ONLY 105 DAYS UNTIL PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT

Missing baseball already, but now is the time for players to make plans for off-season training.

Up here, in the cold weather climates, players head off to other sports like football and basketball. There's a lot to be said for the cross-training, multi-sport athlete approach for younger athletes.

In the sunbelt states, you probably see more baseball players continue to play in organized leagues up until Thanksgiving week. They shut down maybe until the beginning of January. They follow the specialization model a little bit more.

Some pluses and minuses attached to both results and we'll take a look at it in future posts. Generally speaking, whatever you do that improves your Athletic Skills, Baseball Skills and Character (Mental, Emotional and Game Strategy) Skills, is going to make you a better ballplayer. If you play another sport, it is more of a challenge to maintain and develop you baseball skills and specific sport strategy skills. It makes it more difficult, but not impossible. That's part of the trade-off.

For now, I have to make the switch from baseball (umpiring) to basketball (refereeing). Which means I have to lose some weight to take the stress of running off my knees. Good Luck with that one ;).

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