WEEKLY MOTIVATIONAL PIECE

Greetings!

“Your existence has many doors, and each serves a purpose that ultimately helps define who you are. Sometimes it is hard to open these doors. Often you would think it just won’t work. It takes patience and perseverance, but you must believe that you already have every key for each door you encounter” – stated by an unknown author.

Take Marco Scutaro as another example for perseverance. Here is a player that was tucked away in the minor leagues for seven years searching for a break and wondering if it will ever come. He’s been traded three times during his 11-year Major League Baseball career and shuffled around between the Mets, A’s, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Rockies and Giants. Every step of the way he’s always been a serviceable player. Versatile and scrappy. Someone who knows his role in the game and the reputation he brought with him to each city was one of being a ‘great teammate!’

He played in 95 games for Colorado earlier in this 2012 season and was batting a respectable .271 before being dealt to the Giants at the trading deadline. For all the years pent up in him playing the role of a utility man, Scutaro went on an immediate offensive tear in San Francisco that continued through the end of the season and into the playoffs. He batted a Tony Gwynn-like .362 in 61 games and became the team’s inspirational sparkplug on-and-off the field! To think, that the Rockies actually paid (cash in the deal to have) the Giants take Scutaro off their hands!

Scutaro’s baseball portfolio rose to even greater heights during the current post-season. He just tied a MLB Playoff League Championship Series record (against St. Louis) by pounding out 14 hits and captured the NLCS MVP Award all the while surviving one of the most talked about collisions in baseball memory (when Matt Holliday of St. Louis barreled over Scutaro at second base in a double play attempt back in the first inning of Game #2). Suffering a strained left hip, Scutaro showed his true grit and perseverance by never missing an at bat and put together an impressive 9-for-19 run at the plate following the incident. The 36-year-old Venezuela-born Scutaro has finally found a place where fans in San Francisco and elsewhere around the baseball world will now know his name for years to come!

Giants’ pitcher Sergio Romo said it best on what effect Marco Scutaro had on the team and the locker room: "That was the blockbuster trade we made to get that guy. He's been the bridge between the English and Spanish teammates, let alone an unbelievable leader by example on the field. Without him, we definitely wouldn't be in this position, and he's up there for team MVP, right beside Buster (Posey)."

Fellas – as we’ve said many times in past readings, it doesn’t matter where you’re drafted, how old you are, your place in the batting lineup or status in the pitching rotation, you have to be mentally ready when opportunity comes knocking! You have to believe that you can be the difference maker when the call comes to take the mound or step up to the plate!  Just check out the names of Cody Ross, David Freese … and now Marco Scutaro. Heroes and Careers are born every year and they come in all ages and sizes!

All the best my friend!

Jim Loria

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“The only thing that counts is your dedication to the game. You run on your own fuel; it comes from, within you” – stated by Paul Brown, Hall of Fame NFL Coach

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Speaking of up and down times on the field, Arizona Diamondbacks’ Manager Kirk Gibson was very frank in a recent interview about his own career. Said he battled through countless slumps during his 17-year playing career. He would lash out at the media and lost his temper in front of the public as a result.  After a terrible year at the plate with Detroit in 1983 (4th year in the AL and batted .227), he decided to enroll at the corporate mind-building Pacific Institute in Seattle, where he learned to think positively, work on his mindset and visualize himself in successful situations. “I had to do that stuff because I was a lunatic.”

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MLB Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson’s favorite saying: “Get Out of Your Own Way! Don’t Get in the Way of Your Ability!”

ON HIS SUCCESS IN THE BIG MOMENTS, JACKSON SAYS: “I had a Relaxed sense of Calmness at the Plate in that Moment!”

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FELLAS ALWAYS REMEMBER … “The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour” – Japanese Proverb

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Jim Loria
E-Mail: loria@sfstampede.com