All aspiring leaders can learn from Oakland @Athletics Manager Mark Kotsay on the power of zooming out, navigating criticism, and understanding the filter between perception and reality:
📆 A day doesn't define you. Neither does a game, a season, a week, a month, or even a year. What defines your trajectory is how you respond to those moments.
Don't put too much weight on individual days. Focus on decades. Work with the intention of becoming the coach, athlete, leader, or person you want to be 10 years from now, not 10 minutes from now. And trust the process enough to stay steady through both the peaks and the valleys. Success and failure are not destinations. They're simply data points along the journey.
📰 Critics are a fixed cost of ambition. The more people you impact, the more opinions you'll attract. That's not a sign you're doing something wrong. It's often evidence you're doing something meaningful. Since judgment is inevitable, you might as well pursue work that matters to you.
🔬 Most criticism comes from people who only see the performance, not the preparation. They see the 1% that happens on game day. They don't see the 99% of work, sacrifice, discipline, and repetition that made it possible. That's why you can't let perception outweigh reality. Stay rooted in the truth of your process. Refine it. Master it. Build systems strong enough to withstand inevitable setbacks and stretches of adversity.
The noise will always be there. Your job is not to silence it. Your job is to become so focused on the work that it fades into irrelevance.
Zoom out. Focus in. 🔭
Play a game so big and pursue growth so relentlessly that the opinions from the cheap seats no longer matter. The best response to criticism has never been an argument. It's becoming so successful you forgot they said anything to begin with.
.@DTigerBaseball 2028 Orr/Hughes' Sutton Strosnider goes right back up the middle for a single.
Brock (TX) 2028 #uncommitted
Profile: https://t.co/4JAj78oNeC
In ESPN’s first mock draft, they have the Rangers selecting TCU outfielder Sawyer Strosnider.
He has a lot of power with 24 home runs and 62 XBHs in 2 seasons.
I’ve seen Strosnider play and Ranger fans should be ecstatic if they get him. Potential star
This is it.
Everything learned spending millions on longevity.
From: Your Immortal Unc and Auntie.
To: Our Immortal nieces and nephews.
0. Sleep is the world's most powerful drug.
1. Be in your bed for 8 hours
2. Same bedtime every night, any time before midnight
3. Don’t eat right before bed
4. Calm foods for dinner
5. No screens 1 hour before bed
6. Avoid added sugar (be aware it’s in everything)
7. Avoid all things in an American convenience store
8. Avoid fried foods
9. Shoes off at the door
10. Eat whole foods, particularly veggies fruits nuts legumes berries
11. Walk a little after meals or air squats
12. Get your heart rate high routinely
13. Lift heavy things
14. Stretch daily
15. Water pik, floss, brush, tongue scrape, morning and night
16. Make an effort to drink water
17. Get sunlight when you wake up (UV is low)
18. Protect skin in midday sun
19. Stand up straight
20. See at least one friend once a week
21. Avoid plastic where you can (in all things)
22. Circulate air in rooms
23. When stressed, breathe, learn to calm your body
24. Go to the dentist
25. Avoid sitting for long times
26. Protect your hearing, the world is too loud
27. Alcohol is bad for you
28. Finish coffee before noon
29. Avoid bright lights after sunset
30. If obese, look into a GLP
31. Sleep in a cold room
32. Texting while driving is dangerous
33. Turn off all notifications
34. Limit social media use
35. Don’t smoke anything
36. If you struggle to sleep, read a physical book before bed
37. 1 hour before bed have a calm wind down routine: bath, read, light walk, listen to music
38. The body is a clock and loves routine. Have a daily morning and evening schedule.
39. Avoid long distance travel where you can
40. Baby steps first: incorporate new things slowly
41. Do less… most things don’t work.
Bonus points if you get your blood checked.
Start here, it will change your life.
Nobody told you this about success: Rent is due every single day. A lot of people seem to think that after you make it you can coast in the idyllic land of success. This is wrong. Every single day, you have to fight to earn your seat at the table. And that fight gets more intense as you have more success. You have more to lose. More mouths to feed. More people counting on you. More expectations. There's an old saying that I love: Every morning in the savannah, the gazelle wakes up and knows it must outrun the lion or be killed. The lion wakes up and knows it must outrun the gazelle or starve. Whether you're the gazelle or the lion, when you wake up in the morning, you'd better start running. Rent is due daily. Pay it with pride.
Money advice nobody told you: The only way to make a lot of money is to create a lot of value. No one hands out money. No one is going to pay you just because they like you or think you're cool. That's not the way the world works. Money earned is a direct byproduct of value created. Create value, receive value. If money is the goal, value has to be the focus. This isn't just some vague idea: The only way to get rich is to create an enormous amount of value for others, and capture a small portion of that along the way. It's not talking about the thing, it's not brainstorming about the thing, it's not asking about the thing, it's not thinking about the thing. The only way to create value is by doing the thing. And if you don't know where to start, look around you. Customers, colleagues, bosses, shareholders, employees. Every single one of them has a problem. What problems can you solve for the people around you? Figure them out, solve them, scale that solution. That's how you make money.
I've had the awesome opportunity to interview Jacob Meador and Zac Plunkett, both pitchers who played for Kirk Saarloos at TCU, and then also Luken Baker. Luken, many forget, was actually a pitcher first guy, before, ironically, he hurt his arm in Stillwater, and literally never pitched again.
Then, he turned into the Babe Ruth of the Big 12!
Anyways, Kirk Saarloos is ABSOLUTELY loved by his players. I mean, as much as any coach in America. He's the type of guy that, if one of his former players is in town, he'll call them up, they'll go out for dinner, and sit and talk for hours. And, he'll do the same for any current player who needs something at the moment. It's a stop, drop, and roll for him, for any one of his players that needs it. And that relationship development is what will continue to allow him to get players who are invested in TCU.
So, having said ALL of that, I hated to see last night and his ejection. It was just a bad look, and it looked like a coach who let everything around him affect his emotions and then his actions. And, when that happens, your players know that, and that's when they unravel the same way you did. It's literally...VOILA!
And, that's 100% on him! And, that's 100% NOT him!
The enormity of what Schlossnagle built is a lot of pressure, but that was a different time in College baseball, so I hope TCU fans embrace that and continue to show Coach Saarloos the respect that ALL of his former players have for him.
@KirkSaarloosTCU, keep investing in your players, keep doing what you do, in the way you do it, and then let the chips fall where they may. Tune out the rest! It's just chatter! #gopokes #okstate
This is a story about my father, parenting, and my rule for the strongest relationships in life…
When I was 12 years old, I tried out for a baseball all-star team in our area.
I really wanted to make this team. The tryouts were my first adventure beyond the confines of my small town. An opportunity to see how I stacked up against kids from all around the state.
When the results came out, the coaches called my house.
They were taking 16 players for the team...and I was the 17th on the list.
I was devastated.
It was my first real experience with failure. Something I wanted, worked towards, and came up short. I went into my room, sat on my bed, and cried.
A few minutes later, my dad walked in. He sat down on the bed next to me. After a few minutes of silence, he offered a few words:
“I know you’re upset. I understand. It sucks. But here are the three things the coaches said you needed to work on. Let’s go out every day this summer and work on them. Together.”
And we did.
I’d patiently wait for him to get home from work, holding our gloves, a bucket of balls, and a bat. He took me to the local field damn near every single day that summer. I’m sure there were days when he didn’t want to. When he was exhausted from work or travel, but it never showed.
And I came back the next year a completely different player. Years later, when I got a scholarship to play baseball at Stanford, I still thought back to that one summer as the turning point.
But it was more than the practice that was the real turning point.
It was what my dad said in those moments as we sat on my bed, with tears streaming down my face—and how he followed through on it every day that followed.
He had two options when he walked into my room and sat next to me.
Option 1: Tell me the coaches were idiots. I was the best player. They had made a mistake. They didn’t know what they were doing.
Option 2: Acknowledge the pain. Tell the truth about the opportunity in the failure. And be there to support the work to meet that opportunity.
Honestly, in that moment, I probably wanted Option 1. It would have made me feel better. It would have told me that the world was the problem. That an external thing was to blame. That I was great.
Option 2 was the tough pill to swallow. But also the right one.
I believe that the strongest relationships in life stand on two pillars:
The first is high expectations.
The belief that the other person is capable of excellence. That their potential is only limited by their own views. The willingness to tell the truth about that opportunity and the work required to meet it.
The second is high support.
The ability and willingness to provide the love, support, and engagement to help the other person meet those high expectations.
A lot of relationships fall short of this standard. They hit one pillar, but miss the other.
Low expectations and high support will provide comfort, but no growth. High expectations and low support may spark short-term growth, but breed long-term resentment.
Sir Isaac Newton famously said:
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
It’s a beautiful line, but I think it leaves out the part that matters most.
The giants had to bend down. They had to choose to provide energy to lift him.
That’s exactly what my dad did the night I didn’t make that all-star team. He didn’t lower his shoulders to the level of my disappointment. He didn’t tell me the high heights didn’t matter.
He told me that I was capable of the climb—and then he gifted me with his attention and energy to help complete it.
I think about this constantly now.
This, to me, is the highest calling in our relationships:
To create an environment of high expectations with those we love and show up to support them to meet (and exceed) those expectations we’ve set.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot as a father. I hope it resonated with you.