Former collegiate coach and current assistant executive director of the ABCA Ryan Brownlee joins the show for a great discussion. We cover collegiate coaching, parents involvement, development, ABCA convention, and more. Check out Ryan on Twitter @CoachB_ABCA for more information on the ABCA convention and all things coaching.

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Transcript: EP59 – ABCA Director Ryan Brownlee Discusses Coaching, Recruitment, and Baseball Conventions

Dan Blewett: .  All right. Welcome back. This is the morning brush back episode 59. We’ve got an awesome guest today. We also have a relatively good cohost. Bobby, how are you today?

Ryan Brownlee: Cohost of the year.

Dan Blewett: Yeah, I don’t give you enough credit cohost of the year and then future mayor after that.

So you’ve a strong trajectory in your future. Robert Strong resume for cohost. Strong resume for cost, for sure. So our guest today is Ryan Brownley. He is currently a director with the ABC and former journeymen baseball coach. So, uh, Evansville native, uh, coach two seasons with university of Evansville, then moved to James Madison, uh, coached at Iowa and then was at Western Illinois for a long time.

Ryan, how are you, sir?

[00:01:00] Ryan Brownlee: Great to be here, Dan and Bobby appreciate it. Um, appreciated the reset to come on. I’m excited about it.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. And you and I crossed paths a couple of years ago, you came to one of my showcases, right?

Ryan Brownlee: Yes.

Dan Blewett: Yep. What we do, how did we I’m actually wearing it? Cause I went for a run today, but um, how would you rate my, my camp Ryan?

Ryan Brownlee: I think every camp is great. Um, They’re all, they all are running different, but it’s like, anything else you’re going to get out of it, what you put in into it? Uh, I fully expected that you’re going to get at least something out of it. It may not be on the player side, but you’re going to see how things are run was lucky to go all over the country and watched how different people ran things.

And I think anybody can do things better, but. I try to not be judgmental on things, because I think every thing has value. And I always, [00:02:00] probably took one or two names out of everyone I went to. But the other thing, and I think that the higher level recruiting coordinators are guys that have been doing it for a while, will tell you is it’s more important to cross names off.

Aye. I feel for the guys right now that are trying to do this virtually. Because I think I have hard time crossing people off because you’re not going to get a great look and you’re trying to do it through a screen. I know the older guys are used to going to the ballpark and watching and seeing how kids interact, but to be able to talk to the coaches, I think they’re losing it, but they’ll baseball guys are great at adjusting on the fly.

The whole community has had to adjust. With what’s going on. And I think you see people that are thriving. You see organizations that are thriving, that have had to pivoted pivot and this time, but I, you’re not surprised by the baseball community. That’s the baseball community at its finest is taking the [00:03:00] cards that you’re dealt and playing them, whatever that means.

I have so much respect for baseball guys. I

Dan Blewett: mean, that’s the base of teaches you, right? I mean, all the bloopers that fall in on the line drives to get caught. It’s a rolling with the, the good and the bad luck,

Ryan Brownlee: frustrating sport. It is. But that’s the beautiful thing about baseball is, and the ones that play for a long time are the ones that coached for a long time.

I think that’s what brings you back to baseball is the failure part of it because when something goes right, Then, you know, it’s like making a putter, whatever you want to use and analogy, but that’s what brings you back to the sports coaching playing is because the failure part of it, the ones that are good, that aren’t mentally strong, that can handle it.

And yes, it weeds people out that can adjust. And, uh, you know, I have exam my 17 year old. You know, that was part of the reason why he stopped playing is because the failure part of it and he runs track and he’s going to be successful in [00:04:00] whatever he decides to do, but it’s not for everybody, but those that stay in it, it’s phenomenal because that is what brings you back to baseball is just that little glimpse every once in a while that something goes right.

And then it’s like, okay, I’m searching for that next time. That’s going to go right. Yeah,

Dan Blewett: just like Bobby grinding it out until you finally got your chance to pitch in pro ball.

Ryan Brownlee: Is that not the dream? That is the position player. Dream

Dan Blewett: speaking words. Do you see Todd Frazier get out there and throw a knuckle

Ryan Brownlee: balls?

He was nasty filthy. Well, did you see the grom was tinkering around with it and the bowl pain? And then you’re thinking, okay, there’s a good way for that guy to blow his arm out because it’s all decelerated. He’s changed his arm angle, trying to tinker around with a knuckle ball. And it’s like, I’m thinking of the back of my mind, like.

Good. I’m interested. See how his next outing is because he’s tinkering around with a knuckle ball and he’ll still, but it’s like why you are the best pitcher. [00:05:00] You’re the best pitcher in baseball and you don’t need it tweak anything right now. Why are you tinkering around with a knuckle ball, but that’s how pitchers and position players are the good ones they think.

Okay. Well maybe if I add this to my arsenal, it might, it might take me to a different level, which is it’s, it’ll be intriguing to see. It’s like pitchers, BP, throw a shutout. The whole staff gets around a BP. Yes. That’s the dream. I think it’s, I think it’s also the dream for the pitchers. Not to have to shag for that round.

So

Dan Blewett: that’s the biggest deal for sure. Cause the beep the five or six swings are always a let down. You’re always like, of course I’m going to juice a couple. Then you like hit two off the end, you roll over two more and you’re like, This has been a waste.

Ryan Brownlee: You’ve wasted

Dan Blewett: all this, all this lead up.

Ryan Brownlee: It’s a waste for everybody.

It’s a waste for them. It’s a waste for the position players. It’s a waste for the coaches, but it’s also, there’s some tradition to it and they owe us every day. Well then maybe that gets you your next shutout. I mean, that’s the way you think about it. [00:06:00] Okay. You may not want to do it, but if they just posted a shutout, maybe you let them do it because maybe that gets you to your next shutout.

You

Dan Blewett: gotta keep the pitchers happy. We’re we’re a very temperamental, cranky Spacey group. So he gotta keep us Daniel,

Ryan Brownlee: how did you two get connected?

Dan Blewett: We were, we were teammates, uh, for what,

Ryan Brownlee: four weeks,

Dan Blewett: and then all right. Being a pitcher and a position player, we played together in Camden in 2014. I needed like, but there’s employers and pitchers don’t interact as nearly as much.

Like you stay with your group. And we were only teammates for like a month. Like an all rights. We should have like faded away and like not been friends after that because that’s just like, you know, everyone just goes their separate ways. After the season, you get to choose your friends. After the season,

Ryan Brownlee: I always tried to put position players and pitchers in the dorm rooms together.

My freshmen dorm mate was Kyle Rader was a pitcher and he helped me. Immensely in college handle the ups and downs [00:07:00] because we could talk about things. And I think it’s, I think you need somebody outside of your comfort zone or outside your, your peer group. I think it’s great for pitchers and position players to interact with each other.

Because they’re going to bring a different perspective. You can’t see the forest for the trees sometimes. And I think when you just talk to position players all the time, or if you’re pitching, you just talked to pitchers all the time, I think you lose some of that perspective. And I think getting those cross perspectives helps and helps you as a player.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. Agreed. And you know, I mean, you played a little bit of pro ball with, with Evansville. We were both wore the same Jersey at different point. It sounds like you were there.

Ryan Brownlee: We had a great season. Yeah. Greg Taggart, summer of 97, got done playing, um, had a really great playing experience at Evansville.

The, you know, socially, academically. Yeah, it was a great fit for me. [00:08:00] Uh, it’s a different time now. I was lucky. I got to see five schools, take five visits. Uh, it took me a long time to make a decision. I had graduated from high school and was playing in the state championship for Memorial high school for Quentin Mercola, coach Don Mattingly.

My baseball tradition at my high school was tremendous lost five games in high school, um, with them. Well, high school. Yeah, it’s crazy. I think about that, that class we had. We lost five games going through from freshman. You didn’t play varsity until you were maybe a junior, but lost five games in my entire high school career.

With Memorial, we lost two games.

Dan Blewett: It’s a long weekend for a year. We

Ryan Brownlee: lost my one game, my junior year and the day game and the state championship with a really talented team of older seniors that were allowed to guys going to play college at different levels. Um, and then that carried over into Evansville program.

My dad. Had a really good relationship with coach Merkel, but they both were very similar personalities, really hard. Um, and so I [00:09:00] think my dad probably knew that if he took a player from Memorial, he was at least going to be able to handle, um, handle him and how he handled things. You look at the record books at the university of Evansville.

There’s a lot of Memorial grads that are on the, on the hitting side. Not as much on the pitching. Uh, but there there’s been some really good players come out of that, that Southern Indiana area at that time, Scott Rowland was it Jasper, you know, Jamie Carroll played 11 years in the big leagues. The Bennis for others grew up in Evansville.

Uh, and then on other sports to Calvert Cheney was the big 10 scoring leader. Kevin Hardy played linebacker for the Jags. Uh, Walter McCardy played for the Celtics, uh, was a really cool area, um, for, for all athletics back then. And

Dan Blewett: of course, you guys have the gem of the ballpark down there. So for those of you don’t know, bossy, bossy field is the, I think it’s the third old third oldest ballpark in America.

Right. And that’s where they

Ryan Brownlee: and Wrigley field they’ve had its hundred year anniversary, I [00:10:00] think two years ago. Uh, yeah, if you’re a baseball, especially an old baseball fan and like old stadiums, it’s like one of those birthday cakes. Stadiums, it doesn’t wrap all the way around, but the Concourse area has that birthday cake feel to it.

Um, and it’s neat. A lot of tradition, the, the Evansville triplets played there.

Dan Blewett: Wait, I I’m nodding I’m nodding my head, but I have no idea what you mean by birthday cake. What does that mean?

Ryan Brownlee: Yeah. Well, back back in the old days, like. The pirate stadium, uh, the red stadium, they, they called them birthday cake because they were all the way wrapped around and from the outside they looked like birthday cakes.

Dan Blewett: Mmm. Okay.

Ryan Brownlee: Yeah. But yeah, the otters I owe Greg Taggart a lot. Uh, you know, you’re disappointed when you don’t get drafted. I had in the Cape, that’s how bad I was. I was one of the few guys that actually played in the Cape and was not drafted. Um, and so you’re [00:11:00] disappointed. And I didn’t know that if I wanted to even play for the otters.

So I was like two weeks in and I’m still working out. I’m maybe thinking that somebody’s going to call to, to sign me and. Yeah, we all come to that realization. That’s that the phone’s not ringing. So I was like, I still want to play. So I tried out, they, I don’t know if they weren’t going to take me because I was a local kid and I get it.

You know, it’s a little bit like recruiting someone locally. They have to be good enough because if they’re not good enough to play for you, and they’re a local kid, you’re going to have issues in the community. So I think that’s probably what it was on the otters part. So I did try out. Um, they kept me, it was no guarantees that I was going to stay.

I could have gotten released any day, but, um, played really well. And they ended up releasing a couple infielders and Greg Taggart was tremendous. Um, I think he’s a really good, he’s still doing it. He’s with Gary. I think he has the perfect demeanor. For guys that [00:12:00] either never got a chance or just got released.

So everybody’s disgruntled because they’re mad at organized baseball that they didn’t get an opportunity or they got released. And I was fine with being done with playing after that summer. Um, he asked me to come back the next summer, but. Uh, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I had, uh, two classes left to finish at Evansville after I graduated.

And my aunt, my dad asked me to coach and I never thought I was going to coach up until I started coaching at Evansville. I could have told you that I was not going to coach. I was going to go either be a professor. I knew it was probably going to be something at the college level. Educational-wise might’ve been a professor might’ve been at admissions director.

Um, but it was not going to be coaching. And then. Immediately. As soon as I started coaching, I was like, I love this. I can’t see myself doing anything else. Just hard when you’re coaching guys that you played with anybody that had had to do it, understand that what you’re saying, [00:13:00] because your teammates know your BS, like they’ve seen you away from the field.

They’ve seen you in the house. They’ve seen you in the apartments. But I think because I was a good enough teammate and for the most part things right. Worked out hard. I was a good student. Um, You have to have that balance with the guys that you coach and you have to set guidelines. Like I did not hang out.

That was hard for me. I did not hang out with the guys that

Dan Blewett: I know it’s really hard,

Ryan Brownlee: but I’ve seen it with my brother. My brother was four years older, coached me at Evansville as well. He and I set guidelines. We, and people that don’t understand this, won’t get it. The only time my brother and I would hang out and we had friends, I had friends that were older that were my brother and my brother’s peer group.

Cause we all hung out, not together in Evansville. The only time my brother and I could actually hang out socially was Christmas break. Other than that it was coach to player relationship. Um, and my brother and I butted heads a lot. Uh, but [00:14:00] I ended up being a good player in college because of my dad and brother and how hard they were on me.

You know, people have this idea yeah. That you can’t be hard on people. I think some people need it. I needed it. I wouldn’t have been as good a player. If I didn’t have my brother just sitting on top top of me for four years, because even when it was going good, he would never let me get full of myself.

And I needed that. I didn’t need on the back. And I still don’t. Um, I don’t take compliments very well. I think that’s a self reflection. It’s a hard time with it. Like even when Bobby tweeted out, like he had, I don’t like I don’t have it all figured out. Um, and so like, it’s uncomfortable for me. If, if someone pays me a compliment, I try to deflect.

Um, I don’t know if that’s right, but it’s just a personality thing for me. I just try to deflect. Yeah. I

Dan Blewett: heard a, I really liked your headphones by the way. And you guys are great. You sound great. Yeah, because you’re, I think is, are you, is he our first guest Bobby? That’s got like his own [00:15:00] like legit podcast that I think Josh and I think a Rick camp also, but.

Ryan Brownlee: Well, you guys are ready.

Dan Blewett: You guys are,

Ryan Brownlee: you guys are in this world and you understand like sound makes a huge difference. And I do this out of respect to the other people, cause I want it to sound good for you guys. And I appreciate, and I understand the challenges of the editing portion of a podcast when it doesn’t.

Come back. Great. Because you can’t tell at times when you’re in the moment and you’re recording and then you go back and edit, sit and listen to the playback and it’s like, okay, you got some tweaking to do. And yeah, because if you’re going to put something out into the world, you want it to sound great because.

But I also listened to a lot of different packages. Yes. And everybody make theirs. There’s like audio mistakes for everybody. I don’t care if it’s Ryan holiday, Tim Ferris, like the bigger ones that Joe Rogan, like any of those that you listen to, there’s going to be those little audio tweaks. So I always give [00:16:00] people a free pass.

As long as the content is good, like. That’s all I care about. You know, I can handle some, some, some little hiccups here and there. Uh, anybody that listens to my show will that I think my intro is really stiff and I’ve tried to tweak a lot of things with the intro. It’s like BP. Now I play the music. I don’t know how you guys do the intros for the other shows, but.

I have the music going while I’m recording the intros. So you got to get it in one shot and I’ll have to, if I’m screwed up at the end, I’ll have to go back in. But I tried it with no audio and it was worse than what it is. And I still, yeah.

Dan Blewett: What do you attribute that to? Like you just did.

Ryan Brownlee: I’m a big, I’m a big music guy.

I’ve always listened to music. I’m just, I have music going almost. All hours. It, it probably drives my wife crazy, but I am more relaxed when I have some background noise [00:17:00] going and that’s from a lot of trial and error with it. I, it just works better for me. I don’t know if anybody else does it that way, but it works better for me to have the music going while I’m doing the intros and outros.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. We just put ours in post production, but yeah, I, I, so I wrote a book last year and I did the audio book myself. I’ve fully recorded and produced it. It was one of the only projects. Cause I do lots of stuff on the web and it was one of the only projects that I was literally like crap, like cracking as a person.

Like I, I was like, I’m never doing this again. I was literally falling apart because with audio. I ended up because I left my, I sold my business last August and Bloomington moved home, moved here. I ended up recording in three different places, which I knew was a no, no, but I didn’t realize how much of a no-no.

So like a third of the book was recorded in one place than another than another. And as I would go through it, you record a chapter, you go through it, you always find some pops and clicks and some words you stumbled through. So you have to like [00:18:00] cut them out and rerecord them. So you go through and do a sentence, patch it back in.

Okay. But then all the patches that I recorded were in a different place than they were originally recorded. So now I can hear a difference in my voice just because of the acoustics of the room. And I’m like, the more I edit this, the more, it sounds like a quilt with holes and patches. And I’m like, It’s like the word, the more I cleaned it up, the worse it gets.

And I. Was like taking two steps forward and five steps back. And it was taking so long, like, like eight hours of editing per, per chapter.

Ryan Brownlee: And I don’t know what the, I don’t know what the terminology is for it, but there’s actually, because on playback, your voice sounds different than, than the way you hear it.

When you speak, it’s going to sound off. And a lot of people don’t like listening to the sound of their own voice on playback or just like actors. Don’t like watching the movies that they film once they’re done with it. So I’ll go back for editing purposes, but very rarely do I then go back and actually [00:19:00] listen to that.

The episodes once I’m done editing them. Um, because again, I think you get into that. You’re going to start picking yourself apart. Yup. Um, you know, and, and nobody else is gonna hear, you’re gonna hear it because you’re, you’re doing it. And so, you know what it’s supposed to sound like, but anybody listening and they’re not gonna pick up a lot of that stuff that you’re picking it up because you’re putting it out there into the world.

They’re definitely,

Dan Blewett: Dan’s always like your sound

Ryan Brownlee: sucks. Something’s wrong with your audio. And I’m like, it sounds fine to me. And postproduction is going to clean a lot of that stuff up too.

Dan Blewett: Well, and like, so I can hear in, like, I listened to a lot of audio books. I can hear the patches and everyone else’s audio books.

Now. Like I can tell when there’s like a slight intonation change in their voice, I’m like, Oh, because everyone, whether it’s Michelle Obama, after she records it, like she’s going to go home. And then they be like, Hey, we need you to redo these lines, these lines, these lines. And you can always tell, I can tell when they patch them in.

And so when I released my audio book, I asked like some of my family [00:20:00] and friends who listened to it kind of in advance. I’m like, let me know if you hear any differences. And then the first person to get back to me, he was like, well, I’m on chapter four and I haven’t heard any yet. And I’m like, Cause there were like five in the first chapter.

I’m like, it’s only me. Okay. Like, we’re good. We’re good.

Ryan Brownlee: And I’ll leave, I’ll leave some things in here and there, especially with the intros and outros, because I want someone that’s listening in that maybe is trying to go through it for the first time to understand that there are mistakes that are made and yeah, you want to clean some things up, but I think the human part of it too is it’s okay to leave some of those.

Cracks and tweaks in there because I think people need to see that, that everybody’s flawed a little bit and we all have baggage and it’s not going to be perfect. So I do, I’ll leave some stuff in sometimes like my intro with Jeff Duncan and Jeff and I are really good friends. I thought my intro was not good.

Yeah. But I left a couple of things in there because it’s like, okay, at the end of the day, um, you know, if somebody wants to beat you up about it, that’s fine. [00:21:00] Um, but you know, Ghana. I care more about the content than I do anything. Yeah.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. Bobby and I made it 59 episodes and sold doing it live so good job.

Good job, Bob. We haven’t yet.

Ryan Brownlee: I like the live component. It’s

Dan Blewett: scary,

Ryan Brownlee: but I liked that part of it. I, my mom, you know, nobody talks about my mom. My mom was. Pro is probably the most competitive person in our family. She’s a huge baseball fan, but competitive on some other avenues. She got me into theater and speech.

When I was growing up, she was my speech coach when I was in seventh and eighth grade. And I did not like speech. Uh, but she, she was ultra competitive. She made me do it because we knew we were probably going to win if I was in it. But my events one was impromptu. So talk about having to give you could walk into a room, talk about like being nervous.

You’re an eighth grader, or you’re in a room with people that you don’t know. They’re going to give you a topic, whether you know about that topic or [00:22:00] not, you have five minutes to write on it and then you got to stand up and talk about it. So I would like beg her to let me out of it. But looking back now, probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, that in her full.

To get into a show. Um, at the university of Evansville, the university of Evansville has one of the best theater departments in the country, Carrie Preston, uh, Rami man, uh, Romanek Malley or the guy that was, uh, Freddie mercury and Bohemian Rhapsody. He’s an Evansville grad. So we had, we had season tickets to Evansville theater department.

So I knew how good it was and I didn’t want to do it. Uh, but I got the part and it looking back now I have friends that were in that play that I still talk to that were college kids. And I was in eighth grade. I talk about like, no hanging out with an older peer group, besides being with your dad’s players that are older.

I got that side of it, but that was competing as well. Like we competed for national theater competitions. [00:23:00] Like once you were done, if you’re good enough, you’re going to go get another competition. So I got to see, you know, and people think that theater or speech people don’t compete. Like they compete in a different way, but they’re competing for ribbons and they’re competing for trophies.

And so it brought a different type of competitive. Dale to me, plus the live aspect of doing a three hour show where you’re on stage for the entire time. There’s some higher wire high wire to that part of it that I think people too, like the people that really like it, I think that anxiety and that adrenaline, um, I think it drives people, uh, because there is that, that unknown and yes, it’s debilitating for them.

Some people, uh, you know, the people that can’t handle anxiety, we have enough of it out there now, you know, it’s sad to think about, yeah. Social media where we’re at. If you guys haven’t seen a social dilemma that just came out on Netflix, because it’s really good talks. It’s what the ground floor designers of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

And the interesting thing [00:24:00] is none of them work for those companies anymore. And you feel bad for those people because when they started to develop these apps, They thought it was going to bring the community together. And it was going to be a way to, to bring people together. And you’re seeing the opposite.

Now it’s creating divisiveness, not just in America, but in every developed country. You’re seeing the same issues going on because of social media, because the hard part is. Your feed is individual to yourself to keep you engaged with the app. And most people don’t understand that. And you know, if you use anything, I think you need to study up on it.

Um, I it’s great. Socials are great. The phone is great if you use them. Right. But it also can create some issues for people because they don’t understand what’s going on. Sorry, I got off on a huge tangent there. I would attend. No. Someone mentioned that to me

Dan Blewett: yesterday. The social dilemma that.

Ryan Brownlee: Yeah, it’s phenomenal.

Well, you feel bad for us as a society in general, because you can see [00:25:00] why we’re at the place that we’re at and you see it on Twitter every day. You guys have been a part of it. And I appreciate the fact that you guys are very open to bringing different views together and okay. Agree to disagree.

Sometimes I was thinking about that in the shower today. Like when you guys had teacher man and, and Jeff on it’s a little bit like. The stock market and Warren buffet and David Portnoy, like Warren buffet for me, you know, traditional investing and I’m old school and Portnoy now is like all in on Bitcoin.

It’s just a guy that’s just insane money and a platform and, and is out there day trading on live Dave trading, which. Who knows if Warren buffet probably doesn’t even think about David Portnoy at all? Cause he does. Yeah. Does it need to, because he’s built it up, but I think there’s some, there’s some. No parallels to the baseball community, because you [00:26:00] have those older traditional guys that have it’s been successful in the way that they did it.

And then you have a younger generation that is going to be all about tech. That’s going to be all about this and they’re successful in their own, right as well, but where you see it social and what the socials is, comparison aspect is not fair to anybody for me to compare myself to you. Or to Dan, it’s not fair, but people do it all the time.

They make those social comparisons and someone’s path is completely different than your path Warren Buffett’s path to get to where he’s at. He still lives in the same house that he bought in Omaha for $35,000, which is crazy. And David Portnoy is probably spending millions of dollars every year for the lifestyle that he lives.

So two completely different things, but yet. Why would those guys compare each other? And I think that’s what you see on Twitter. Now, a lot of it is apples to oranges. When people start to fight with each other, a lot of [00:27:00] it is they’re arguing about completely different things. It’s just so hard for people to get on the same page, because now we’re at that point where if you argue with me, we’re supposed to be like mortal enemies and that’s not what it should be about.

Like, okay. If we argue, we argue. We may not find a common bond, but I guarantee if you pick up the phone and call the person and get them one on one, it’s going to be a completely different conversation. And reading text is so harsh. I’ll, I’ll send a text to my wife or she’ll send a text to me and it’ll come across really harsh, but that’s not the context of it.

And you lose context when you read and you just don’t, you don’t get the inflections. You don’t get it. Again, if people could get on the same page and they’re going to disagree, but it’s just so, it’s so hard right now, speak in absolutes. And you don’t and you don’t hammer home one side or the other. You don’t have a

Dan Blewett: brand

Ryan Brownlee: at that point.

It’s funny. It’s funny. You say phone calls because the one person who [00:28:00] calls me after like Twitter, like things on Twitter is your brother once a month. Once a month, I get a phone call from him and it’s we’re on the phone for an hour and it’s, it would just basically run down anything that I’ve tweeted in the last 30 days.

He, and my wife, he and my wife from my voice are ease. And it’s like there, my wife is not on social media at all. She, she just doesn’t do it. And then my brother is my voice or reasons I’ve taken things down, um, because of my brother, because he’ll read them and be like, Hey, just take it off. Like, that’s, that’s not what you should be putting out there.

And he hasn’t done that lately. So maybe I’m, I’m being a smarter social media user, but taking this job. I think lends itself to being in the middle more, um, much more than coaching. Um, I think when you work for the ABC, you’re going to ride in the middle because you’re going to deal with, and that’s not my job.

My job is not to tell people what they should believe. Um, my job is to be a resource to help players and coaches. And so, yeah, you should write [00:29:00] in the middle and, um, uh, yeah, I know speaking from experience, what worked for me as a coach. But the path that I took and what I used as a coach may not work for somebody else.

And you know, my path, we talked about that off air. I mean, me, me giving plasma to stay in coaching or sleeping in my office or working a million part time jobs to stay in coaching that may not work for somebody right now. It worked for me, but I may not work for

Dan Blewett: somebody else. Yeah, I want to, I want to jump down a line that you mentioned.

Uh, I w I want to come, we’re going to delve back to all this stuff, but you mentioned comparison, and this is definitely a tough thing for kids, especially who can, you know, you can have a average sized high school freshmen. Who’s five, 840 pounds jumps on Instagram, sees a kid who’s six foot five, 230 pounds throwing 96 at a PGA tournament.

You’re like, Oh, I am terrible at baseball, I guess. Um, So for you as a coach is my question to you and as a longtime recruiter, uh, how, what, what would you tell [00:30:00] parents and players about developmental age versus biological age? So that’s talked about this a lot. I’ve written about it. Um, where would you say that?

Because I guess the questions are this, are you a better player, baseball player? If you’re just physically more developed, like you’re a 17 year old and a 15 year old’s body and you can throw a ball harder and hit a ball harder, or you’re the 15 year old who’s. You know, the right size and whatever for his age, essentially age appropriate, but you’re really good skills.

I mean, how do, how to college coaches take into account like this? Kid’s just physically better. Bill. He’s farther along developmentally. This kid’s maybe just not there yet, but has good baseball skills. I don’t know where my question, my question. I

Ryan Brownlee: think you have to ask the question, like, what is the end goal?

What is the end goal? I mean, you can’t discount the fact that someone that is more mature than their, their peer group is probably going to dominate that level at that time. So really what is the end goal is the end gold up in the big leagues? Yeah. Is the end goal to, to [00:31:00] play division one? Baseball is the end to just get on your high school team.

Yeah. Again, that’s where everybody’s path is different. I’m a great example of a, I didn’t mature until college. I. I looked at division three schools coming out of high school as well, because I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was good. Even junior year of high school was a struggle for me. You know, God bless coach Merkel.

He stuck with me. Um, but if you would’ve seen me, you play as a freshman in high school. I probably weighed 115 pounds even. I was 142 pounds. When I showed up at Evansville, you know, I was working out, but you didn’t know. This this time would have been bad for me as a high school player, because I would have gotten overexposed when you watched me play, but it would have been a great time from a training aspect because of what we understand about nutrition and strength training.

Um, if you want to get bit well, Bryson de Shabbos, a good [00:32:00] example. If you want to get bigger and stronger, you can get bigger and stronger. Like regardless, if you want to get bigger and stronger, you can do that. And you can do that in today’s day and age. There’s so many good training things out there, but again, I think you have to ask yourself what the end goal is, um, and for doing it as long as I did and seeing as many games as I saw and coached as many players as I did, I have so many examples of guys that were really good high school players that ended up not being good college players.

And then guys that were just okay. High school players that ended up being phenomenal college players and got a chance to play professional baseball. One is on the big league staff with the Indians right now, Justin tool. Great example of it was a good high school player and dominated that level.

Struggled, struggle as a freshman in college, and then looked himself in the mirror and dominated the college level and got an opportunity to play six years and minor league baseball. And. [00:33:00] I don’t think anybody thought that was going to happen. Jamie Carol, another great example of a guy who was, is a really good college player, but was a better pro.

Um, you just see so many examples of it. This is a hard time for college recruiters because they’re, they’re having to make, especially at the division one level, they’re having to make decisions on kids that they shouldn’t have be having to make decisions on. And it’s just the way the system is set up until the NCA wants to come in and, um, and make some changes.

But it’s still on the parents. Everybody wants to. I’ve texted guys about this that are getting after the division one recruiters. It is not the division one or recruiters responsibility to stop the recruiting process. It’s the parent’s responsibility. If a parent of a 15 year old tells a college coach that their kid is not to be recruited that college coach won’t recruit the kid.

And that’s, that’s where the line in the sand has to be drawn is it [00:34:00] has to start with the parents. I have a 17 year old and a 15 year old, I think my 17 year old, if he wants to, we’ll probably be able to run track somewhere in college. He and I really haven’t talked about the process at all. I’ve mentioned things to him and told him I will be a resource for him if he wants it, but I’m not doing it for him.

I refuse because. I’ve coached forever. And the kids whose parents did it for them, it didn’t have the same impact on them in college because they felt like they were doing it for the wrong reasons. And that’s a hard thing as a parent. I’m a, I’m a parent. I get how difficult it is to be a parent right now, because you want what’s best for your kids.

Like everybody’s, heart’s in the right place. You know, the division one recruiter, he’s trying to help his program. They’re trying to win games. They’re trying to win a national championship. A parent of a 15 year old wants what’s best for their kid. And hopefully if they [00:35:00] want that that’s going on to playing college.

So everybody’s heart is in the right place. And this is where you see the divisiveness everybody’s heart’s in the right place. It’s just, they have different angles. And a parent also has to understand that if you do let your 15 year old commit, there are no games guarantees to any of this. And if you’re okay with that as a parent of letting your 15 year old commit, but understand that it may not work out at the school that they’ve committed to.

That’s what you’re signing up for right now that that’s where it’s at. That’s the honest truth for anybody to not look at that, honestly. Then it’s just a social media grab or an ego grab that, that your kid is going to this school. Like that’s an ego grab and that’s not what it should be about regardless of what school they ended up going to.

Or even if they play a college sport, we all played college sports. It’s not an easy thing to do, especially if you’re not passionate about it. If it’s really not your passion [00:36:00] of playing that sport for the right reasons. Don’t ask don’t do it. Like you’re going to be miserable in college. Go be a regular student.

Like there’s nothing wrong with being a regular college student. There’s nothing wrong with what

Dan Blewett: percentage of kids would you say? Show up to college sport, whatever, and drop out within a month. They just quit their

Ryan Brownlee: sport. Honestly, you see them, you see them write it out. Cause the scholarship. Hmm. I I’ve had, I’ve had, that was later in my career.

I did have two kids, right. It showed up, um, that were on really good scholarships that within two weeks of training and, and our two, our two week training before team practice start was probably the hardest time for those guys because. We would do some Friday early morning stuff. And the conditioning, general conditioning was difficult.

You know, you have some kids that have never trained before, and this is the first initial shock of, I’m not sure what I signed up for, [00:37:00] but every college student on every the college campus is going through the same deer in headlights, the freshmen. I don’t care if it’s  Juco, even the regular students. Are going to have that.

Did I make the right decision those first two weeks? Because everything is brand new on campus. They don’t know anybody. Uh, they may know a few people, but probably don’t know anybody. So you’re trying to make friends, um, you’re going to be thrown completely out of your comfort zone. And so every person.

That shows up to a new place is in the same boat, but people don’t understand that because they’re self centered on their own journey, which that’s being a human is your self centered on your own journey. Um, so yeah, that was later on. I did have a couple of guys that we got, I tried to tell him like, Hey, hang on.

Like, hang on. Cause we’re through the worst of it. Now we’re getting into the team portion of it and this is going to end up being fun. [00:38:00] But, you know, sometimes I think you have to make it hard in the initial because honestly, you’re not going to be able to count on those guys anyway, like bottom of the ninth tying run or game, when you’re on at second base, they’re people that opt out early, like they’re going to opt out when you need them.

So like, it’s not a cow’s thing. It’s just, it is what it is. And I think probably as a coach, you want to figure out if somebody’s going to quit on you early, because then, then, you know, rather than somebody that’s just trying to hang on because. They’re going to ride it out because mom and dad wanted them to play or they’re on a scholarship.

And I saw more of that, that kids would ride it out. Even though you could tell they weren’t passionate about it. And it was, it was work like playing a sport should not be work. Yes. There’s some more components to it, but at the end of the day, you shouldn’t be excited for a 6:00 AM workout. You should be excited for.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Ryan Brownlee: Let’s not get ahead

Dan Blewett: of ourselves. The

Ryan Brownlee: better [00:39:00] ones do that though. The better ones are off, like in a good way that the higher achievers, you know, I’m sure David Portnoy is off a little bit. He’s a higher achiever. You know, he started a really successful company. Steve jobs was off Elon Musk off Michael Jordan off.

I mean, if last dance showed us anything, it often a good way. You know, he was a high achiever and also a generalist. Like people want to talk about Jordan, how good he was in baseball. Great golfer, great baseball player. Great gambler. Know, Michael Jordan’s good gamblers. A stretch. Well, a stretch enthusiastic.

Yeah. I asked at gambler. Um, but you know, again, I got off tangent there, but you know, I think again, you saw it more with kids that didn’t know why they were playing and just were punching the clock. Yeah, because they thought they were supposed to do that rather than, okay, [00:40:00] this is what I really want to do, but the ones that get it and the ones that are passionate about it, all parts of it are, are great for them.

And those are the special ones, the special ones where that can even take something that you don’t want to do. We’re all out in the real world. How often do you, do you do something every day that you probably don’t want to do every day? You’re going to have to do things that you probably don’t want to do, but.

You should find a way to jump in on it. And rather than all, no, here we go again. I just, I don’t think it’s a great personal lifestyle statement. If you can’t try to, to get enthused about it. I just think it’s a tough way to go through life. If you can’t at least create some enthusiasm and you do have to fake it, sometimes it’s all part of being successful and getting out of bed.

Like if you’re really focused on all the bad things that could happen to you or will happen to you, you won’t get out of bed in the mornings. And some people don’t, I don’t think that the kids or even their parents realize [00:41:00] what. Like what goes into making

Dan Blewett: a certain level of player

Ryan Brownlee: or a certain recruiting aspect.

They just see, they see Twitter, they see Instagram, so-and-so committed. He’s my age. And Oh, he does

Dan Blewett: something right. I could probably do. Like, why

Ryan Brownlee: aren’t I getting recruited? It’s

Dan Blewett: I I’d

Ryan Brownlee: like to see maybe, you know, maybe the hardest part is you can’t look five years down the road. And that’s where you have to have that perspective active as a parent is you don’t know if that’s the best thing for the kid who just committed to that school or committed to.

So, and so you have no idea. What that journey is going to look like. So again, be careful what you wish for my dad used to my dad still says it all the time. Be careful what you wish for, because that kid had just committed to this school or this school you may look up and five years from now and be like, that was the worst decision that kid made or that parent made like, so you don’t.

So why do that? That’s unfair. It’s an unfair. [00:42:00] Decision to be like, well, I should be doing this and this, and look this person’s doing this. Okay. Write that down. I mean, if you want to, if you want to do a thing, right. Write that down. And this is something as a recruiter, you would have to pay attention to that.

Okay. This school’s recruiting 20 guys. Okay. Three of them graduated in that class, you know, six years from now, seven years from now that class that he was in going to that school. Only three of those guys graduated from that school. So again, was that a good decision? I don’t know. Like you don’t know if it’s great decision that’s the high wire act is like, you don’t know if any decision you make is, is going to be a good decision in, in anything.

Yeah, well like, okay. Ask me in five years, if that was a good day decision. Uh, and that’s also why you shouldn’t get too bogged down with decisions that you make, because if you write it down and 12 months from now, when you look at that, Probably happened the way it was supposed to happen [00:43:00] now. And whether you want to call it karma or whatever, like I do think things that end up the way that they’re supposed to.

Um, you know, but, but it’s, it’s tough cause you’re going to see it, it get shoved in your face. I’d like to see at the ABC, cause I want to talk about ABC a little bit. Uh, I like to see one of the coaches, like a division one coach has come up and basically talk to parents and say, look, if your son’s not the best player on his team, Playing a premium position, catcher pitcher shortstop, stop contacting division one schools, centerfield, stop contents, contacting division one schools until he is all at least 90% of time, the best player on the field.

He needs to be the best player on the field. And I only say this because I ask all of my kids at the end of the summer, you know, what’s the goal? What are we looking at? And I get the younger kids, the freshmen sophomores, and they’re like, Oh, I wanna play division one. And I’m like, okay, well, You’re not on our top team for number one.

So like you’re not in the top 12 players in our own [00:44:00] program and we don’t have 12 division, one players on the top team. You’re also not a starter at your high school. You also don’t you play first base and you’re five eight, or you play right. You know, you play second base. You don’t

Dan Blewett: have good recruiting Bobby,

Ryan Brownlee: but I mean, honestly like the

Dan Blewett: realistic.

Ryan Brownlee: Yeah. But when you Bobby me do pee, do people want to hear that though? Maine’s people realistic. I know they need to, but do people really want to hear it? No. And they don’t does that kid that, and, and that’s fine. Like, and it’s not that there’s a lot of good examples there, and there’s a lot of good examples of guys that I, as freshmen in high school.

Aren’t on anybody’s radar. And then you look up when they’re a junior in college and pro ball gets it wrong too. I mean, how many guys are first round draft picks that weren’t drafted out of high school? Now, there was a lot of factors that go into that sign ability. Yeah. Um, yo, but guys all through the cracks draft wise, you hear it every year, you know, how did we miss on that guy?

Well, you probably [00:45:00] didn’t miss on him at the time. Just got locked. He got a lot better. And from senior year of high school to junior year of college, which happens a lot. That guy got a lot better. I mean a lot better. Yeah. I haven’t just in general.

Dan Blewett: It’s the, okay.

Ryan Brownlee: You’re not there yet. Here’s what you need to do to be there.

So don’t come back at me in six months and ask me again, like I told you where you need to be like, this is, these are kind of hard and fast rules. Like they’re going to recruit the best players on the team. You have to be one of those guys. So I was dominate the level you’re at dominate the level you’re at and also stay in the present moment.

And you deal with that a lot. People look so far down the road. My kids do it too. I try to bring them back. You’re worried about playing in college and you’re a freshman in high school, right? Like worry about being a freshman in high school, enjoy being a freshmen in high school. You also put your whole

Dan Blewett: career passes you by if you’re always doing that.

Like you’re [00:46:00] always, I did that. Most of my career

Ryan Brownlee: I’m guarantee it made you miserable.

Dan Blewett: I mean, I don’t think it made me miserable, but I think the first year, so the only year that I know that I was like, this is my second all-star season. After my second Tommy John surgery, I was 29. I ended up playing one more season after that, but it was just like, A year where I was happy, where I was living, I was living in Philadelphia.

I was having the best year of my career. I’d come back from a second surgery. He was finally myself again. I had like a good roommate, good teammates. It just like everything was together. And I just like wasn’t as worried about whether I was going to make it to the major leagues. I was just, this was just like a wonderful summer, like just like a peak of my baseball career.

And it was nice to bask in that. And then when you feel that for the first time, I’m like, Hmm. I wish I had had more of this back when I went and I was never unhappy. I always had purpose cause I wanted to be better. So every day I was like, look into the future, which keeps you going. Right. And I was never unhappy.

Like I wasn’t, but

Ryan Brownlee: they were just like, you’re [00:47:00] finally let it go. I mean, do you feel like you finally resigned yourself to the fact that probably not going to play in the big leagues, let’s just try to enjoy where I’m at.

Dan Blewett: Not really. Cause I think I was still like, that was the best I was like, and there’ll be Scouts were looking, were talking to me then even at 29, um, it just was like, I’m just here.

I don’t know. Like I’m, I’m happy pitching well today and what’ll happen, happens. And just like everything around me is good. It just was like, it was like, I felt like I was here, like at some sort of destination, even though it wasn’t my final destination, that was like, I wasn’t actively on the train. Like the train stopped for a minute and I could get out.

That was kind of how I internalized joy.

Ryan Brownlee: I, my pay, I. My path was, was so different in a good way, because if you’re at my level Laurel high school, you are going to buy into to helping Memorial high school be good in everything, you know, academically, socially sport wise. So [00:48:00] like you were never allowed to get outside yourself or think about things other than helping Memorial high school be good in every possible thing it could be in.

And then I think college was the same way when you’re playing for family members. There rarely. Wasn’t a reason to look outside of where you’re at at that moment. Cause you’re trying to help, you know, the program that you grew up around wind games. And you’re trying to help family members win games as well.

So I, and I, I really didn’t think I was ever going to get an opportunity to play professional baseball anyway, like I did. And even when things were good, I was like, I’m a runner. I can run my throwing’s terrible. I can hit a little bit, but that was back in the negative fives. And I think I hit 500 Ron’s my junior, senior year.

But like, if you weren’t hitting like 30 back then. You had no power, um, could barely get a ball out of the infield with a wood bat. And I think what bat for a hitter is eyeopening. [00:49:00] Um, you can figure out who can hit with a wood and, and again, if you can’t drive the ball with a wood bat, you’re not gonna, you’re not a professional baseball player.

Like. And I was a roll guy for the otters. I fit that role. Well, I played all over the field. I didn’t catch, I didn’t pitch, but I played every other position and tag used me that way. It was great. Cause I never knew what position I was going to play when I showed up to the ballpark. And so I could be in Santa.

I could be in right. I could have been left. I could be short third, second. And so that made it fun too, but. Yeah, I think I got to stay in the present moment most of the time, just because I think I was fairly realistic about where I was at, even though I was a good player, but I was more of a role guy on the teams that I played on.

Dan Blewett: Gotcha. Yeah, no, there’s definitely something to be said for, I don’t know, having dreams, but also being in the present. The, and just finding a balance. Like, again, like for me, I don’t think I ever knew what it was like to be in the president until I kind of looked around and found that I was. [00:50:00] And so it was just like, everyone’s different in the way they get there.

I don’t know. It’s uh, Bobby, I mean, you, you saw your career dwindling when we were playing together, but, um, was there a moment where you felt like you were happiest in baseball?

Ryan Brownlee: Uh, I think the most fun I had playing baseball wish, but probably equate to happiness was playing. And, uh,

Dan Blewett: actually

Ryan Brownlee: after we played together, Where it was just playing.

I was hurt, but I was, we were just playing. We were trying to make the playoffs. We ended up getting knocked out the last day of the season, but

Dan Blewett: it was like,

you

Ryan Brownlee: go to you show up, you know, you’re kind of in a race. It like independent baseball

Dan Blewett: felt like the

Ryan Brownlee: purest form of baseball. Like the last

Dan Blewett: time

Ryan Brownlee: I felt like I was playing for something

Dan Blewett: was college,

Ryan Brownlee: like as, uh, playing for something, you know, when you’re in pro ball, when you’re drafted or playing minor league baseball.

You’re playing for yourself, which is hard to separate from playing out when you’re on a team,

Dan Blewett: like it’s hard to not

Ryan Brownlee: like you want to win and guys are [00:51:00] competing to

Dan Blewett: win, but essentially, like

Ryan Brownlee: if you go three for four, you had a great day at work. If you guys, even if he got blown out

Dan Blewett: 12 to two,

Ryan Brownlee: and that doesn’t resonate with people that compete that much, like it’s a very, it’s a different mindset when you’re in.

Affiliated minor league baseball. Then when you’re in independent baseball, because independent baseball is winning

Dan Blewett: college, baseball is winning

Ryan Brownlee: third win. If you’re not there, when you’re, you know, the coaches, aren’t there for you to advance your personal career,

Dan Blewett: obviously that is a goal

Ryan Brownlee: that they want to see all their players go on to play pro ball, but they’re there to win.

You get paid to win as a coach, the school you were it’s the school’s name on the front of your shirt. Like that’s the goal. And I mean to Dan’s question, it’s like

Dan Blewett: the.

Ryan Brownlee: It felt good to play, to win, like to play the game,

Dan Blewett: how you played on the

Ryan Brownlee: playground. Like you’re playing the beat, the other team, like the other guys, you don’t

Dan Blewett: like, you tried to beat them.

Ryan Brownlee: Whereas minor league baseball. It’s like, everybody knows everybody affiliated ball. You play the same team. [00:52:00] You know, you’re playing a series and. Like you’re yeah. You beat the other

Dan Blewett: team, but nobody cares about the playoffs. So you’re not gonna

Ryan Brownlee: play off race

Dan Blewett: guys gifts.

Ryan Brownlee: You’re, you’re basically playing to beat be better than the guy.

That’s the level

Dan Blewett: ahead of you at your position. Like you’re kind of competing with a, with a

Ryan Brownlee: ghost in that regard. Bobby D did I recruit you? Good enough? When I was at Iowa, did I do a good enough job recruiting him? My, yeah, I guess I don’t even know. So what I remember about they recruiting there were like four or five really good shortstops in your class.

Yeah, there were, you know, Kevin Hoff, you know, there are a couple others and I think he felt good if he, you got one of those guys. Now we ended up getting off and it’ll be in a third baseman, but I, you know, at the end of the day, you probably were one of the better guys out of that group. Jason White. Why it is, my lady was unbelievable.

Um, another good example of a guy who developed in college, um, and probably would have [00:53:00] played in the big leagues if he wanted to keep doing it. But good example, he wasn’t passionate about playing professional baseball. He was in big league camp with the Orioles and he hung it up. Like after spring training, like that was it like, yeah, he was like, aye.

I think I was at his wedding. So I

Dan Blewett: like, I know him really well. I would say

Ryan Brownlee: my

Dan Blewett: recruiting in high school was it’s different

Ryan Brownlee: and everyone asks me like the kids that are juniors. Like, you know, what did you, I go, look, I only want two things. I’m like, I don’t want to pay for school. Cause I couldn’t. And I had wanted to start right away and most college coaches will tell you that those two things don’t exist.

At

Dan Blewett: the division one level

Ryan Brownlee: and not going from, uh, out of state, you know, that’s where we ran into issues without a state difference. Um, it was still reasonable to go to Iowa, but you ran into issues with the end state out of state, but still one of the cheaper, big 10 schools, comparatively, you know, you look at how expensive.

Um, it is to go to big 10 schools, especially out of States, Iowa, and Nebraska, that the cheapest, [00:54:00] um, you know, so they, they do have a little bit of an advantage and you have so many Illinois kids that are just general students that go to Iowa. Um, you know, it’s a, it’s a big draw for an Illinois kid. Um, so at least it got us in the, it got us in the conversation.

You know, you think about the guys that. Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don’t get because either they don’t pan out or they sign, you know, you look at Casey Crosby. You know, we were one of the last ones with him. He goes commits to Illinois, but signs Michael Boden took a visit to, to us, ended up, come to Arizona state and was a first or second round draft pick the one, probably the couple that.

Hurt the most, a guy like Kyle Gibson from Indiana who ends up going to Mizzou. We spent so much time with him and then Michael Waka, his, his. He was born in Iowa city and we just didn’t do a good enough job financially, um, scholarship wise with them. But then you look up like if those two guys are in your rotation, [00:55:00] that makes a huge tip.

If Kyle gets them or in your college rotation, you feel pretty good about your chances on a weekend to win games. If those two guys are in your rotation, I feel good as a recruiter to see guys that you targeted, even

Dan Blewett: if they don’t come to the school, like

Ryan Brownlee: your eye

Dan Blewett: for talent is.

Ryan Brownlee: Is like, you always had this guy, always tracked guy guys after, you know, if it didn’t work out for whatever reason, not every kid you recruit, um, can’t be in a college recruiter is gonna thicken your scan because not every kid’s going to tell you.

Yes. Uh, if, if they did, you’d have a hundred kids on your roster, but not every kid’s going to tell you. Yes, but I loved tracking or even kids that I didn’t recruit very hard. To see how they turned out, because I think it gives you a better idea of where your evaluation skills are at and okay. He didn’t come, but he ended up being a good player or I didn’t recruit him enough.

And he ended up being a good player. Like [00:56:00] again, that’s where you have to self evaluate. Your own process as a recruiter is, um, not just on your own guys, cause you’re going to see those. Those are daily reminders. If you did a good job recruiting or not the guys on your roster, like you’re going to get reminded every day, if you did it right.

I made the right choices, but the other ones are interesting. The ones that you don’t get like to track those guys and right. I was lucky. I was, I was right more than wrong. You’re going to miss on, on kids. You miss on the extra factor. That’s that’s where, where you’re going to miss is you’re gonna miss on how hard a kid is willing to work.

When baseball starts punching them in the face because everybody gets punched in the face. Uh, you know, the scary part is, is you recruited kids that probably aren’t going to fail a lot and they may fail for the first time in their entire life. Um, and how do they handle it? But it happens not just on the athletic side.

It happens on the [00:57:00] academic side. You look at the amount of suicide rates at Ivy league schools. Um, Those are kids that fail academically for the first time in their entire life. And they don’t handle it well either, you know? So it happens in all walks of life in college. Uh, but yeah, you can always evaluate, I think you always have to evaluate your recruiting process when you’re in it.

Dan Blewett: So I want to, I want to go to a, a line of conversation, walk me down the line of conversation, but you’ve mentioned a couple of times that. Uh, about being hard on players, but how you appreciate it. You know, coach is being hard on you. One of the things I’ve seen on Twitter that I raised my eyebrow at are people getting real angry at the idea of punishment running.

They’re like, this is the worst. This is the dumbest idea. I think punishment running and just like physical punishments in general are like maybe a little overused, but I also don’t think they’re completely out of style. I don’t think they’re meaningless. Um, I think they can have their value and I think [00:58:00] sometimes people are just being a little soft about it, but what’s what is your take on punishment running?

Does it have its place? Is it overused? Is it not used enough? What do you think.

Ryan Brownlee: I think as a coach or, you know, this is where you have to get on page with your strength trainer and your athletic trainer. I come at it more from an over-training standpoint. Now, I think you have to find ways to keep people accountable.

However you want to do that. There needs to be accountability and you’re dealing, especially at the college level, you’re dealing with 18 to 23 year old. Kids that buy brain development are going to make stupid mistakes. Sometimes it’s just like, they’re, they’re not developed the prefrontal cortex still.

Isn’t all the way developed yet. They’re by nature and by brain development are going to make stupid choices sometimes. So there has to be some accountability because if not, then. The inmates are running the asylum and that’s where you lose it. [00:59:00] So I still think there’s, there’s a value to accountability.

Like, however you want to keep people accountable, then keep them accountable. But I think from a training standpoint, you have to see where you’re at during the year to understand that okay. Is a punishment run gun to get us what we need to get out of it from a training standpoint. I think if you’re, if you’re in a calendar cycle part of the year where you can train hard, then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but you have to explain why you’re doing it.

Um, No. Why, why is there accountability? I started to turn some things at the end, sorry guys. You know, I think as you get older, you get a different perspective. And so, you know, we would, we would ask the guys like, Hey, if, if a guy’s late, what’s the punishment. I think that’s where you can, 10 can turn it around with this generation of kids is allow them to make it.

They’re like, okay, that’s fine. We might have somebody [01:00:00] late. What do you, what do you all feel like? Is the, the correct punishment for that? If we have a guy that forgets his Jersey, what’s the correct punish what? What’s the accountability factor. And so you put it on them. So then when it does happen, Hey, this is what you guys decided.

Yeah, like this is your program. Just as much as my program, this is what everybody came to do. The decision on that. This was going to be the best thing for the program, from an accountability standpoint. And then it has value to your team. And it’s not just, okay, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do a punishment run because I said, it’s, we’re gonna do a punishment, Ron, because that’s what everybody decided was the proper accountability for, for this decision.

So I think that’s a way you can, it still has value. I think anything has value as long as you put a why to, why you’re doing it. Um, I, you know, and I, tiger woods is still working out until yeah. Pukes, like, is, is that a good thing? It works for [01:01:00] him. Man, you can say whatever you want, but I don’t think you can discount the fact that yeah, it still works for an individual or still works in a team setting.

And that’s what the, what Bobby talked about. You can’t speak in absolutes. Yeah. Like there’s no black or white with any of those decisions. Like you can’t speak in absolutes with any of it. It’s all gray area because the person that says you should never do punishment runs. I guarantee there’s a program out there right now that does punishment runs that probably they won the national championship.

Or again, you can, you can look at examples from either side of an argument and you can get confirmation bias on anything that’s out there. It’s funny. That tiger woods thing you mentioned. I don’t know. I don’t know if you jumped in my Twitter argument about, sorry. That was dr. Rose. I apologize that went that one in like in a direction, but I also did, I did apologize to him.

Like I love their [01:02:00] stuff and OnBase you. But it’s

Dan Blewett: my TPI. I think he does

Ryan Brownlee: well that that’s the OnBase. You and my TPI are the same. My TPI is the golf portion of it. And then was the baseball portion of it. But I was with you on that. Like, I don’t think you can discount that. Okay. If tiger wants to work out till he pukes lets the guy work out till he pukes, like he felt like if that’s going to help him win a major championship, whether you agree with it or not.

If tiger woods feels like that’s going to help him win his next major tournament by all means, work out till you puke in no bucket. Like go do it. And that’s like the experience fact, right? You’d take in the experience factor of a baseball. Twitter’s big in this, like Albert poodles tells you to swing down and then you’ve got the, the other guys are like, well, that’s not really what he’s doing.

It’s like, okay. But. Albert poo wholes is better than you at

Dan Blewett: baseball.

Ryan Brownlee: So if he’s saying this is what he does, and this is how he thinks you need to put some stock into that, [01:03:00] whether you agree with it or not. If Alan poodles told you to ride a unicycle three miles a day, because it’s going to help your balance, you at least need to at least need to entertain that that might benefit somebody somewhere.

And this is where you’re going from average performance to peak performance to, to get your performance. That’s from an average area to a peak area, you’re going to have to do something outside that is abnormal. And so yes, the general population is going to look at that and be like, well, that’s not right.

Well, if it weren’t, you see it with doctors, you see it with musicians, you see it with athletes. The best at their craft, do things that are off. Like that’s how they get to that level, because they’re doing things that not everybody does. Yes. They have some God given ability and they have talents. But to take that talent to an area that nobody hardly gets to, which is the elite level, you have to do things [01:04:00] differently because if not, you’re going to be like everybody else.

That that’s just again and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with being average and being like everybody else, it’s hard to be elite. But to get that to an elite level, you’re going to have to do some things that not everybody is doing. I mean, look at Trevor Bauer. No, Trevor, I think Trevor Bowers, I’m sorry, but Trevor Bauer is a guy that couldn’t have been a multi-sport athlete.

No, and yes, I, we all love multi-sport athletes, but Trevor Bauer’s a guy that would not be pitching to the level that he is. If he was a multi-sport athlete. He got really good at throwing a baseball and he understands the tech side, you know, a little bit like Bryson de Shambo now on the tech side of things, you know, de Shambo, same thing.

If he didn’t do what he did along the way.

Dan Blewett: And you want to explain real quick who he is. I just. I just came into awareness of who he is, but do you want to, he’s

Ryan Brownlee: a golfer and guys don’t like him. He’s a little bit [01:05:00] like Trevor Bauer, you know, he’s going to say things that come to his mind and that’s going to ruffle some feathers and that’s okay.

Like it works for both those guys. They’re going to ruffle some feathers, but he, he doesn’t win bursts industry and Bo doesn’t win that championship last week. If he’s not a freak and what he does, he put 40 pounds of muscle on eight. He. Gets readings on every golf swing. All of his irons are the same length and same weight, so he can take the same swing every time.

Which for me is, that’s a great idea. I didn’t even know that was an option to get golf clubs, the same size and the same weight. So he gets, he takes his same swing. No, the book that he read talks about a one plane swing, he takes, tries to take the same swing every time, which should be right. That’s the right thought process, right.

For him, try to take the same swing every time, regardless of where you’re at on the golf course. And just to let your clubs play the di the different lengths, like for me, it’s fascinating.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. My buddy was telling me about him last [01:06:00] week and I was like, that all makes a good amount of sense because we were talking about.

Arm actions. Cause I actually, I actually was in like a Twitter argument with Lucas. Giuliano’s his dad. Yeah. We talked about this on our shelf. He was mostly politely. He was mostly politely coming at me about saying, look, I think. I think these short arm actions like these very short arm actions of which, um, G Alito Bauer or some of these other guys, I think it’s a really, it’s an early it’s too early to judge.

Whether that’s a good thing longterm,

Ryan Brownlee: we don’t have any data. We don’t know from Tennessee that the lefty from Tennessee, very short arm action.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. We just don’t know. Like, if, if guys start changing to that, like they’ve always thrown like a little longer and they start to really shorten up. We might have a pile of arms.

That are blown out in five years or we might not. We don’t. No. Yeah. My, my, my only point was like, okay. If, if this weird way of throwing was natural, we would have done it by now. Like there would’ve been more guys over the years, who’ve just [01:07:00] naturally figured out like, Hey, this is a great way to throw, but we haven’t.

We have essentially just coached ourselves into that today. That was my only point. So we went back and forth. He was mostly polite, but it was like, kind of, I could just, I’m just gonna irritate at me, but, um, But yeah,

Ryan Brownlee: my brands are supposed to do that. Right. Like dads are supposed to stick up for their kids.

Dan Blewett: It’s off

Ryan Brownlee: a few people, probably not the place to do it. Not a big way. You’re going to get it. But like, yeah, but sometimes a parent, I think again, I have kids probably look at my kids as older than my wife does. My wife, I think will always see my children as five and six and seven years old. Like I, I don’t like, I view them, you know, I.

Probably much harder on them than, you know, at times she has her own things that she’s tough on. I probably view them as 15 and 17 and I don’t think she ever went and she’s not supposed to, I don’t think moms are supposed to ever look at their kids as being older than, than five or six or seven years.

Dan Blewett: No. Uh,

Ryan Brownlee: why [01:08:00] was Jim Brown? Lee is watching on Periscope. I’d like to know how he viewed you when you were you and your brother. He probably when you were five and 65, I looked at you guys as 30 year olds. He’s no he’s stories. Um, you know, Tim and I are different, you know, even though we have similar baseball paths, um, way different personalities and way different, probably from an accountability standpoint with raising us, I, I was going to push all kinds of boundaries and, um, didn’t and, um, I probably was a handful for my mom and dad at times, because I was going to push boundaries, but that also helped me later on in life to be an individual and, um, not conform.

Cause, cause again, conformity for me, I would have never played at a past high school. Um, if I conform to what everybody else was doing.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. Well that back to the story with G Alito and how it tied to Shambo is that. So I was, I think I was pretty clear, [01:09:00] like I am not criticizing what Julie is doing. He’s a pro athlete, just like with tiger woods, if he thinks this is the thing to do, by all means do it.

I was just saying like, for all the impressionable kids and parents who are watching this, should I be reteaching my kid the way to throw. I’m saying let’s, let’s wait. Like we don’t really know yet it works for him. He should do it. If that’s what, like he’s a pro athlete

Ryan Brownlee: for everyone else.

Dan Blewett: I think the verdict is out.

That was my main point.

Ryan Brownlee: And, and you hit the nail on the head, like, okay, somebody who’s 25 or 26 or 27 years

Dan Blewett: old can make choices for

Ryan Brownlee: that. But, but let, let a eight year old be as athletic and let them do it natural. I, I think I’m on the same page with that. Like,

Dan Blewett: And I do a billion trend shortening

Ryan Brownlee: on axis stuff.

And I thought I liked it cause he was bringing light to the core velocity belt, which I think the core velocity belt for pitching in for hitting is one of the best training devices that are out there. I think it allows people to feel what they’re doing through their movements. It allows them to feel their stronger position.

So [01:10:00] I’m a big fan of the core velocity belt. Um, so I liked the fact that he was bringing light to that and. I don’t know if he was consciously making that change to his arm action as a, as much, he made some changes to his lower half, which led to some upper body changes. Because again, I think we’ve all been through it.

The more you start thinking about the throwing motion, you’re going to run into some issues with the throwing motion. The more you think about it. If his dad’s listening, I just want to say something like don’t screw them up. We’re in the playoffs playoffs. Don’t screw this guy up. Like we need him. We, as in the Y as a, as a white Sox fan, Tim Braley would say like, Hey, where are you at?

In the front office? Like, it drives them crazy when people say like, Oh, we he’s like, are they on, are they in the dugout? Like they’re saying, we like, are they making, are they making decisions? I’ve suffered as much as all these guys were waiting for the waiting, listening to Cubs fans, you and Chris miles.

These are [01:11:00] just for years listening to the Cubs fans. Now it’s the white side. Don’t screw this up, Lucas. You, well, you throw, however you feel like you need to throw, but he’s.

Dan Blewett: Yeah, but with the D Shambo, the golfer guy, he, uh, Like there was never an anatomical way to swing a golf club. There was never like, you know, like humans have been throwing things for a long time.

And that was part of my like point like pitching mechanics are an extension of the way humans have thrown rocks and thrown all sorts of stuff. But with golf, as I was talking about this with my buddy, he was telling me about this golfer. It’s like the way we just decided to do stuff is just historical.

The same as the way baseball has done a lot of stupid stuff. Like why are there all the golf clubs shorter? Or different lengths. No one knows like, why do you have to do this way? No one knows just traditional or is it really, it seems to make a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense to me. What a lot of what this guy’s doing, like he’s taking different, like why not make every club the same length?

Ryan Brownlee: I didn’t seem like they’re all the same way.

Dan Blewett: I don’t see any reason not to. Like

Ryan Brownlee: we’ll either be [01:12:00] like, yeah, like a hitter. Okay. One at bat. You’re gonna go up with a 34 31 and then next to bat, you’re gonna go up with a 30, 28, which is good for training. Like we can get into the overload underload aspect of training, but not in a competitive.

Environment like a hitter would never do that. Go up different bats and, or, you know, you’re not asking a pitcher to throw yes. Training different weights, but it’d be like asking a pitcher in a competitive environment that throw a five ounce ball and then an eight ounce ball and then a two ounce ball.

Like you’re not going to do that. So,

Dan Blewett: yeah. Um, so I, I got a good question here on YouTube for you. So one of, uh, I know this fellow Connor what’s up, man. Um, he says he’s a travel coach. And a college coach has been asking him about a specific player. Should he tell the player, this coach is coming to watch him or not tell him so that he’s not like extra nervous and you can kind of like play relaxed.

What do you, what do you, what is, what is the coach’s role there? When they start to get college recruiters asking them

[01:13:00] Ryan Brownlee: as a coach, you need to know your athlete, their CA can they handle it? Um, I think with anything with coaching, you give your players as much as they can handle. Um, I. What, what age group?

I mean, the age range for me, I think is important on

Dan Blewett: that

Ryan Brownlee: from a college recruiter standpoint, I didn’t want kids to know I was showing up. I wanted to see them in the national environment. I didn’t want them to know I was there. Um, maybe I’m different on that, where you can see how they handle it. The lights were on. I didn’t want any outside influence on how they were going to show up to the ballpark that day.

I wanted to see them in their natural environment without external factors, because I think you’re going to see their true self then, um, You know, again, and that travel coach, like what’s the end goal for that kid? Does he want to play in college? Well, you know, it’s not your choice, which college is going to be best for [01:14:00] them, that it’s going to be the kid’s choice and the college that recruit them.

So again, I think if you say, Hey, so-and-so is coming to watch you play that day, then you have to have a different conversation with the kid, like, okay, so-and-so’s coming to watch you today. Don’t change a thing. And I would use that with our, our college guys. I think it’s the same thing for college guys.

Why tell them that pro Scouts are shown? I mean, it’s the same thing. I wasn’t going to sit there and tell a lie. One of my players that, Hey, you know, Todd Corey, L from the giants is coming to watch you today. Or Andy stack from the reds is coming to watch you today. Why? Cause, cause again, if. Every Scout’s gonna like somebody different, you know, if you get 10 Scouts or 10 recruiters in a room, and this is what parents and coaches need to understand at the youth level and travel level.

If you get 10 coaches or 10 Scouts in a room and line up 10 [01:15:00] players, they’re all gonna like them different in different ways. Everybody’s eyes see things different. You know, some programs recruit differently, some organizations recruit there differently. So again, why, why does that no matter who’s showing up and who’s not showing up because they’re, at the end of the day, they’re going to make their own decisions, whether they like the kid or not.

So, yeah. Yeah. You can tell them, but you also have to know your kids and also like Kenny can handle it. Um, why put any undue pressure? Um, and why would you want him acting different? Just because shouldn’t he be, shouldn’t he be trying to do his best and be at his best every day, regardless of who’s in the ballpark.

And that’s what the good ones figure out that the ones that play on TV every day, figure out that it doesn’t matter. Who’s behind the screen watching them what’s going on with them. And so

Dan Blewett: after. Okay. So say he just keeps doing himself. Coach shows up, watches the kid play after that. Does he tell him like, Hey, you’ve had some Scouts, you know, talking to me about you, one of them was there.

I mean, when, when did, does he [01:16:00] need to disclose it or is it the cop

Ryan Brownlee: when you disclose it as when that coach wants contact to be made with the kid? Not, not going to watch, but once that recruiter says, Hey, can I get hit? Hey, have him call me? Then I think that’s where the conversation needs to be had because now there are, now, now you have to ask, Hey, do you want the recruiting process to start?

And that’s where you have to get the parents of all three, if I’m coaching a 15 year old kid. And that coach talks to me like, Hey, can I get so and so to call me, that’s where the travel coach has to be like, Hey, I’ve got to talk to his parents first and I need to ask them if they want the recruiting process to start or not.

Um, and, and that’s where you can be the bridge until, until their contact trying to be made on the college’s side. I don’t even think it’s a bridge even need to cross because then people are just going to be disappointed because then it’s like, Hey, so and so from [01:17:00] so-and-so school showed up and they haven’t reached out to me or they haven’t asked about me, what’s going on.

And then you’re creating, again, those social comparisons. That don’t need to be there because you’re giving information that doesn’t even need to be talked about until somebody actually wants to actively recruit somebody.

Dan Blewett: Right. Gotcha. Okay. No, I think that’s really helpful because yeah, I think that, I wonder if I even knew the right answer to that back in the day.

Cause yeah, you start to get.

Ryan Brownlee: Contacting

Dan Blewett: coaches. And you’re like, you’re like, should I tell the kid? Cause it’s exciting for him. It’s like, Hey, this is like really positive. A coach is asking about you, but yeah, you gotta figure out whether it’s in the best interest of them. So

Ryan Brownlee: I’d have guys here. Hey coach.

Um, you know, what do you think, uh, about my prospects of being drafted in this draft? I’d be like, Hey, is anybody sent you any cards? Cause they usually come to my office and. Not one organization has sent you a card. And again, that’s not to be mean. That’s to be honest, that’s real. Hey,

Dan Blewett: Bobby Stevens,

Ryan Brownlee: doc, we’ll get your heartbroken about the draft.

You haven’t filled out one card [01:18:00] and not one scout has tried to interview or your contact you. So like let’s pump the brakes here on pro ball. And again, let’s try to dominate the level we’re at. If you’re good enough, somebody is probably going to give you your chance, but why, if nobody’s even contacting you.

You’re just putting yourself in a terrible Headspace, because now you’re focusing on things that are out of your control. You can’t control. If someone drafts you, you can’t control. If someone recruits you, that’s out of your control. So why are you even concerned with it?

Dan Blewett: Yeah, I have a question for you, Bobby,

Ryan Brownlee: did you like that, Bobby?

Dan Blewett: I love

Ryan Brownlee: that. Just again, we have a hard time with being honest now, and, and again, this is where the mortal enemy things come into play. Like you have to choose side. Well, that’s not. Just because someone is being honest and truthful with you doesn’t mean they don’t like you. It actually means they probably love you deep down inside.

If someone’s being honest and truthful with you, they love you way more than [01:19:00] somebody. That’s gonna tell you what you want to hear. Waymo. It’s a lot harder and yes, people get bunched up about it. But again, people, I think you have to appreciate, you don’t need it coming from every direction, but you need a couple people that are going to be.

Brutally honest with you and yeah, it may hurt your feelings. Um, but it’s probably coming from a really genuine place that that person loves you a lot and wants to see what’s best for you.

Dan Blewett: So now that you’ve left, you’ve left college baseball. You’re no longer a coach. You can answer one of my big questions of objectively.

How do you feel about calling pitches for players?

Ryan Brownlee: Who’s going to bring this up. I put it in my notes. Um, again, it’s all gray area, uh,

Dan Blewett: which I mostly agree with, which I do say

Ryan Brownlee: it again. I didn’t, I just, I saw the initial tweet and then I didn’t deep dive in. What age range of kids are we talking about?

[01:20:00] Cause I’ll okay. And I’ll walk through it. I was lucky I caught

Dan Blewett: thrown out. I

Ryan Brownlee: caught, I caught in little league and probably cause that was the one position that I would actually receive. Okay. I couldn’t throw like John McCall who’s passed away now coached for my dad a little bit. And he was okay with me, skipping throws to second base.

He goes, Hey, just get rid of it as quick as you can. And one hop it. So I got good at one hopping. I was just lucky that we had a division one shortstop that was nine years old. Robbie can end up playing at Notre Dame and Arizona state that could catch the ball. Like, I don’t think you can do this with every little league team because the catcher may one hop and your shortstop or second base may not be able to catch it.

But. For me, it was perfect. Cause I could get rid of it quick. And so I would throw guys out, but I did get to call pitches sometimes. Um, and then wasn’t good enough to catch in high school, um, which was lucky for me that I switched positions. Um, but coach Merkel called every pitch at Memorial high [01:21:00] school.

And again, you can’t discount the fact that we only lost five games in four years. So like that worked for him college. Um, you know, my dad would call pitches a little bit here and there, but catchers would run it. I let guys at Western, if they were, could handle it would run it. And then if it got tight would start to call pitches and the thought process on this, um, with the 18 to 23 year olds now, um, and some coaches will tell you, Hey, they gotta go to class.

So it’s not their responsibility to deep dive into the scouting report on the teams that we’re playing. Because that’s my job as a coach to call the pitches because I’m going to be the one, doing all the research, watching all the synergy. So I, I’m going to have a way better understanding of how to get guys out much more than he is, but I felt from a flow standpoint for pitchers and catchers, way better to let them run it.

And then if you had to call [01:22:00] pitches and tight situations, because what I didn’t want was for the catcher. If we got beat to go back to his dorm room or his apartment, and just completely beat himself up all night because he made wrong pitch calls. And, and that, that was the thought process for me is that I needed to, at times I think the coach has to take responsibility for that part of it to take ownership and take it off their players because you, you could see it with guys.

It could negatively affect their performance. Through pitch calling and then what carry over in the offensively for them because they couldn’t get out of their own way. And they were beating themselves up about making bad pitch calls. So again, I think there’s all gray area with that. Um, yes. I think world, the catcher and pitcher should run every pitch of every game because I think the flow is better.

I think you throw more strikes. I think you play better defense with it, but it’s not realistic to think that 18 to 23 year olds can handle. Every pitch of [01:23:00] every game. I think they need a break sometimes. Now there’s nothing wrong with letting them run it. And if they make some mistakes of talking it in between innings, I guess I was all over the map with how to do things.

Like there was no black and white, so yeah, sometimes we would run the game. Sometimes the catcher would run the game. Sometimes it was a mix. I think it depends on your personnel. And how much they can handle. And again, it’s about winning games. So if this is going to help you win games, if the catcher calling his own game and the pitcher chime in when need to, is going to help you win at the college and pro level, then let them do it.

If it’s not going to help you win games, then you have to make an adjustment.

Dan Blewett: So, I guess I like to go back to, to two points you made. So, first one, I’ve heard that argument about synergy and about like co kids have to go to go to class all day. They don’t have time to deep. Hey, does I really take that much deep diving to get a scouting report?

Do you want [01:24:00] hitter and B, why can’t the coach do his deep dive. It’s always going to come down to a couple actionable things like, Hey guy kinda kind of long swing, beat him with breaking balls down. Why can’t the coach deep dive during the day, say, okay, here’s the summary of what we needed to tell our catchers, Hey, 20 minute meeting.

Here’s kind of what we think and let’s go through it. I mean,

Ryan Brownlee: let me ask, let me ask you this from a, just a simplicity standpoint. I think as you’re breaking down another team and how to get their hitters out, you’re going to look at if they swing at the first pitch. Right. Who are the guys in the lineup that are going to ambush the first patch?

So that’s the first place you need to look. How many times does that cat swing first pitch? You know, if it’s 90%, then if we get into a big situation, we’re going to have to, to probably throw off speed. First pitch. Now, what do they like in their hitters counts? That’s the next place you go to? Again, if the pitcher can execute fine, if not, then, [01:25:00] then we’re going to the pitcher strengths.

And then how are you going to finish with two strikes? Cause there’s a variety of ways you’re going to do that. Are you going to spend in the dark? Are you going to go hard in, um, you know, I think those are the three main areas. And so I agree with you a little bit on there. Like if you stick to those three components, like, do they swing first pitch?

How are we going to pitch them in big, big situations? Um, and then how are we going to pitch them with two strikes and then cross counts? I mean, the one ones, I think we all agree that the one, one count is the most important and which is why the change up for me. And I think my dad will agree. I think the change that the one, one change up is the great equalizer, especially when you’re dealing with ultra.

Ultra elite bat speed, which at the college level, you’re going to run into a lead bat speed. And at the pro level, you’re going to run into elite bat speed. The high school is, which is why most high school guys don’t throw change. Ups is. They’re they’re a better high school pitcher. Who’s going to go pitch in college.

[01:26:00] His changeup is in the hitter’s bat speed. So, which is why they’re not going to throw it, but it’s the great equalizer at the college and pro level. So the one, one change up. If you can get it in for a strike or anything, off-speed get it in for a strike. Uh, I think that’s the great equalizer and that’s where you’re going to see elite pitchers at the college and pro level.

Is, they can throw something different than they, when they need to and type situations, they can throw something else besides a fastball. And you see at the pro level there’s guys throwing 97, 98, getting hit around the ballpark because their command is not good and they can’t mix anything else in Bobby was a hitter.

I was a hitter hitter, or not smart. If you give them multiple things to think about, you’ve got a chance as a pitcher, you have a chance, so you can simplify the scouting report.  level

Dan Blewett: can usually time a bullet.

Ryan Brownlee: They wouldn’t be there if they could. They wouldn’t be there. They get weeded out in the interview process.

If you don’t have good [01:27:00] bat speed, probably not getting an interview to a, an upper level college or a professional team. You’re not getting there. Like that’s that’s bare. Bottom floor is back a few boxes, check a few

Dan Blewett: athletic boxes before they start.

Ryan Brownlee: Good between the years. Yes. Point of entry is going to be bad speed because I don’t care if you’re a new scout or an old scout, you can show up at the ballpark and see if a guy can swing faster.

Not, yeah, you can see if a guy can run fast. Um, the high gauge on the mountain takes a little bit of time. But if you’ve been doing it long enough, um, yeah, you need all the metrics and you need to write all this stuff down, but the guys that have been scouting forever and recruiting forever, they’ve forgotten more than, than most people know.

And that’s why, like, they’ve seen so much, like people can make fun of those guys, all they want because they’re older, but they have value in the game because the amount of games and reps they’ve seen, and they’ve seen that. You know what I saw, Reggie [01:28:00] Jackson hit this dude reminds me of Reggie Jackson.

You can’t discount the fact that that’s right for that scout or this college recruiter. You know, Eric, Snyder’s one of my favorites. I’ve been known a long time. Eric Snyder can walk in the ballpark and figure out that, okay, that dude can play because of the amount of games that he’s seen. And you can’t discount the experience factor when it comes from scouting recruiting, you can’t like, I know the metrics and all that stuff.

That’s new is important. You can’t discount somebody who wants 10,000 baseball games and watched a million players, like things are gonna, they’re gonna recognize things more than somebody else does.

Dan Blewett: And then, so my second thing is you discussed how, like your high school was a super duper winning program.

And so pitch calling worked for him. But the question is, how do we know that? I mean, like what, what percentage would you even say that that is as a factor for a good high school program? Like they’re probably dominant for. A laundry list of reasons and pitch calling is what the, you know, like the, the [01:29:00] bugger on the face of

Ryan Brownlee: Well, it is, and I have the picture is over my shoulder. I have two frame pictures. One is me and Peter Gammons, uh, in the Cape league. Cause Brian Bridges, who was a scouting director, the braids knew him. He was our pitching coach at the time. So I have a signed picture with Peter Gammons and then the. The state championship team, but that team was good because we had a guy named John Ambrose who would have pitched in the big leagues if he wasn’t afraid of flying, but he was slow low to mid nineties as a high school kid.

Um, And we won a lot of games because he was our best pitcher, but also our best position player. He played third base and then we had a, a third baseman John Sartori that was a touch and feel throwback would, would like triple pump, um, that we’d throw after John through. So like they were a good combo, but yeah, there were, I agree with that part.

Um, coach Merkel proudly could have let his son, Sean run the game and we [01:30:00] probably still would’ve. One as many games as we did. I mean, yeah, what’s first the chicken or the egg, right?

Dan Blewett: Yeah. You know, and like, especially with high schoolers, you know, you talk started talking about where do you even get this guy in your report?

You know, his coach just calling the pitches. I mean, he’s seen this Johnny new freshmen for the first time, just the same as everyone else. Like. What’s the difference when your team’s going to just slug it out and play great D and throw a lot of strikes. It’s like pitch calling. I would love if there’s, that’s my thing, pitch calling is there’s so many uncertainties.

Like you, you try to choose the right pitch, but it’s also like there’s no objectively correct pitch. Then you try to execute the pitch. Then you try to wonder what, like at the hitters, even like guessing, like, you know, there’s so many. Improbable improbables. Yeah. And so then you’re like, well, if we just had a robot or we just did it out of a bingo machine, is it significantly better than not doing it that way?

Probably. But like how much even like, is it like, it’d be fascinating to have some sort of way to figure [01:31:00] this out.

Ryan Brownlee: We tracked run runs per game. We, we ended up tracking it. So like, that was, that’s what we went off. We would experiment with it. Okay. Let’s let him run it for awhile. Let’s let somebody else run it for a while.

So we would experiment a little bit with, with total run scored over an extended period of time. See what the difference was. And I know speed of the game is a factor now, like length of game. Obviously it’s going to take a lot longer, somebody else’s calm pitches rather than the catcher and pitcher running next.

But yeah, that was the one thing we did track was like total run scored, just to get

Dan Blewett: what’d you find what’d you find.

Ryan Brownlee: And again, it depended, there was a lot of variables with it. I’m a guy,

Dan Blewett: but everything depends.

Ryan Brownlee: It depends on the catcher for me. It’s the catcher that all hinges. If you feel comfortable with your catcher to be able to do it, let them do it.

If you don’t feel comfortable with your catcher doing it and you don’t trust them, then you’ve got to take it over. Like you’ve got to trust your [01:32:00] catcher to be able to do it. And

Dan Blewett: when you’re watching,

Ryan Brownlee: like, if you’re. I mean, I played shortstop, so like I see every pitch call and. Like, you

Dan Blewett: know, when you think

like

Ryan Brownlee: this is a bad pitch call, like, why are we calling it?

Why

Dan Blewett: would

Ryan Brownlee: it even cross your mind that call that pitch right now? And you don’t think that very often,

Dan Blewett: but when you

Ryan Brownlee: see it, you know, for the most part I see sign, it’s what I would have expected to be called 99% of the time, whether the coach is calling or the catcher there’s calling, but there always are like probably a handful of pictures.

Dan Blewett: Game

Ryan Brownlee: two, three, four pitches were. I’m like, yeah, let’s shake. Let’s shake, shake. Don’t throw that  Oh, two Oh two for me was the one that used to drive me crazy. Like you have a picture that wastes a fast ball, nowhere near the zone, because they’re told to do that. So a hitter’s never gonna swing at that pitch.

And. [01:33:00] Now what usually happened is the next pitch is not in the zone either because a pitcher has tried to vary too much. We ended up just trying to, to make it good enough to hit, but we wanted guys to try to finish guys off. Oh. To not waste a pitch. Now I think in a big situation, you may have to use OTU as a setup.

And so how are you going to do that? You know, different hitters in the lineup. How are you going to set them up? Oh, if, if we have a runner at third base, like if it’s, if necessary. If we have second and third or bases loaded, where we have to pitch to a guy, how are you going to pitch them in big situations where you can’t work around them?

But for me, I just think guys overthink OTU and then it’s fall, it’s fall two, then fall three. Then we walked a guy. Rather than, okay, let’s get extremely competitive. OTU here and let’s try to finish somebody off because it keeps the pitcher in an aggressive mentality then too. And you know that how many times you get away with a, uh, an OTU pitch because you threw in aggressively and maybe made a [01:34:00] mistake, but because you threw the pitch aggressively and within 10, it worked out.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. And I think  is a one of those counts where you start thinking outside of the bat. So one of the things I learned in my second half of my pro career was just how intently I had to watch and like, read all the information, like the way he swung, where the pitch was. Like, every pitch is like, okay, I got this amount of information.

Just like playing poker, then you make the next batch. Okay. I got this amount of information. Then when you get to OTU, you’re like, All right. Let’s drag this dude out and it’s like, you throw your page. There’s a way. And you’re like, I’m gonna throw my best pitch. And you’re like, wait, that’s not the right pitch.

Like, you still need to continue to follow. Like, don’t throw your notes away. I feel like that happens a lot of times. And it happens with youth kids all the time where they’re like, they throw two fastballs by a kid. And then when they do, they go to their curveball. Cause they’re like, it’s strike out time.

It’s like, no. Throw a third basketball throw

Ryan Brownlee: bird basketball. Yeah. They’re not good enough to adjust. We would talk to pitchers and catchers all the time about that. Like Kyle, even the better college guys [01:35:00] probably can’t make a mid at bat adjustment. They might be able to make an at bat to in a bad judgment.

But admit it bad adjustment. Like keep sticking it to him there. Well then how many times did he throw a really good breaking ball? And then it’s like, okay, I’m going to throw this next one way better. And then it’s spiked or you hang it because you try to do too much with it. It happens all the time with pitchers.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. And you get to, you get to that moment where you’re excited and something’s going to happen and you try harder. And that was the big thing. My college coach always said, cause boa, you can’t try harder. It’s

Ryan Brownlee: not a try hard game. It’s literally a game,

Dan Blewett: right? It’s an inverse relationship. The harder you try, the more you suck and the more the baseball gods just like punch you, punch you.

Ryan Brownlee: And I do love the fact that you brought baseball guides to the forefront. What I love the name of that I do. Cause I’m, I’m a believer in karma and that stuff too. I do think the game knows. And I think the game, you know, historically and has taken care of people that do things the right way. And so I do think [01:36:00] there is some karma and some baseball guides, um, in our world.

I think it takes care of it. Well,

Dan Blewett: yeah, I agree. And I think it’s also, it’s also just the way you. I think it’s the way you interpret good and bad luck. I mean, just like anything like you, we all know people who’ve had, like the worst stuff happened to them, but they still have like a positive Alex, like yeah.

You know, this horrible thing happened. And to me personally, but good things came of it. Just another person could be like, yeah, I just had like a really rough one, two years, you know, it just depends on the sunny side. And obviously like with. And that’s my frustration with parents and players, uh, with all the bad luck with umpires.

And it’s like parents, you should want your kids to get screwed over by empires and games because it sets them up for all the other times in life. Like if they learn to handle as well, like just like, you’re just going to get rung up. Sometimes it’s not gonna be fair. Uh, that’s setting themselves up to.

Handle all of life’s bumps and bruises along the way. Like these are the times where you should not be howling at the [01:37:00] empires, right. To give your kid what they deserve. Just like life is always going to be unfair. And that’s what basically teaches you, you know? And it’s funny that you, you know, my. Coach in summer ball.

He was the one that like brought the baseball gods up for the first time. I’d never heard it before when I was like 20, but you know, like we were always a hard nose team and he’s like, there you go. Like, you play the game the right way, the blooper add, hop, like the baseball gods take care of you. But at the same time, if you’re really paying attention, you got a lot of bad hops that hurt you too.

You’re like, what are the baseball gods then? But you just like highlight the good stuff, stuff and you know, like, uh, so. But yeah, I mean, you just see the players trajectory over time when they do the game, do things the right way and they treat their teammates. Well, I mean, just like Annie McCauley, who was my manager at Evansville, if I hadn’t like played hard for him and, and just been a good player underneath him, he would never have stuck his neck out for me and extended my career because I absolutely needed him to make calls for me.

When I came back from my second surgery. And that was just like, if I hadn’t done things earlier my career for [01:38:00] sure. And that second surgery, cause no one would assign me and he just like kept, kept calling, kept calling. I was going to go to Gary and play for Taggart. Uh, that was my next stop until I got a call.

So.

Ryan Brownlee: Um, Jeff Duncan talked about that. He was like, you need a sponsor. You know, when you get an organized baseball, you need a sponsor, you need someone to the sponsor, you know, Jamie Carolyn, same thing.  guys that maybe shouldn’t have made it that made it, like they had somebody pulling for them behind the scenes because they handle things the right way.

And if you’re not doing things right, I don’t think you should. You shouldn’t expect people to try to help now that the world doesn’t owe you anything and life doesn’t owe you anything. So like, I don’t think you should expect someone to help, but yeah, people are going to be more willing to help you, if you are doing things the right way and you’re helping other people, like it does come back to you.

Um, but if you’re not, then you shouldn’t expect somebody to help you out. It’s like being a bad teammate. And that’s the other thing you [01:39:00] tried to tell guys in those rooms, like, look around like, You’re not going to have a real long list of people that can, you can put on a reference. I’m probably going to be one of them, but these are the other guys around you that are, we’re gonna help you get jobs because you, you’re not going to know anybody.

So if you don’t handle it right, when you try it, ask somebody for something, once you leave the baseball arena, good luck getting them there. I even call you back because he didn’t handle it. Right. And you were a bad teammate.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. And even with the college recruiting stuff, I mean, like I, and Bobby, I’m sure you’re the same way.

There’s people who it’s like, I’ll call everyone and I’ll just like, please give this kid a chance. Like you won’t regret it. You just absolutely won’t regret it. Great family, parents get it, the kids. Awesome. You’d love to have 30 this kid on your team. And that’s, you know, they don’t ever ask for that.

They just like, that’s the kind of kid they are. And as a coach, you do everything you can for them. And, uh, yeah, you want to help, you want to help those that deserve to be helped. [01:40:00] And that’s why parents just need to know, like in the, in the stands, like just sit there and be really positive. Let the empires just leave him alone.

Let the coaches Lima alone, just like be a really good positive influence in the, in the bleachers. And that’s the best thing you can do as a parent. It’s like stay out of it and just be really positive.

Ryan Brownlee: Yup. It’s hard though. It’s hard from a parenting standpoint because you, you want what’s best for your kids.

And so it’s tough. You don’t want to see your kids struggle, but at the end of the day, you need to let them struggle. Not again, not every day, but they need to taste that because they’re going to taste it at some point, they’re going to taste the struggle. Okay. At some point I would much rather my kids have to taste it early.

And we taught my daughter hates it. Nora, I talk about grit because she’s working through things right now and she’s, she has some success. I’m like, yeah, you’re building your grip muscle. Like you’re figuring out that it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be. And [01:41:00] you actually accomplished something.

So now the next time you have to make those decisions that makes it easier because if you never get tested like that at an early age, Then you’re going to back off, you know, if you’ve never had to really test and, and get over that. Yeah. When you turn 18, 19 or 20, much easier to just back off, because you’ve never had to deal with it in there at an early age.

Dan Blewett: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s, let’s, uh, talk a little bit about the ABC because obviously you’re a big part of getting that huge event together. So obviously with coronavirus things are different this year. So can you take us through it a little

Ryan Brownlee: bit? Yeah. And this was a really hard decision for us. You talked to anybody in the baseball world, they would have been to the convention probably at least once.

And everybody knows how much fun it is. And it does get people’s batteries recharged for the following spring and the upcoming season. And, you know, you get so much good information, plus you see people that you haven’t seen forever. [01:42:00] And so we did try to hold as long as we could. But when, when the Gaylord tells you that you can not, we have 750 people show up and we had 700 guests last year.

No. Is it fair to the vendors? You can only have a hundred in the exhibit hall at the time. Like it’s not fair to, it’s not fair to it. So who do you tell them? That show up? And then from the exhibitor standpoint, like, Hey, sorry, I know you’re going to pay 50 or 60 grand to get all your people there. And, and, and there’s going to be a hundred people right.

Time in the exhibit hall. Like it just wasn’t fair. So once we made that decision and we were, we were kind of working on the back, you know, behind the scenes. No, it’s not like, you know, with all of this stuff, you have to figure out what platform is going to be best. We’re not, we’re not slapping a couple of zoom chats together.

Like that’s not what we’re doing, so it’s going to be expensive to run this thing and you want it right. You want it right for the speakers. You want it right for the attendees. You want it right for the exhibitors. Uh, it’s a [01:43:00] wonderful opportunity because we’re all going to be going through this for the first time and it’s going to be good.

Like we’re going to have, from the speaker standpoint, we always have a great lineup. We’re going to have another great lineup. We still have the main stage. We still have the youth, we still have the expo theater. I do feel like it’s going to be more access. To the attendees than there’s ever been because of the Q and A’s and then the side rooms after the Q and a.

So if you’re somebody that’s coming to the virtual conveyance and you’re going to have more access to the speakers than probably what you’ve had in the past. And then we picked the one that was going to be most user friendly for the attendees and then for the audience. So that’s how we came to the decision on it.

Uh, but I’m excited. I’m learning something new. You, you go through the onsite one first time and you feel like you have that under control. And now it’s like, okay, you know how to do that? Like turn around and. And try to run a virtual one now. And I’m lucky, like I’m a small part of this thing. Now, Craig, pilot’s our executive [01:44:00] director.

His dad was the executive director before and he’s been here seven years. John Litchfield has been here seven years. Don is like our chief of staff. Like he runs everything. Um, Juan Clark, who runs the, exhibit’s been with us for 19 years. And then you have Zach kale, Matt West and Sarah bar lox. Zach, Kayla, Matt West had been with us for a while.

They’re younger, but they’re really good on the tech side. And then you have Jim Richardson. Who’s kind of in the area that I’m at with coaching outreach. And then Mike Odom is new. He’s doing the, uh, the contracts. Um, but it it’s a fascinating. It’s a fascinating how all this runs and you do feel like you’re making a huge impact on the game of baseball that you, you wouldn’t get.

If you were coaching just your own team, I feel like I can help coaches, parents, players, um, anybody. Cause I say this all the time, there’s more than enough room in the pool for everybody. I love our community. Um, even [01:45:00] outside the organization, I love our community because. Uh, for the most part, I think people are willing to help each other.

Now you talked about that being a good teammate. So I think, I think if you stay in baseball long enough, You’re going to have to be a good person and you’re going to have to be a good teammate because if not the game gets rid of the game, the game weeds, those people out there, there’s some outliers. And maybe some people that get through that, that aren’t in it for the right reasons.

But 98% of the people that are in the baseball community that have been at for a long time are in it for the right reasons and more than willing. To help someone that reaches out to help. And, um, I, again, I’m excited, this is new. I’m trying, we’re trying to line everything up, but I like the fact that it’s new and that we’re all going to go through it for the first time.

Dan Blewett: Yeah. I mean, you guys always did a great job with the AAV. I mean, I was super impressed. We’ve been there. I think I’ve been to three of them and this was what this one was going to be a DC. Dang it. This one’s going to be right down there.

Ryan Brownlee: It’s the same Avi company. My Carli, um, does our a [01:46:00] V it’s the same a V company.

So even though we’re bringing speakers here to record, it’ll be the same look and feel. Uh, but now you have more access to the speech because of the Q and A’s afterwards, and there’s still gonna be a social component. Like we have, I have, we can set up social. Yeah. I mean, for guys that want to hang out at night with each other, there’s going to be avenues to be able to do that.

Uh, through the virtual platform where it, you know, what, if you want to get a six pack and hang out till three o’clock in the morning via that one of the cyber rooms, you can do that. Um, yeah, it’s not face to face. You’re face to face. You’re just not in, but you can still do all the social aspect of what people really like about the convention.

And, um, and that’s still gonna have a little bit of that component as well.

Dan Blewett: Yeah, absolutely. So when you’re doing the,

Ryan Brownlee: I don’t know how much you personally have, but when you’re, when you guys are discussing each year’s convention, how do you break down? Who’s speaking, you know, where. Fourth vice president is in charge.

So Rick hit, I feel bad for Rick [01:47:00] Juco coach in Florida. You know, guys work their way into the acts. And so Rick worked his way into picking the speakers and it is like your baby. So you feel bad for him that, okay, you, you work your tail off. You’re trying to run your own program, but then you’re trying to line the speakers up and then it’s virtual, but he’s done an unbelievable job of, of getting.

People on board getting them here. I run on our youth stage. So I’m in charge of, of getting the youth stage speakers. So we’re running through that right now. Everybody is good. Um, uh, you know, Ken, it’s just a great sign of the baseball community. All of the guys, all 12 that I had lined up to speak in DC, not one of them hesitated.

And we’ve got coach coming all the way from California, not one guy hesitated on the virtual side of it that, no, I can’t do it. Like everybody stayed with it. And. Can you just appreciative of, of everybody willing to, to jump in and, um, [01:48:00] it’ll be good to see him out here too. So

Dan Blewett: do you think you guys will get back on track?

Let’s forecast a little bit, do you think 2021, hopefully.

Ryan Brownlee: And cargo will be unreal. It’s Chicago 2021. It’s at McCormick place. This will be the first time in Chicago. I think everybody gripes about how cold it is. It’s terrible now four or five years ago. I think Indianapolis was coldest ever. Um, you know, to, to think that Indianapolis was.

Way colder than Chicago has ever been. But in 21, it’s at McCormick place, we have enough hotel rooms for everybody, regardless of how many people show up. No, one’s going to have to leave the McCormick place. There’s 2 million square footage of examiner space or some really cool things. Um, yeah, I think we’ll have a, a really good attendance this year.

Uh, we already have, you know, compared to, you’re always make comparisons. I know everybody wants to say it’s terrible. [01:49:00] It’s really not. We have, as many people signed up for the convention right now than we did two years ago, going to Dallas. Um, you know, membership is, is above where we’re usually at. So like all things considered, we’re still moving in a great direction, but I think that’s part of staying positive.

No, you can say, Oh, you know, COVID Stanks and, uh, but that’s not going to get you anywhere. Um, yeah, play the cards you’re dealt and then pivot and try to find a way to make it great. Regardless of, of what you’re dealing with. We all go through tough things, try to find a way to make it great, regardless of what’s going on.

And, um, again, I’m excited about it. I think we’re going to look up a month after January 6th through the 10th and figure out that. It wasn’t as bad. Like, you know, I think you always think about the worst sometimes, but that it was a great event and we’re all also able to now take an onsite one and still [01:50:00] make some virtual components.

Cause not every member we have not ever vendor we have is going to be able to come to Chicago. So. We’re probably going to be able to get them included a little bit more in 2021, because we’ve had to do a virtual in 2020, you know? So I think that there’s always going to be some positives that come out of it.

Um, and I think that’ll be a huge one is that we’re still going to be able to keep people included if they can’t show up for an onsite one in future years.

Dan Blewett: Gotcha. And as the goal always growth, I mean, do you guys want to be. A hundred thousand strong at a convention, or is there a point where you’re like, Hey, this is probably as big as we want to be.

Even if we have this space, we want to cap it. And you know what

Ryan Brownlee: I mean? That’s why we kept it last year. And I was brand new. I got thrown into the fire, you know, got the job in late August and got here September one. So we were still in the initial, like, okay, we’re going to cap it, but [01:51:00] what do we cap it at?

Because it still is a customer service. Like. It’s still customer service on our end. It doesn’t matter if you’re a member vendor we’re in the community service, you know, we’re in the service industry here. So we’re trying to help people like realistically, you can’t have 20,000. We don’t have enough people.

Like there’s only nine of us in the office. I don’t know if everybody understands that there’s only nine people in our office. So the bigger you get. You run into some service issues then, cause you want it to be a great experience. I think that’s what people have always enjoyed about the convention is it’s a great experience.

Yes. People are going to have gripes here and there, but I don’t know. You walk in at 10 people, somebody is going to have a gripe about something, even if it’s 60 and sunny out. And it’s great. Like somebody is probably going to complain about something, but you don’t want, you don’t want a ton of complaints, which is why we kept it last year because Dallas, there were [01:52:00] issues with.

People having to wait too long for food people having to wait too long for the shuttles. So that’s why there was a cap last year in Nashville because it ended up being a customer service issue from Dallas the year before, because you want people to enjoy people who are going to spend their money and people are going to invest their money and show

Dan Blewett: up.

Ryan Brownlee: You want it to be a great experience because if it’s not, then you feel like you’ve let people down and you just don’t want to let anybody down.

Dan Blewett: Yeah, that’s that’s fair. I mean, Nashville or Chicago every year.

Ryan Brownlee: I know, I know everybody says it, but you do want to spread it around. Um, You want to move to Dallas sometimes.

So it’s easier for the California guys, you know, and that’s logistically you want to move it around. Like this year would have been great in DC because you probably have some coast guys that maybe couldn’t get to some of the other ones that can go to, to Washington D C. So I, it wouldn’t be great Nashville every year, but you do [01:53:00] want to, again, you want to be fair to every part of the country.

If they’re big enough to host us, you do want to spread it around. And we do sign our contracts out six, seven years. The reason. You know, people are like, why DC? It’s an election year. Well, You know, when you sign six years out, you do that to keep the hotel costs down. If we went year to year, everybody would be paying 300 to $500 in hotel rooms.

Like you, you you’re trying to keep the costs down. So we’re still the cheapest. National convention of any sport out there. We are the cheapest. We are the cheapest membership for what you get now for $5,600 worth of video content and continuing to add more video content for that to be 75 bucks. Um, you know, I’ve talked to Mike  the other day he was at Mary Hardin, Baylor.

Um, he’s gonna speak at our Barnstormers event at McLennan. Good guy. He’s a great dude. He goes, Ryan, I don’t understand why anybody would not be a member like for what you get. Now, all the price [01:54:00] breaks on rentals, hotels, you get liability insurance, um, even just inside pitch for me inside pitch magazine to, to get that is worth 75 bucks, but then you factor in all the other things and the app.

Now with the app, we have a community going with the forums and just the video access itself. Um, for me is, is a no brainer because I still learn things, you know, go, I spoke in 2012 and Anaheim. I did not watch it after I was done with it. Cause I just didn’t want to see it, but such great memories. Um, you have so many great memories of, of the conventions and the speakers and things pop up.

Um, you get constant reminders of how great it is.

Dan Blewett: One for people who are griping about DC. You can bring your family. And if they don’t want to do baseball stuff all day, they have a million free museums to go to. There’s tons of green space. It’s like the best. It’s like the best thing to do. You have all this other stuff you can do that doesn’t cost you another 500 bucks for the weekend.

Yep. The Smithsonian all day, like tons of

[01:55:00] Ryan Brownlee: great city though.

Dan Blewett: Yeah, that’s great city. And, and it’s within like three hours of like a million other cities. So go DC. So

Ryan Brownlee: you don’t realize that until I moved to Virginia and nine hours away from Evansville, by the way, best thing I ever did was to go coach with Spanky McFarland.

Um, cause I got a chance to be around somebody different. That was way different personality. If you look at personalities, Jim Bradley skier, Spanky McFarland is here as far as perceived personalities, but you don’t realize how close everything is until you move out to the East coast. Like. DC to Philly, to, to Atlantic city, to New York city to Boston.

Like you can get everywhere in a short amount. It’s a to Baltimore, like everywhere. It’s close. It’s crazy.

Dan Blewett: So

Ryan Brownlee: I guess the question is when are we going to do one? We

Dan Blewett: in Atlantic city,

Ryan Brownlee: I think softball actually has done, has done the one in Atlantic city. Right. I don’t know, like square footage.

Dan Blewett: The biggest thing is it’s on, [01:56:00] right?

Ryan Brownlee: Hey, we’re going to be in we’re in Vegas, I think in three or four years. It’s also great. It’s great choice. As we go Chicago virtual this year, Chicago, then back to Nashville. Oh. And then I think, and then I think Vegas, I think it goes, it’s going to go virtual Chicago, Nashville. And then I think,

Dan Blewett: which you probably have all your travels stuff, cause I’m sure you travel a ton, but if you don’t have an Amex platinum.

Which gives you the lounges lounges. There’s a century and lounges Vegas, my business partner, my former Academy, we ate at least $250 worth of free, amazing food and free drinks in that lounge. So the next time you go to Vegas, make sure you have that card. So you can go to the Amex lounges.

Ryan Brownlee: I’m still down Amex.

I had an Amex blue after I got my masters, my wife and I were working through so much credit card debt and Amex was the worst. So like I had, I would never get a car to theirs.

Dan Blewett: Okay. Understandable. Yeah. But,

[01:57:00] Ryan Brownlee: but you’re really making it difficult to attend the events at the convention when you’ve scheduled

in

Dan Blewett: Nashville and Vegas.

Ryan Brownlee: You have choices to make and that’s part of being professional. Um, yeah, that’s part of being a professional. I think he tried to relay that to your players at times, too. Like you have a decisions to make as far as how you live your life, but yeah. If it’s starting to flow into your professional life and the other things, then you have to be an adult and, you know, with adult decision to become adult consequences.

So like if you can still run it and there are guys that, that still handle that and still are there for the, for the first bell and know that’s the older baseball guy, you would be at a camp or you’d be at a recruiting deal. And you would learn from the older Scouts and coaches is like, Hey, if you’re going to do this.

You have to be the first person at the bottom in the morning. And if you’re not. You’re a joke. You’re an absolute joke. And I think it was the same thing with your teammates. Like teammates know, [01:58:00] like they know who’s out and if you’re the guy who’s out and then you can’t even get up in the morning or you miss tarp duty or you’re late, then you’re a joke.

You’re an absolute joke. So, you know what, if you want to run it, that’s fine. But you better be the first person at the ballpark the next day. And you better never be late. Uh, cause if not, that’s part of knowing yourself and, you know, Sometimes you have to use that as an excuse to make good decisions as an athlete.

I think that’s fine. You know what use coach, if you’re a guy that can’t handle being out and you can’t handle peer pressure, Hey, I’m not doing it because coach doesn’t want me to do it. That’s fine. Or use your parents like that’s okay. Like there’s ways to work around that. Um, and again, I’m old now. I don’t know if, how big peer pressure is now with the younger generation.

I mean, it it’s through social, but I don’t know. I don’t know, as a social aspect, how hard people are on now, if they’re not partying. Um, I know back in the old days you would, you would get it if you [01:59:00] weren’t partaking. But again, they also were good if you said, Hey, I’m sorry. Like I can’t, I know

Dan Blewett: if you can be out till four and,

Ryan Brownlee: and be the first one I weightlifting at six you’re you’re, you’re almost, you’re a legend, honestly.

Like how my, my senior year of high school, I was too old to play, um, Legion. I had a weird birthday, so I actually played up until I got to college. And I worked out with the men’s basketball team that summer. And they had a player parish case of Bayer who was an all American. But you could tell he hadn’t been to bed yet, but his workouts were insane.

Like we would push the strength, coaches car around the track. He would be just crushing squats and bench press. But you knew it was, we’ve been out all night. And you also knew he was pouring in like 30 points a game at the university of Evansville. So it’s like, okay. Yeah, I can do it. Not too many guys can do it.

And [02:00:00] eventually it catches up to

Dan Blewett: you.

Ryan Brownlee: I think that’s the next, as we wrap up here, I feel like if I had a suggestion for ABC, this incorporating the legendary status. So somehow in a, in a booth, ABC after hours, I thought about doing a podcast series called like convention stories. Um, there’s so many good ones.

We all have. ’em. I’m Elia. And I do try to ask that question every once in a while of the guys that have been doing it a while, like what it’s meant to them and also like what the convention has meant. Um, but there’s so many good stories. That’s how everybody is learned. Um, you know, there’s a tribal aspect to it.

Um, where. Traditions and things get handed down from one generation to the next. And I know people can like discount that the old traditions of baseball, but those still have values like how a scout went about his business or how our recruiting coach went about his business or an old hating coach or pitching coach.

Those stories [02:01:00] still have value and we need to continue to bring those to lights, um, because it does help. If you get some inexpensive experience as a young coach, To learn from other people’s trials. Right. I also know that Tim Corban started as a GA somewhere and coast at Presbyterian college. It’s great for people to see that because if you only see.

National championship coach. You think like he fell out of it tree doing it that way. Everybody’s had a long path to get to that point. So we need to still tell those old stories of baseball for the new generation of kids to see that like, Nobody comes fully evolved nobody. And the best ones are still evolving and learning every day.

The best ones, Tim. Corbyn’s a great example of a guy that’s still learning. Still asks great questions. Still responds. I owe a lot to that guy. He was an assistant at Clemson and I asked him for his [02:02:00] resume and he sent it to me. And I still always remembered that. I said it when I spoke in 2012, I thanked him because he sent me his resume and he didn’t need to do that.

And he mailed it to me back then, email still wasn’t that hot. So he mailed me a hard copy of his resume and I used that template and I still think part of that reason I got the Iowa job is Mike’s template on my resume was tremendous because it was Tim Corbin’s.

Dan Blewett: Well, Ryan, as we wrap up here, what, uh, how can people stay in touch with you?

Uh, tell us a little bit about, like, about your podcast and your work and where do you want to direct? Uh, hopefully some of our listeners that, you know, keep following you.

Ryan Brownlee: Yeah. I’m, I’m easily accessible. Um, email our brownlee@abc.org, uh, Twitter, uh, it’s coach B underscore AB CA. Uh, Instagram, uh, our Brownlee 17.

And then if you’re a member through the, my ABC app, my DMS are [02:03:00] open. Um, you can interact with me. I have people that email or reach out to me at all times, hitting plans, if need be. I don’t have the app. The app is great. And I think there’s some nuggets in there that a lot of people, people don’t see. If you go in to that, the.

Resource center on the app. Like my entire team manual that I gave our team at Western Illinois is in there. What’s that there’s some deep dive stuff in there, travel checklist, which I don’t think people think about it all. There’s a travel checklist in there. There’s practice plans in there. Anybody can reach out to me at any time.

I have 20 years worth of external hard drive that has something that probably could help. At some point, I came from a peak performance background, so I have a lot of people, performance stuff, but, um, that’s, that’s the best place to reach to me. And I’m, again, I’m, I’m here to help. It’s a service job. So I’m here to, to service and hopefully help coaches and players accomplish their [02:04:00] goals.

By the way, congrats on 50 podcasts. That’s awesome. Like I know how difficult that is. And I still feel like an infant. I do want to know Jeremy shading or helped me a lot when I first got here because he had moved on to coaching and it was his equipment. And, you know, Jack Warren who I, Jack Warren for me is I think everybody owes Jack Warren a show of gratitude.

He started top coach podcast. I think in the initial, before anybody was really doing a lot of podcasting,

Dan Blewett: I met Jack. I was on a show.

Ryan Brownlee: I think it was, he kind of showed that it was viable. Like I loved top coach. Cause you got all the good stories and the good nuggets from coaches. I think everybody that is in the podcast baseball game right now, owes Jack Warren a show of gratitude for where everything’s at.

Cause again, you know, I listen to a million different podcasts and. We’re all different. Everybody has different personalities. So, you know, some people are going to gravitate differently to different podcasts. So, you know, my voice is going to be good for some [02:05:00] people, but not good for others. And so I think you get a little slice of everything in the baseball community with all the podcasts are out there.

I think it’s phenomenal.

Dan Blewett: Bob. You want to send us officer speaking of different voices. I mean, Bobby Knight, we butt heads. We haven’t recently we’ve had no political talk, but

Ryan Brownlee: it’s, that’s why you haven’t fought

yet.

Dan Blewett: It’s going to heat up soon. It’s going to juicy and backs more vaccines off this. Can’t can’t wait,

Ryan Brownlee: like it’s coming up.

I

Dan Blewett: really, really out. Really? Adam is a

Ryan Brownlee: yeah. Bobby I’ve enjoyed our talks years. Like the behind the deep dive stuff, you know, with windy city. And when I was recruiting, like I always appreciated. Your honesty. And I feel like you try to do things the right way. We need more of that. Um, I really feel like you’re in it for the right reasons and you are truthful.

I know it’s hard to be somebody out there right now that that tries to speak the truth because most people don’t want to hear it, but keep doing it cause you’re doing the right way. I appreciate [02:06:00] that. And that’s, I feel like as someone who does what I do, you have to tell the college coach. He’s going to find out eventually if the kid’s not,

Dan Blewett: who you say is he’s going to find out if he doesn’t

Ryan Brownlee: know taking them, and then it’s going to ruin your relationship for future kids that might have a shot to

Dan Blewett: go play at those schools.

Ryan Brownlee: But right. I really appreciate you coming on. Yeah. Anytime, anytime you need to get Tim and Jim rally on,

Dan Blewett: I was he’s the

Ryan Brownlee: nicest call. Yeah. Both of those guys on together. You probably don’t need me for that. Cause those guys coached together forever, but they have unbelievable stories, you know, talking about the convention and stories.

Those guys have. Unreal stories. And my dad has all the great details. Like he knows all the names, the places like he’s a great storyteller. So if you get an a, in a bind, get my dad and brother on, cause they tell great stories.

Dan Blewett: I’m going to ask the hard questions about it’s baseball tournament. You’re ready.

Ryan Brownlee: He a similar they’re very similar to the

Dan Blewett: fair. He was always fair in our program. Like I never had any [02:07:00] bad interactions with Tim, but I’ll tell you what a lot of angry parents. Not necessarily always because of his job history. Man’s a tough industry.

Ryan Brownlee: It’s a tough industry, Ryan. I appreciate you coming on.

We’ll see everybody on Friday.