The Way of Baseball/About

"It's bad when one thing becomes two.  One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai.  It is the same for anything else that is called a Way.  If one understands things in this manner, he can hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own."

-From Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

The Way of Baseball, presented by Pat Ahearne is pitching coach Pat Ahearne's website on pitching and baseball development.  Playing baseball and learning all the intricacies of the game has been my life.  Since officially retiring from pro baseball in 2007, I've been working as a coach.  It's something I enjoy very much and my philosophy is simple.  It is to make you a better player today than you were yesterday.  That was my way as a player and now it's my way as a coach.

My primary area of experties is pitching, but with my years of playing professionally, I have a great deal of knowledge on all areas of the game.  I do not teach only baseball techniques to players as that will only go so far.  On my way to becoming the most complete, well trained, and competitive athlete I could be, I found it absolutely necessary to cover other areas of athletic training just as diligently as my baseball skill.

An athlete needs to be strong, agile, and flexible so it's necessary to train physically.  He also needs to be able to learn, have a strong work ethic, be competitive, and handle adversity so mental strength and training is essential.  How your body performs is directly affected by the food you consume - learning and using better sports nutrition practices is never to be overlooked.  I have come to learn how important vision is to performance and how your vision directly affects your movement patterns and that a glitch in the visual system can render any mechanical training ineffective.  I've learned about methods to train the visual system and learned that when you train your eyes, you train your body and your brain.

To train all these areas (baseball, physical, mental, nutrition, vision), is what I did to have a long career playing the game and it is the basis of my approach to coaching.  These areas are all integrated and need to be addressed to make a complete and competitive athlete.  The goal of my coaching and of The Way of Baseball is to improve and develop baseball players to compete in the game.  As an added benefit, the training helps to compete in life too.

Answering the question "What is The Way of Baseball?" comes by defining it in three parts:

1. The set of practices followed by baseball masters to give them the best chance for success
2. A player's journey toward mastery of these practices
3. The methods of training players in these practices

It's a practice, it's a journey, it's methods of training, coaching, teaching and developing.  It is a Way.

I want to thank you for working with me and I look forward to helping you to improve.

Through this site, you have access to a 16 year veteran professional baseball player and his team of experts on training the skills needed to play the game.  Contact me with your questions or ideas or comments and I'll respond to the best of my ability.

Thanks,

Pat Ahearne, The Way of Baseball