Besides baseball, the other major passion I've had in my life since I was a kid is playing music.

I started teaching myself to play guitar when I was 11 by trying figure out Pearl Jam's "Ten," then made a lot of noise in our basement with my brother on drums, and finally played in public with a band for the first time when I was 16 or 17.

I played in a band throughout college (with Coach Ballgame on drums!), played in a band in my 20s that did the whole Beach Cities bar circuit (even playing on Sunset Strip a couple times), and have played with friends in garages and at parties whenever possible since then.

Music has been a huge source of joy for me in my life and I really really really missed getting together and jamming with buddies when Covid hit.

But recently, I've been playing more frequently and had gigs the past 2 weekends with at least 2 more lined up this Summer - it's been such blast playing out again!

On Saturday, we played a 40th birthday party in Long Beach and it was awesome - great spot to play, really fun people in attendance, and I thought we played 2 really strong sets.

Despite playing well, of course I missed a few notes during a couple guitar solos and forgot a few lyrics here and there. And on Suday, as I was replaying our performance in my head, the couple mistakes I made got me thinking about the similarities between playing music and playing baseball.

When I hit a bad note during a solo, I couldn't stop playing. There wasn't any time to feel sorry for myself, and the band kept on playing which means I had to just keep playing. No time or options to do anything else!

This is really similar to when I would make an error on the baseball field. The next pitch always comes immediately after the last one, so there's no time to do anything but quickly move on mentally and stay focused on what's coming next.

Whenever I hit a bad note in a song, no matter how I feel about it or how I react, the band is going to keep playing...the show must go on.

Same thing in baseball! The game isn't going to stop because I made an error. The game isn't going to pause, just like the band isn't going to stop, and give me lots of time to regroup mentally. The game will go on and we've got to go with it!

Next, if I let ever let that one bad note distract me then there's a good chance that I'll hit more bad notes as a result of my lack of focus. Now repeat that last sentence but insert "error" for "bad note." Same exact situation! In music and in baseball, we've got to learn how to "flush" the mistakes, turn the page quickly, and keep playing in the present.

Lastly, playing music is supposed to be fun and I never want to let a few small mistakes rob me of the enormous amount of joy that I get out of the overall experience!

Now repeat that sentence and replace "playing music" with "playing baseball." :-)

Rock Hard, Have Fun!