The Baseball Observer - Mental Skills Issue
SIMPLEXITY AND BASEBALL: KEEPING THE GAME SIMPLE, WITHIN ITS COMPLEXITY
As a baseball coach, you have, no doubt, heard phrases about baseball being a basic game, even though it can be considered as being complex in nature and scope, and not easily mastered by players. In this regard, perhaps you have heard coaches use some of the following phrases, and you also may have used some of them with your players:
• “Keep the game simple”
• “Don’t make things hard on yourself”
• “Just stay in the moment”
• “Don’t worry what others say and think”
• “It is only a game”
• “Relax”
• “Don’t get caught up in the hype”
• “Just play”
Coaching baseball and participating in it as a player reflects many dimensions: The task of playing the game can be perceived as being easy and hard at the same time; success and failure during the same at bat or during the same inning are common occurrences.
Indeed, baseball is enjoyable and frustrating, simple, yet complex, all at the same time.
In order to make sense of these baseball realities and to assist coaches in keeping things in proper perspectives for their players and themselves, I would like to introduce a term from outside of sport that may be helpful in working with players.
The term is simplexity. This term may very well provide a useful perspective for those who coach as well as those who support baseball players, such as athletic trainers and mental skills coaches.
Simplexity and Baseball
Simplexity is a term that may have relevance for you in your coaching of individual players and for the development of your teams. This term--- simplexity--- was coined by a consultant, Anuraj Gambhir, for use in the telecommunications industry.
In essence, simplexity has to do with the process where human beings strive toward simple ends but often by complex means and in complex settings; where the complex and the simple interact. This balance of the simple or basic with the complex certainly is applicable to baseball.
I have used the notion of simplexity in my professional work with players and coaches, in order to assist them in making sense of the simplicity and complexity of playing the game.
In one sense, this interaction of the simple with the complex is what baseball is all about.
Basically, simplexity is a combination of the words, simplicity and complexity. The term recognizes that the simple and the complex occur in a dynamic relationship with one another. The simple and the complex occur before the game when getting ready to compete; during the game, pitch to pitch; after the game when evaluating performance; and at other times away from the ballpark.
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