. The entire book is written with the objective of helping the player to make the most of their skills in the moment, rather than on improving those skills over time.

The guidance given is sound and sometimes more profound than it appears. "Your Career = TODAY + TODAY + TODAY + TODAY and TODAY = NOW + NOW + NOW + NOW" is not, perhaps, mathematically sound -- but it sure does make the point that success is about making the most of the present moment. The book is filled with quotes from players, managers, and coaches that lend credence to the approach espoused by Ravizza and Hanson.

Unfortunately, some parts of the book are unnecessarily repetitive. There are chapters on hitting, pitching, and fielding -- and each appears almost to have been generated, MadLibs-style, from a template. "Step off the rubber" is replaced with "Step out of the box"; the same "Control -> Commit -> Compete" cycle is repeated almost verbatim. Even within a given chapter the same ideas are often stated, restated, summarized, and restated once more, just for good measure.

Overall, however, Heads-Up Baseball 2.0 is a worthwhile investment for any player, especially those who perform better in practice than in games.