A while ago hanging out with my friends the topic turned to sports. A buddy of mine asked what the easiest sport to play at a professional level might be. Most of us agreed that it was probably baseball. I then suggested that if an average guy trained with weights and practiced 16 hours a day for a year straight that he could be as good, if not a slightly better ball player than the worst player on the worst team in the MLB. My buddies don’t seem to think that this is true though. What do you guys think?
Please set aside all notions of scouting and making your way up though the minors as I know that this is the only way to do it. I am only concerned with the talent aspect. Could this average joe become MLB worthy in a year? Also assume that he is familiar with baseball but never played in a league in high school or anything like that. Just a regular guy.
Absolutely impossible IMO. The hand-eye coordination needed to hit a baseball coming at you at 95 mph is something the “average Joe” doesn’t posess. Even bench warmers in the Major leagues are very good players. There are less than 800 people in the majors out of how many wannabes?
I would think bowling would be the easiest professional sport to join.
Start bowling for 12 hours a day(or doing bowling related training) for about a year or two. Hire an instructor. Get the best equipment. Enter tournaments.
You can probably make it. Just takes a lot of time.
Actually, there is clear evidence that this is not the case when you consider baseball’s farm system. The players drafted into the minor leagues are all damn good ballplayers at the high school or college level, much better than your average Joe. And once they are in the minor leagues, they pretty much play and practice all day for most of the year.
Even so, only a small number of them progress through the levels of the minor leagues to make the big leagues.
I’ve heard people say that hitting a pitched baseball is the toughest thing in sports. I’d believe it.
In any event, all of the players in major professional sports have started with an significant base of tallent and been playing and practicing for years before getting to the big leagues.
Imagine if it were. Compared to major league salaries, how little would a team have to pay to round up a hundred such prospects and put them through a year of training? The contracts on the ones not used could surely be sold for more than the cost of training.
This is, if not a common misconception, at least a fairly widely held one. Because baseball players look a lot like regular people in terms on height and weight, people think that the things they do can be done by anyone else of the same size, with enough training.
People see a John Kruk or a David Wells playing and think “It must not be that hard”, but it is, really. All Major Leaguers posess agility and coordination that the average Joe will never have and can’t learn. I have played against future Major Leaguers and everything about them, even at the college freshman level, was different. The sound the bat made when hitting the ball, the ease of delivery of a pitched ball, the “smack” the ball made when hitting a glove were all different. They had it, we didn’t.
I remember playing basketball in the summer in college with a bunch of other college athletes, and having to guard a guy who was an end of the bench guy on the college team, one of the lousier D1 schools in the country. He was 8 inches taller than most of the guys on the court, almost all of whom played HS basketball. He ran rings around everyone.
The difference in natural talent between the worst professional athlete and the “average Joe” is so much wider than people believe until you see it up close.
You could beef yourself up to be a decent power hitter in one year IF you were already given to hitting a baseball well and for power, sure.
HOWEVER:
fielding
throwing
running the bases
thinking through the situation
You’re ignoring all those aspects of the game. Could you possibly become a pinch-hitter in one year? Ignoring the farm system, the draft as well as the odds that a team would even need a pure power (at the expense of contact and good baserunning, not to mention the mental aspects of the game), maybe you’d have a shot.
But you’re ignoring far too many aspects here for it even to be realistically plausible.
I agree with the others here. Baseball is one of the hardest, not the easiest, sports to learn to play at the highest level. Hitting a baseball, as it traverses the hitting zone during its 3/100th of a second (or somesuch) in that zone is immensely difficult. Try a really good fast pitch batting cage for an example. Prepare for embarassment. And those aren’t even sliders or curves or whatnot.
Don’t even get me started on pitching. A part of the sport where a player actively injures himself while playing.
Keith Hernandez wrote a book that examines two major league games almost pitch by pitch. To say that there are a lot of head games going on between the battery and the batter is an understatement.
(For a pitcher): What is the standard book on this batter? How’s he doing lately? How’s he doing lately against pitchers like me? Which field is this? Is my infield injured today? What did I throw him last time? How’s my curveball working this inning? Are there runners on base? What’s the count? Etc.
This is an enormous part of being successful at that level. You have to adjust for every count, and then be able to hit a ~90 mph fastball that may have some additional motion on it. That’s if you’re looking for it, and the pitcher actually throws it. Good luck!
Basic economics blow this argument away. What’s the major league salary minimum? If the average guy could work his way to that spot within a year, why wouldn’t there be throngs of average guys doing so?
See if you can get ahold of Why Michael Couldn’t Hit: And Other Tales of the Neurology of Sports by Harold Klawans. It answers your exact question about Michael Jordan. Basically, besides having the necessary strength and conditioning, good eyesight, etc., there are certain neurological connections necessary for top performance in baseball and many other sports that, if they are not acquired as a young person cannot be developed by an adult. Some degree of effectiveness, yes, but true excellence, no. MJ had developed the necessary skills for one sport, but they were quite different from the ones needed for excellence in professional baseball.
Many athletes have conceded that hitting a round ball with a round bat, especially when the ball may or may not be travelling at 90+ MPH, is extraordinarily difficult. The top players, after all, manage to do so effectively only about one-third of the time. And that’s when getting several tries at it in every turn at bat.
Come on now! You guys make it sound like baseball players are supermen! I am talking purely about hitting ability. You’re telling me that an average joe practicing 16 hours a day for a full year couldn’t hit a measely .160? That’s a bloody 160 hits out of a thousand. I have been to the batting cages and hit a few balls at 90 MPH. Now I imagine if I trained for that full year I could hit anywhere from 160 to 200 out of a thousand. Easily enough to warrant a spot on the last place Detroit Tigers. Once again I must stress that I am talking about HITTING only. I know that running and feilding add all sorts of other problems.
Yes, that is exactly what we are all saying. You couldn’t do it.
A commercial batting cage doesn’t have a ball going anywhere near 90 mph. Too much liability. Most likely it’s under 80 mph. Anyone with some athletic talent can time a steady diet of fastballs. Mix in some curves, sliders, and 95+ at your earhole and get back to us.
I definitely agree with the rest of the posters, and don’t think there is any way in hell an average person off the street could become a major league baseball player. I don’t even think a random great athlete could make themself into a MLB player, much less within a year.
My main reasons for this opinion (whish have also been mentioned already):
Of all the players drafted, who are the best baseball prospects to be found, many don’t make the majors at all and very rarely does someone make it within a year.
If it really were that easy, at least someone would have done this before. The major league mimimum salary is like $300,000, someone somewhere would decide to go get that money if all it took was busting their ass for a year. The closest thing I can think of here would be Jim Morris who went from being a HS teacher/coach to pitching for the Devil Rays, but he was far from being an average guy. Morris had minor league experience and was still around baseball the whole time.
Although some players hide it well, most MLB players are incredibly talented. There may be a few guys without as much natural talent who built themselves up by working harder than the rest, but these guys did it for thier whole lives, not just a year.
I think at some point putting in more time working wouldn’t gain any additonal results. I don’t think practicing hitting for 16 hours a day would necessarily help someone more than practicing only 10 hours a day or less. At some point more practice simply wouldn’t help. MLB teams spend millions on player development, so I’d expect thier programs are pretty much as good as you can do to improve a player. If MLB players could be imporved more by just putting in more time, some players would be doing just that.
Upon preview:
To respond to that:
.160 wouldn’t come close to getting you a spot in the major leagues.
Hitting a 90 mph straight pitch from a machine in a cage isn’t even close to hitting major league pitching. These guys change speeds, their pitches move, they hit different spots, and they throw multiple different pitches. Not even close.
Based upon what I know, If you took 100 “average guys” and had them train for 16 hours a day for a year, they would be unlikely to hit .016, let alone .160.
Pitchers hit around .160, and most of them were the best athlete in their high school, if not their city.
So, if you were a manager, you’d rather take the unknown guy hitting .160 in the majors over the guy who’s hitting .265 on the AAA team? I know whom I would be inclined to try.
As previously stated, your example about the batting cages in completely inadequate. A real pitcher is changing pitches between perhaps four basic types (fastball, curve, slider, changeup), and maybe throwing 2 or 3 variations on the fastball. He’s also changing speeds on the fastball to throw off your timing, and changing location.
He’s got a very practiced brain, he’s working with the catcher (who’s seen you more often), and is able to play mind games with you and set you up for a strikeout or at least a batted ball that is popped up or hit weakly on the ground. He doesn’t really care which he gets. He has many options.
Wow, this is ridiculous! Just take a look at some of the stats. Some of the catchers in the league are batting like .045!!! This is talent?
I realize that the pitchers are not machines and won’t be throwing only straight fastballs. This is what the full year of training is for! Teaching the person to hit the different pitches.
I was only using the batting cages as an example to show you that real people, unlike your super gods the MLB players, can actually hit a 90 MPH fastball.
To respond to the person who asked “why if this is so easy, hasn’t someone done this before?”
I am not arguing that a person will become an amazing full fledged baseball player. Of course only being able to hit (and not well mind you, still pretty bad considering the whole league.) won’t get you onto a team!
I am merely suggesting that an average person, given a year to work with, can hit as well as the worst player on the worst team in the majors. On a whole, the average player wouldn’t be as well rounded as the MLB player.
So once again, I am not suggesting that a coach would draft the player or that the average joe would be a good fielder. THIS IS ONLY HITTING! Again, THIS IS ONLY HITTING!
365 days @ 16 hours a day (Training and lifting weights) = As good a hitter as the worst player on the worst team in the MLB. (Around .160)
