Three hours with World Series winning manager Charlie Manuel

When asked about what kind of players he thinks become successful, here are some of his comments

• Love the game - He repeated this over and over.  The player has to love the game in order to reach his maximum potential.  He said that his players that won a World Series a few years ago "love the game", which leads them to work harder to get better

• Attention to detail - Charlie repeated this concept many times over the three hours.  One of his favorite saying is "little things mean a lot".  He said this when referring to hitting, to throwing runners out a second base, to catching signs from the third base coach etc.

• "Gotta want it" - He said that in order to be successful, the player has "gotta want it".  I also took from it that proof that the player wants it is that they are willing to work harder than anyone else.  He said that when he was a minor league player, he took batting practice for "at least an hour per day, sometimes two hours".  

• Charlie talked a lot about mental toughness and "earning playing time".  He talked about how guys who earn their playing time are better than the ones who are given playing time.  

• Charlie had a turning point during his professional career where a coach challenged him to "be as good in games as he was in practice".  The coach challenged him by telling him not to come back unless he really wanted to be there.  Charlie said that after that day, he was "more relaxed, more focused and more prepared" each game which led to him putting up outstanding statistics over the remainder of his playing career. 

Charlie talked about how to play winning baseball.  He said "executing the game and playing situational baseball comes first".  He then went on to give examples about moving runners and good baserunning.  He said, for example, that if you are a left handed hitter with a runner on second base, all you have to do is pull the ball to the right side.  He said hitting a grounder to the second baseman is good but hitting a home run is even better.  Either way, you have to execute.  

Charlie gave his top three most important tips when it comes to hitting:  First, get a good ball to hit.  He talked about conversations he had with Ted Williams and I know that Ted Williams wrote about this in his book The science of hitting.  Secondly, be prepared.  He talked about practicing an hour per day and he also talked about observing pitchers and being able to remember how the pitcher might have pitched you in the past.  He gave an example of a time when there was twelve years between seeing a particular pitcher and remembering what the pitcher threw him last time.  He joked about how Albert Belle used to keep a notebook about each pitcher but that he would just remember.  He said 'isn't it smarter to remember than to have it in a notebook somewhere'?  Third, "quick bat = slow feet, quick hands".  He talked about how the best way to have quick hands is to make sure the hands are taking the shortest distance to the ball.  He said that the best way to get your timing is by playing in games and mentioned that he used to like to get 80-100 at bats during spring training to get his timing down.  I found it interesting that he talked more about his playing days than he did his managing days. I think that's probably how he manages his players.  He said that he tries not to talk about mechanics with a player during the season if he can avoid it.  He'd rather talk about a better approach.   He said that if a players is doing something mechanically wrong, he will wait until the player goes into a slump to mention it.  He went into detail about Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez's swings and compared them a bit which I thought was very interesting.