Dugout Chatter Podcast

We connect with one of our own as Detroit Tiger minor league manager Gary Cathcart stops by and delivers a powerful conversation through his vast experience in professional baseball plus his growth as a person, a leader and a communicator. Cat holds his own content channel with us at SBTV already but it's an honor to showcase this passionate teacher to our podcast community as Gary takes us into a myriad of topics within this interview and leaves you wanting more time on the clock!

Inside this episode, we deliver our very first live interview from the floors of the 2020 ABCA Convention this past January in Nashville, TN. Taking the stage for the very first Expo Theater presentation of #ABCA2020 were some of our featured coaches within our Stick & Ball TV team including: Washington State head coach Brian Green, Detroit Tigers minor league manager Gary Cathcart, Philadelphia Phillies hitting coach Joe Dillon, Glynn Academy (GA) head coach Trent Mongero and GameSense's Paul Phillips. We work to cover a myriad of topics inside our time slot including their personal growth, how they are challenging themselves daily and the why behind joining the SBTV team!

Inside this episode, we connect with Mental Performance Coach Steve Springer and detail out his unique journey inside the game and his message of helping parents, coaches and especially players redefine their definition of the word 'success'. A powerful show packed with notes that will help players stay away from the biggest traps in our game and help organize their mental game thoughts to obtainable goals that can help transform performance and possibly even a career!

We are waving Old Glory this week as we welcome in the Director of Coaching Development for USA Baseball Andrew Bartman who joins us on the show and we walk a few different paths with this one. First, we touch on and detail out all of the tremendous resources and initiatives coming out of the USA Baseball offices. Amazing information, coaching clinics for all comers and so much momentum around their efforts to help grow more coaches and players, awesome stuff! Plus, Bart takes us into his growth away from the coaching ranks and ‘covering home’ in terms of being a better parent and husband. With this episode hitting most of us right in the middle of our seasons, this one was perfectly timed! 

This episode finds us 'crossing the pond' to connect with Great Britain Manager Liam Carroll and the Baseball Brit himself Joey Mellows as we detail their unique paths towards educating their country on the wonders of baseball. From Liam's journey in rejuvenating a national team and taking a grassroots effort to grow homegrown talent to Joey as his efforts to bring more exposure to baseball through his commitment to immerse himself in the game, this is an inspiring conversation and one that will certainly bring our listeners appreciation for baseball in our own respective areas.

This week's episode finds us catching up with Auburn University skipper Butch Thompson as we walk through his journey in baseball plus anchor ourselves to the lessons he is learning each new day as a head coach. Listeners will find themselves engaged in a fully transparent conversation and one packed with passion, humility, vulnerability plus a commitment to growth coming from Butch!

We head back in the Dugout with two of the top High School head coaches in the country with Chuck Box from Hartfield Academy in Mississippi and Butch Chaffin from Cookeville High School in Tennessee both live on air and answering questions right from our listeners on Twitter! Talking culture, development and all aspects inside running a championship high school program.

We are heading back behind the dish for this week’s episode, connecting with one of Stick and Ball TV’s own featured coaches but also an individual that embodies what we are all about inside this community as we welcome in The Catching Guy himself Todd Coburn. We walk inside a conversation that covers most everything you’ll need to know to improve yourself behind the plate as we spend time on receiving, blocking and throwing, allowing Todd to cover his key components but also offering some of his favorite drills in all three of these areas. Plus we chat about leadership behind the plate and the various touch points from in-game to in the dugout to inside the locker room. We also cover improving flexibility and mobility making this a dream episode for any catcher and catching coach who needed some details to guide their development – you hit play on exactly the right episode!

What an absolute treat it is to welcome in the long toss legend himself, Alan Jaeger from Jaeger Sports joins our call and we throw the time clock away on this one! Alan has spent so much of his career championing the mental game, working to educate and build confidence with the coaching community to bring mental practice into our training environments and we double down on this mission inside this show. Buckle in as we Alan details out for us his definition and pillars of the Mental Game, he defines what this practice would look like and even sound like as Jaeger spells out a basic script that coaches and players can follow and even takes us through a real time guided meditation live on the air! Plus more insight into understanding and committing to the process all in an effort to better prepare our players for the challenges of the game itself. An instant Certified Audio Gold episode and one that you need to stick around all the way until the end for…

What an absolute treat to connect with these two guys, both representing the Los Angeles Dodgers organization with the Assistant Farm Director and Coordinator of Skill Development Shaun Larkin and one of LA’s top prospects Gavin Lux that we all saw break through this past September in a major way for the boys in blue. Lark lives in a constant state of challenging himself and the status quo, always in search of the better way and Lux brings the same hunger and desire as well so we walk through both of their journeys and discoveries along the way plus we double down on Gavin’s growth as a person and a player, talking his internal cues and obstacles that he has overcome in his short career. Lark details the Dodgers’ plan to promote not only player development but also staff and personal development as well, adapting to the current demands of the game and the mental skills needed to find success.