Hey, Jason Botts here. Thanks for stopping by.
Since I was fifteen years old, I’ve been obsessed with development and performance.
At first, I was seeking a better way to improve myself. I was a young small-town ballplayer who was still holding onto the boyhood dream of becoming a major leaguer. I was a big-bodied kid struggling to get consistent playing time on the school's varsity team and knew I had a long way to go to be an everyday starter, let alone the type of standout player who would attract college and professional interest.
This was the mid-90s, and finding beneficial information was a task in itself. The internet was barely coming into existence in homes, and Google search was still years away from launch. There was no Amazon or social media platforms. There were few books on the topic, anyhow, and in my small town, without a Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore, I often had to search through catalogs to find something I thought could benefit my mind or body for training my athleticism and skills.
It was a long journey, but as the years went by, I’d pick up a few pieces here and there — likely just enough to work on their application (rather than be flooded with information and make no progress). I’d go on to become a professional prospect and get signed with the Texas Rangers out of junior college. Making the major leagues at the age of 24, and spending parts of four different seasons with the Big League club. In all, I’d have a fifteen-year professional career, playing for teams not just in the United States but also in other countries, such as Japan, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Giving a very literal meaning to the figurative term given to me early in my career by one writer, “Have Bat, Will Travel.”
Throughout my professional career, my obsession with the mind/body connection, as well as the philosophies and principles of other Arts, only continued to grow. I was convinced that there was more growth and consistency for me to reach as a hitter/ballplayer by learning and practicing other disciplines like yoga, Tai Chi, and Martial Arts.
After my baseball retirement, I began mentoring and providing mental skills training to up-and-coming athletes across the country. In a few short years, I became well-known and highly respected not only for the Beast Mindset lessons I taught but also for my ability to quickly connect with and help the development and performance of a wide array of athletes of all ages.
But the biggest ground-breaking realizations I would have wouldn’t occur until I took a step back from my mentorship programs and began focusing more time and energy on raising my two sons to be Big Leaguers (read Raising Big Leaguers to learn what that term means to me).
For five years, I had been helping athletes grow and mature on and off the field, but I hadn’t really dived into the trenches of the youth sports landscape myself. When I finally did with the boys, I was shocked. So much so that it pretty much immediately led me to move from a “hotbed” area of southeast Florida to the “baseball-nowhere” scene of the Rocky Mountains.
I had had my experience as a late bloomer, and as a small-town boy without much instruction or high-level teams or opportunities to play throughout the year. I attributed much of my high-level success to the resourcefulness I developed as a youngster, despite limited opportunities and limited access to knowledge. But what I had learned from my teammates and more stories than I could count through books and magazines was that the “come-from-behind-underdog-story” was the rule to being a success at the top of any given field, not the rare exception it is made out to be. And that’s what truly prompted the move to the mountains so that the boys could become late bloomers themselves in whatever passion their hearts called them to.
I suppose that leads me to where I’ve been the last couple of years, still mentoring other athletes, still raising the boys to be their best, and loving the process of sharing it all through writing more and more.
HAVE BAT, WILL TRAVEL, is my collection of writing on what I consider to be the counterintuitive art of development, and what I refer to as the new paradigm of performance — the latter being a new approach, mindset, and philosophy to competitive performance — allowing athletes to improve faster, perform greater and enjoy themselves a hell of a lot more by stepping out of the current constructed Matrix.
Whether you're casually following some of the free information posts that I constantly share or you dive headfirst into my paid subscription plan — I promise you won’t be disappointed with the knowledge and advice I give there — I hope either way that you find value and direction with HAVE BAT, WILL TRAVEL.
JB
