How to Be a Great Baseball Teammate

Baseball is a sport that’s meant to be fun. Unless you’re a great teammate, how can it possibly be fun?

That’s the first thing I tell kids. It’s also one of the first things a college coach tries to answer when he starts watching a player.

What a great teammate looks like

When your son shows up to the yard, people should want to be around him. They should gravitate toward him because he’s a leader. Not because he talks about how good he is but because he leads by example; he brings guys up when they’re really struggling. That’s a great teammate.

The other version is easy to spot. The kid who only thinks about himself. He only talks about how great he is. Nobody wants to be around that. Over time, it becomes a cancer. In the long run it will hurt him because college coaches don’t want that in their clubhouse. There are few players so talented that they can outlive being a bad teammate.

A college staff can find another arm. They cannot live with a cancer in the clubhouse. If two kids are equally talented, the kid everybody wants to be around will be who gets the offer. The guy who sprints on and off the field, plays with energy and loves being around his teammates.

If somebody’s struggling, a good teammate goes over and puts his arm around him and tells him he’s a really good player. He helps him through the struggle. When he does that for somebody else — and he’s sprinting, and he’s a great teammate — people will want to be like him and the entire organization will rise.

What you can teach in the car

You can teach this. You don’t need another trainer for it. Watch how he talks in the car after a game. Does he only recap his at-bats, or does he mention how the team played? Does he speak negatively of others on his team or does he see the glass as half full? That’s the start of a great teammate.

You need to model it too as his dad. Do you speak negatively about the coach or another player? The dad who only talks about how great his own son is is teaching the son the same thing. Sit next to him. Help him see the other kid. Then let him be the one who walks over.

If he isn’t a great teammate yet, that’s a learning opportunity. Treat it that way. The tools get him looked at. The clubhouse is how he stays around for a long time.