RECAP PART 1:
“There I was, the fierce competitor who minutes earlier imagined himself as David preparing to slay Goliath, now reduced to climbing through the bleachers to retrieve the glove I had just thrown in a tantrum. Humiliation has a funny way of making lessons stick. I thought that was the end of my humiliation.

It wasn’t.”

THE PART I DIDN'T KNOW YET

After the game, I went through my normal routine. I iced my arm. I stretched. I tried to put the whole miserable afternoon behind me. Then I noticed something. A dull, gnawing pain deep in my shoulder. Not the normal soreness after pitching.

Something was wrong. Eventually, the diagnosis came back: A micro-tear of my subscapularis. My season was over.

That fall, instead of starting baseball, I started physical therapy. Think about that sequence.

Minutes earlier, I had acted as though giving up that home run was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.

I blamed my catcher. I untucked my jersey. I threw my hands into the air. I dropped the baseball, making Coach King pick it up. I launched my glove into the stands. That didn’t work either, landing at her feet.

I made certain everybody in the ballpark knew how devastated I was over one pitch. And I didn't even know yet that I had just thrown my last pitch of the season. That realization has stayed with me for nearly four decades.

We rarely know, in the moment, how big the moment is.

I treated a home run like a catastrophe. Then an actual setback arrived quietly. No crowd reaction. No screaming coach. No baseball disappearing into the night. Just a dull ache in my shoulder. One moment required maturity. The other revealed how little of it I had.

I DIDN'T HAVE TO SAY A WORD

That's what I understand differently today. I hadn't dropped a string of F-bombs on my teammates. I hadn't delivered some profanity-filled tirade. In fact, I really hadn't said very much at all. I didn't need to. My body had already given the speech.

Blaming my catcher. Untucking my jersey. Throwing my hands into the air. Dropping the baseball instead of handing it to my coach. Throwing my glove. Walking away. Every movement communicated something.

This isn't my fault. I'm angry. I'm embarrassed. Someone else is responsible. Look at me.

I had just pitched a pretty darn good baseball game against a very good team.

Nobody cared anymore. My body language became the story.

Imagine if college coaches or professional scouts had been sitting in those stands.

What would they have written down? Not my ERA. Not the movement on my slider.

Not that I had competed deep into a game against a talented lineup. They would have written down something much more important: he is a tantrum-throwing cancer in team chemistry.  How I responded when things went wrong. And that's why body language belongs in our coaching curriculum.

THERE ARE WAYS TO COACH IT!

COACH THE RESPONSE, NOT JUST THE RESULT.

We coach the swing. The route. The shot. The throw. The pitch. Start coaching what happens after the mistake. Give athletes a reset routine.

Error? Pick up the glove. One breath. Find the next assignment.
Strikeout? Helmet away correctly. Eyes up. Rejoin the team.

Bad call? No eye roll. No hands thrown into the air. Reset.

Don't simply tell athletes what not to do. Teach them the replacement behavior. In sports, it is called “having a short memory.”  Coach Ted Lasso from the sports soccer series declared that the happiest animal in the world is a goldfish.  Why? Because the goldfish has a ten-second memory. At least to Coach Lasso.

TURN THE SOUND OFF.

Athletes often have no idea what they look like. Neither do coaches. Use game film for more than mechanics. Occasionally, turn the sound completely off. Watch what happens after an error. After a substitution. After a teammate makes a mistake. After an official makes a bad call. After you're winning. And especially after you're losing.

Then ask one question: "If we couldn't hear anything, what would our team be saying?"

That could be one heck of a film session!

I was hired to work with a coach developing a team culture. The hard part was telling them they were the problem to start with. Why? Their actions, words, and nonverbals would/could never be tolerated by them or their players.  The coach had never seen or heard themselves.

“Next game,” I paused for dramatic effect. “Coach don’t film the game. Film you, your staff, and your team,” I said. They agreed to the filming.  And they agreed to wear a lavalier mic to record their words during coaching. After the game, they had forgotten that we had filmed (and recorded).  The film made them mortified.  That took care of the coaches' “lead as I say” hypocrisy.

COACHES: REMEMBER WHO IS WATCHING YOU.

I must tell you, the coach nearly changed overnight.  Long after I was gone, they self-imposed a “Coaches Fine Account.”  Cash for a tantrum. Cash for profanity. They realized that this lesson isn't just for athletes. Your players watch what you do after an error. They see your face after a bad call. They notice the eye roll. The crossed arms. The disgusted turn toward the bench. The clipboard slammed onto the chair.

You may tell an athlete: "Next play." But if every part of your body is screaming:

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST DID THAT!" Guess which messages the kid hears?

The body usually wins. Our job isn't to eliminate emotion. It's to learn how to manage it.

THE LOUDEST EMOTION

We don't want coaches and athletes to become robots. If you strike out with the bases loaded, be disappointed. If you make an error, be frustrated. If you hit the first home run of your life, for goodness' sake, celebrate it. Emotion is one of the beautiful parts of sports.

The lesson is learning the difference between having an emotion and surrendering control to it.

In the summer of 1989, I hadn't learned that yet. Coach King didn't need a 30-minute lecture to teach me. He needed two sentences.

"Harp, you don't throw tantrums on my team."

"Now go into the stands and get your mitt."

And life added one more lesson a few hours later. The glove came back. The season didn't.

Thirty-seven years later, I can still see that baseball leaving LaRue Baber's bat. I can still see my glove sitting at Aimee's feet. And I can still remember that dull ache in my shoulder.

That's part of why I have spent so much of my adult life coaching coaches and athletes.

I'm trying to put a roadblock in front of them before they barrel down that road called:

OUT OF CONTROL.

I don't teach this because I mastered it. I teach it because I've traveled it. Your shoulders talk. Your eyes talk. Your hands talk. Your walk back to the dugout talks. The way you hand, or don't hand, the baseball to your coach talks.

And occasionally... the glove flying over the dugout talks loudly too. It screamed to my pops and to his high school buddy, “Harper is a punk.” It screamed to my mom, “Oh Jason!”  And I am sure it screamed something to Aimee.

Coaches, teach it.
Athletes, own it.

Because long after people forget the mistake you made, they may remember how you carried yourself after making it. Your body is always talking.

Make sure it's saying something you're proud of.