Overachieving Tampa Bay Rays Show How Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Practice makes perfect, right? Not so fast. I think the more accurate version of that truism is that perfect practice makes perfect, and the Tampa Bay Rays offer living proof of this maxim every time they warm up before a game.

We’re in the dog days of summer when people are vacationing and sports viewership is generally down, except for those of us seeking to beat the summer heat by reaching for the clicker to go to the MLB Network. Your faithful scribe finds himself doing this regularly, especially when the Rays are playing. I have an unusually strong interest in the team because I’m often fascinated by why Tampa Bay is so good.

The Rays occupy one of, if not the, smallest markets in baseball and even all of sport. They also have one of, if not the, smallest payrolls in baseball. And yet they are the second-place team in the powerful American League East and boast the third best record in all of Major League Baseball. They are, again, making a very strong run towards the playoffs.

I’ve always been a big believer that greatness comes from doing the little things well, so I hoped to be able to spot those things during the game. It didn’t take long during the two games I watched this week. During the pre-game warmup, their opponents followed a predicable routine. Players sauntered out to their positions and, eventually, one of the coaches began to hit balls to them. I’ve seen the drill ten thousand times: the coach hits the ball a few feet in front of the player, who scoops it up easily and flicks it effortlessly to first base.

I didn’t use to think much about this until I noticed that when it was the Ray’s turn to get in some field practice, the entire energy level on the field soared. The players stretched and jumped and did short runs. And when the time came to shag balls hit by the coach, they weren’t the cans of corn the opposing players had to contend with. No, these were rockets hit almost at game speed several feet to the right or left of the players who had to react at game speed to catch them. Their passes to first were crisp and cracked in the fielder’s glove with a purpose you could feel in your living room. That’s when I saw why little Tampa Bay is challenging the big market teams this year.

In baseball games, you can’t expect hitters to serve you up nicely catchable hits designed to help you get find your rhythm. But you can expect them to blast balls that are just out of reach and require you to lunge for them. As you think about mentally preparing yourself for your next meeting, call, report, analysis, coaching session or what have you, do so with the kind of focus and energy you would have if the game had already started. The reason for doing this is obvious: we all benefit from adrenalin. It makes us sharper, stronger and more focused. The sooner we channel our adrenalin to the task at hand, the faster we get out of the gate.

Watching the Rays beat Detroit 10-6 on Sunday and continuing to warmup like it mattered in a 5-2 losing effort against the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday called me back to a lesson learned from my friend, Brigadier General (USA Ret.) Bernard Banks. His well-known and often-cited motto, “success favors the prepared,” influenced a generation of servicemen and servicewomen and continues to influence the students he mentors at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

In the early 2000s, Banks was brought in to improve an Apache Helicopter unit ranking in the bottom third globally among Apache Helicopter organizations. Under Banks' leadership, the same group was designated number one in the world in only two years. How did he lead such a swift turnaround?

“Practice,” said Banks. “Lots of practice.”

But Banks went beyond getting his team to practice more — they went from doing quarterly to monthly training runs — he also got them to practice better by simulating the kinds of challenges they would face in real combat scenarios. In other words, amid the usual pushback that attends change of any significance in many organizations, he got them used to practicing at game speed.

With this in mind, I thought Detroit manager A. J. Hinch said more than he knew when he commented after his loss, “We were chasing the game right from the start. I liked the way we fought to the end, but we made too many mistakes to be encouraged.”

Finishing strong is always a plus, but the best way to get in front of the game so you never have to chase it is to use your warmup not to get limber but to get hot.