ED LUCAS - 10yrs BEFORE HE GOT CALLED UP

When he graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004, Ed Lucas announced to his baseball coach that he didn't want to be one of those 30 year olds still hanging on in the minors, "just playing to play."

This year marked Lucas' 10th in professional baseball, and in those previous nine seasons he had never played a single major-league game.

While his Ivy League teammates headed to Wall Street, boutique law firms and even major-league front offices, Lucas went on commercial flights in the morning and long bus trips at night. He was good enough to keep a uniform – a .399 career slugging percentage and a great arm, necessary for all left-side infielders – but not quite good enough to get "the call." He'd become his own worst nightmare: 31 years old and still playing minor-league ball.

He had logged time in Idaho Falls; Burlington, Iowa; High Desert, Calif; Wichita; Springdale, Ark.; Omaha; Lawrenceville, Ga.; Jackson, Miss.; Salt Lake City and New Orleans.

"I've been everywhere," Lucas says.

And nowhere.

"Baseball has a way of telling you when you're done, not the other way around," says his old Dartmouth coach, Bob Whalen, "so play as long as you can."

Baseball hadn't quite told him emphatically that he was done. After spending time with the Royals, Angels and Braves organizations, the Marlins signed Lucas last December.

Then, at the end of another May in another remote corner of nowhere, Ed was warming up for his 925th minor-league game and his 3,732nd at-bat when his New Orleans manager walked to the outfield and told the team to gather around.

"It's my pleasure to announce Ed Lucas has been called up," he told them.

The team flew together in high-fives and hugs, and Lucas felt "hot" – the physical feeling when all your emotions rush together and gather at the fringes of your skin.

"It was an odd emotion – very tough to explain," he says. "I was excited. I was happy. There was a lot of relief involved. It's the validation of the past decade of my life.

"Every day you wake up and make decisions about how you're going to live your life that day. I've been doing it the same way for 10 years. A very big relief to see it come together."

Suddenly Lucas was the first Dartmouth grad since 1991 (Brad Ausmus) to appear on a major-league roster. Suddenly he was putting on a Miami Marlins uniform and trotting out under the lights of arguably the most modern baseball stadium ever built. Suddenly Lucas was standing in the batter's box, facing Fernando Rodney and taking his first big-league pitch.

It had to be the most special Strike 1 of the 2013 season.

Lucas grounded out. In doing so, he joined a truly special fraternity of major-leaguers. Few have made it to the very top of the sport, and far fewer would have kept going through all the long nights of crappy hotels, fast-food meals and middle seats in turbulence.

But after that ground out, Lucas made sure he was no Moonlight Graham – tapping one nubber to the mound and then vanishing from the game forever. He logged six hits in his first 10 at-bats as a Marlin, four of those hits coming in Sunday's win over the Mets. The guy is not looking like a career minor-leaguer.

On Monday night, in a phone call from Philadelphia, where the Marlins are playing, Holly asked the question she's asked hundreds of times before, "How's everything?"

The question hit Lucas with unexpected force.

"I realized something for the first time," he says. "Minor-league baseball players are the best complainers you'll ever meet. We can find the worst-case scenario in every situation. There was absolutely nothing I could possibly complain about. Everything was harmonious."

Lucas made sure to say a special thank you to Holly and his agent, for encouraging him. But there was also something else at play – something unique to the sport.

"The great thing about baseball and baseball players is the hopefulness," he says. "You have to have it in this game of failure such as ours. If you somehow hit .330 this season, the majors are always there. One step away."

Ed Lucas took 10 years to make that one step, from sad tale to inspiration. After all those departures from musty terminals and bus stations, a major-leaguer has arrived.

GEORGE BRETT - GOING ALL OUT

A reporter once asked 3 time batting champion and Hall of Famer George Brett what he wanted to do in his last at-bat before retiring, he gave the following response:

"I want to hit a routine grounder to second and run all out to first base, then get thrown out by a half step. I want to leave an example to the young guys that that's how you play the game: all out.

DEREK JETER - YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE TALENT FOR EFFORT

Good story on Derek Jeter told be A's General Manager Billy Beane:

Eight years ago, to his recollection, Beane watched Jeter run out a routine ground ball to shortstop in the late innings of a routine game in which the Athletics were beating the Yankees. Jeter ran down the first base line in 4.1 seconds, a time only possible with an all-out effort. Beane was so impressed by the sprint that he ordered his staff to show the video of that play to all of the organization's players in spring training the following year.

"Here you have one of the best players in the game," Beane says, "who already had made his money and had his four championships by then, and he's down three runs in the seventh inning running like that. It was a way of showing our guys, 'You think you're running hard, until you see a champion and a Hall of Famer run.' It wasn't that our guys were dogging it, but this is different. If Derek Jeter can run all out all the time, everybody else better personally ask themselves why they can't."

Told of the story, Jeter says, "It makes you feel good whenever anybody appreciates how you do things. The least you can do is play hard. It's effort. You don't have to have talent for effort."

Ichiro has a very fine prefrontal cortex

TOKYO — Countless attempts have been made over the years to try to pinpoint Ichiro's prowess, but Dr. Kenichiro Mogi may have trumped all explanations. "Ichiro," he says with confidence, "has a very fine prefrontal cortex." Mogi's a celebrity brain scientist in Japan. More to the point, he also co-hosts a TV show loosely translated as "Secrets of the Ultimate Professional," a popular weekly documentary series focusing on the methodology that has allowed certain individuals to reach the pinnacles of their trades.

For 70 days over three different spans of last season, a four-person, one-camera crew (of which this writer was a member) followed Ichiro's every move, trying to discern his professional methodology.

What viewers saw was a program that quickly zeros in on Ichiro's meticulously crafted daily routine of preparing for a game. It doesn't start at the ballpark or with his equipment or anything else directly related to baseball. Rather, it begins with one of the first activities of the day for people who work at night — lunch.
The camera discovers that Ichiro has eaten the same lunch before home games all seven years he has been in Seattle — homemade Japanese curry from his wife Yumiko. Not variations of her recipe, but the exact same kind every single day. And on the road, he almost always opts for a cheese pizza, easy on the sauce and fluffy around the edges, if you must know.

But why must we know this? When that question is posed to Mogi, he first giggles in slight embarrassment."It's very interesting from a brain science point of view," he says as his tone becomes serious. "There are many solutions, not just one solution to a particular problem. Certainly, some athletes eat lots of different food, that's also a possible approach. But in Ichiro's case, he sticks to a particular style.
"We believe it has a lot to do with his baseball playing style. Ichiro has found in his particular case, it is helpful to follow the same ritual every day and that way he can really fine-tune his brain state so that he can concentrate fully on baseball. Ichiro's way is not everybody's way."

Nor should Ichiro's way be confused with superstition, because he doesn't alter his lunchtime menu depending on the previous night's performance. And it might not be as idiosyncratic as it first appears, either. By limiting himself to dishes he knows he enjoys, Ichiro eliminates the element of surprise. He knows exactly how the meal will taste and how it will sit in his stomach.

Lunch, then, becomes a stress-free way of beginning his daylong mental and physical preparation for that night's game. It doesn't mean Ichiro doesn't enjoy finer foods, which he certainly does. It merely means he's willing to sacrifice the immediate pleasure of seeking a gourmet lunch for the long-term reward of higher focus at game time.

This higher focus allows him to achieve his ultimate goal, which is an acute awareness of the sensations he experiences on the playing field. Some of the minute tinkering Ichiro occasionally makes to his batting stance has been reported before, but often with a tinge of sarcasm out of disbelief that such fastidiousness could actually matter, like a minuscule repositioning of his foot or an infinitesimal reduction in the pressure of a finger on the bat.

To Ichiro, though, batting, and really baseball overall, is absolutely about capturing a unique but essential feeling. The television program explored his unwavering pursuit of this. "When Ichiro said he is aware of his own feelings and he is committed to his own feelings, that was the most interesting point for me," Mogi explains. "No matter what the batting theories are, he doesn't really follow the already established and well-honored style of batting. He follows his own sensations and feelings."

Certainly, different batters have different approaches to their craft. But among all the possible ways of accomplishing the task, Ichiro's chosen way of trying to understand and respond to exactly what his body feels is perhaps the most difficult. Mogi agrees. "Ichiro's way is a very hard way and certainly out of the norm," he says. "In order to rely on your own feelings like that, you have to have something called metacognition. It's the ability to observe yourself as if you're observing your own internal state from the outside. Of course, it's all your own feeling, but you can access and analyze it as if you are observing it from an objective point of view.

"I find that quality very strong in Ichiro. He can actually report on his own internal feelings in an accurate language. It's very unbelievable. Even if he can't describe it in words, he has a very good idea about how he's feeling in a particular situation. For example, in batting, if he doesn't do well, he remembers how he felt at that particular instance so that he can reflect on it later and compare it with the feelings he had when he was doing well so he can make this very fine adjustment to improve his performance. "In order to do that, you need to have these metacognitive abilities, and that is actually carried by the prefrontal cortex in your brain."

And that's where Mogi's earlier praise for Ichiro's prefrontal cortex comes from. But, during the course of the program, Mogi actually finds something even more stunning than his appreciation for what lies beneath Ichiro's forehead. It's the moment in the program's studio segment when Ichiro turns to Mogi and proclaims he's felt no sense of accomplishment to this point in his career because his records have been achieved from what he perceives as a deficient state.

Ichiro goes on to explain that during the course of last season, he captured what he imagines has long been an elusive feeling at the plate and now he feels he's closer to being able to perform at 100 percent of his ability than he's ever been before.
That revelation is also the key to grasping a comment Ichiro made in numerous interviews at the end of last season. As he turns toward what will be his 17th pro season, he finally feels he's on the cusp of where he's always wanted to be from a feeling standpoint. That admission, coupled with the program's ending, could give any baseball fan great anticipation for what Ichiro still has to offer on the field.

DISCIPLINE

Here are some thoughts on the importance of discipline and a great example on the Yankee great Mickey Mantle.

He may have been the most naturally gifted baseball player of all time. He was clocked rounding the bases in an incredible 13 seconds. Yet, his speed was nothing compared to the power of his hitting. It's been said there were home run hitters, and then there was this man - in a league of his own. The Guinness Book of World Records credits him with hitting the longest home run ever measured, at 643 feet.

The player I'm describing is the great Mickey Mantle. By the age of 19 he had been called up to play for the New York Yankees. He won a World Series his rookie year, and his teams would capture seven championships over the course of his career. By the time he retired, Mantle had played more games as a Yankee than any other player, and had been named MVP of the American League three times. He still holds the all-time World Series records for home runs, runs scored, and runs batted in.

Yet, in spite of his impressive accomplishments, experts believe Mickey Mantle never reached his potential. Most blame Mantle's chronic knee injuries for preventing him from doing more. But injuries weren't the root of the problem. What most people didn't know was that Mantle was a raging alcoholic.

At age 62, with his health and family life a mess, Mantle checked into the Betty Ford Clinic and started the long road to sobriety. Looking back from this vantage point, he assessed his career:

“I never fulfilled what my dad had wanted [to be the greatest player who ever lived], and I should have. God gave me a great body to play with, and I didn't take care of it. And I blame a lot of it on alcohol. Everybody tries to make the excuse that injuries shortened my career. Truth is, after I'd had a knee operation the doctors would give me rehab work to do, but I wouldn't do it. I'd be out drinking... I hurt my knees through the years, and I just thought they'd naturally come back. Everything has always come natural to me. I didn't work hard enough at it.”

Despite his great natural talent, Mickey Mantle never disciplined himself off the field. By the time Mantle was ready to change, it was too late. His liver was ruined from a life of alcoholism, and he died at age 64 from inoperable cancer.


Four Truths about Discipline
What were you born to do? What is your dream? To become the person you have the potential to be, you have to cultivate a life of discipline.

1.) Discipline Comes with a Price Tag
Discipline is costly. It demands a continual investment of time, energy, and commitment at the expense of momentary pleasure and ease. Discipline means paying hours of practice to win the prize of skill. Discipline means giving up short-term benefits for the hope of future gain. Discipline means pressing on to excellence long after everyone else has settled for average.

2.) Discipline Turns Talent to Greatness
When you read about someone like Mickey Mantle, you realize that too much talent can actually work against someone. Super-talented individuals can coast on sheer ability and neglect building the daily habits of success that will sustain them. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow shared much insight when he wrote:

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

If you want to reach your potential, attach a strong work ethic to your talent.

3.) Discipline Focuses on Choices, Not Conditions
In general, people approach daily discipline in one of two ways. They focus on the external or the internal. Those who focus externally allow conditions to dictate whether or not they remain disciplined. Because conditions are transitory, their discipline level changes like the wind.

In contrast, people with internal discipline focus on choices. You cannot control circumstances, nor can you control others. By focusing on your choices, and making the right ones regularly, will help you stay disciplined.

4.) Discipline Does Not Bow Down to Feelings
As Arthur Gordon said, "Nothing is easier than saying words. Nothing is harder than living them, day after day. What you promise today must be renewed and redecided tomorrow and each day that stretches out before you."

Becoming great isn’t easy, its built day by day, month by month, and year by year.

ALBERT PUJOLS

Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals might be the best young hitter in the history of the game.

But there is something behind his stat sheets, thats not shown on highlight shows, or seen by the fans. "What you don't see is how hard I work, how hard I prepare," he says.

Pujols has just finished one of his daily 2 1/2-hour off-season workouts. He lifts weights, watches videos of pitchers he'll face during the season, and spends serious time in the batting cage.

Despite his star status, he was one of the first position players on the Cardinals to arrive at spring training this season. He spent much of that time polishing his play at first base.

During the season, Pujols arrives early for games, takes cuts in the batting cages to make sure his swing is smooth, and watches more video on the opposing pitcher.

"Albert is so professional in his approach, whether it's the winter, the spring, or the summer," says Cardinal manager Tony La Russa.

All that study and preparation helps explain why Pujols is a fast starter (.385 average last April) and why, unlike other hot starters, he keeps punishing pitchers as the season progresses. In 2003, Pujols hit a hefty .346 after the All-Star break and ended the regular season with the majors' best average: .359.

"God gave me this natural ability," says Pujols. "But it's even better when you work hard and you put those two things together. [Then], it's unbelievable."

EVAN LONGORIA

Step into the circle with Evan Longoria. It's an imaginary place he goes to before every pitch, a place where expectations and ramifications and past failures are not allowed, a place where the only thing that matters is the challenge before him.
The Devil Rays have a 4-3 lead and at third base is Longoria, a place that demands total focus. His eyes are unblinking, his knees and elbows bent, his weight shifted to the front of his spikes. His mind is embedded in this moment, because this is the only moment he can influence. Longoria's glove flashes open as he reaches to his left; the ball takes one hop, then disappears into the webbing, and he finishes the play with an easy throw to first. White Sox manager Terry Francona says aloud, "Wow."

For the young third baseman, it's just another out. Longoria is only 23, and he hasn't played even a full season's worth of games in the big leagues, but if the managers and general managers of all 30 teams were to redraft the players in the majors, he'd be the first guy taken by many of them. "No question," says one longtime GM. Longoria arrived in Tampa Bay last season, and not coincidentally, the Rays went to the World Series and he was the unanimous pick as the AL Rookie of the Year. His potential as a hitter is unlimited, and he seemingly intercepts everything that comes within a couple of miles of his position. His ability to backhand the ball cleanly is absurd. "I don't think I've seen a better third baseman, and I played with Mike Schmidt," says Tom Foley, Tampa Bay's infield coach.

But there's something more: The quiet SoCal kid exudes an innate confidence, much like Woods does. It's a competitive ruthlessness lurking just beneath the gracious veneer. Longoria is sure he'll figure out a way to kick your ass. "The thing about Evan is that he likes the stardom, he likes all the pressure on him," says Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who shared a college suite with Longoria at Long Beach State. "That's what a superstar has to do, because everybody is looking at you. You've got to want to be special."

And Longoria has always wanted that, even when no major league organization wanted him.

In his first year at Long Beach State, he slept on a futon. The coaches remember him as remarkably quiet, comfortable in his space as Tulo's sidekick. Tulo was the star, the leader, the shortstop, so Longoria became a third baseman. When Ken Ravizza, a sports psychology consultant for the baseball team, first met Longoria, he suspected the teenager didn't see the merits of working on his mental approach, but in time he turned out to be the perfect sponge. "Looking back, if I didn't have the training I had with Ken ... I can see why some guys lose it completely," he says.

Ravizza counsels players to forgive themselves for failure -- and Longoria was far from perfect. In the 2003 draft, 1,480 players were selected; Longoria, then a senior at St. John Bosco High School, in Bellflower, Calif., was not among them. He didn't even get a scholarship offer from a Division I program. He wound up at Rio Hondo Community College, about 12 miles from his house, in Downey. Longoria didn't see that as an obstacle. The summer before classes started, he called coach Mike Salazar two or three times a week: Hey, Coach, you want to go hit? You want to go work out?

Longoria has never known any other way. When Michael Longoria came home from his job as a school maintenance worker to take them to practices, Evan's bag was already packed. "He always wanted to practice," his dad says. "He was always ready to work."
Evan also played water polo in high school, but when he was 15, he told his father, "I want to dedicate myself to baseball." He joined a summer league wood-bat team in nearby Maywood, concentrated on hitting drills and lifted weights to strengthen his skinny frame. Michael couldn't help but notice that his son seemed naturally predisposed to fixing his perceived weaknesses without any prodding. During the 2003 draft, Evan wasn't so much worried about getting picked as he was focused on getting better. "I didn't feel like I would be left out completely," he admits. "You have dreams in high school, and playing in the big leagues is the ultimate dream. But when you don't get any scholarship offers and you have to play at junior college, you start to think you might have to come up with something different in the real world -- having to get a job, get my education."

But Longoria clung to baseball, worked at it. In pickup basketball and golf games, Salazar smack-talked him, challenged him, and Longoria answered by producing under pressure. "He thinks of himself as someone who is clutch," Salazar says. When Longoria transferred to Long Beach State, in 2004, he had no presumption of stardom, only the desire to get there. "He knows himself," Ravizza says. "He's not worried about being a success. He's more concerned with the process."

Ravizza taught Longoria how to use structure to find mental relief. Everything is done through the prism of preparing for success: the way you get ready for at-bats, the way you walk to home plate, the way you forgive yourself after making an out or an error. There will be times, Ravizza told him, when you are feeling good and you can just go with it, but on the difficult days, this structure will be there for you.

Following his first season at Long Beach State, Longoria played in the 2005 Cape Cod League against the nation's best amateurs -- with the wood bats he'd been using for years. He led the league in homers and RBIs and won the MVP award. Now all the scouts wanted him, and in June 2006 he was the third pick in the draft. He reached this point, Michael Longoria believes, because in Evan's daily search for what eluded him, he made himself into a special player. "He doesn't do it for the fame," Michael says. "He does it for the challenge."

Evan Longoria, the rookie phenom. He was getting more attention last spring than guys who had been playing with the Rays for years, so he was in the perfect position to offend the veterans -- just as Delmon Young, the No. 1 pick of the 2003 draft, had done. But Longoria thrived. "He impressed me from Day One," says leftfielder Carl Crawford. "Somebody must've schooled him before he got up here, because he definitely carried himself well. If you'd watched him last year, you would've guessed that he'd been in the big leagues for 10 years. He fit right in. He doesn't want to be the guy with a lot of talent everybody hates. It was refreshing to see someone with that kind of talent act that way."

But it didn't come easy. Longoria started 2008 at Triple-A Durham and struggled at the plate. Disappointed and frustrated, he punched out a text to Tulowitzki: I am never going to get called up to the big leagues. I'm screwing myself. A week into the season, though, Longoria got called up and went to work. He asked veteran Eric Hinske about his pregame workout routine, and when Hinske told him that he did his weightlifting and physical conditioning early in the afternoon, Longoria started arriving early at Tropicana Field. After plays in the field that felt awkward to him, he asked Foley what he might have done differently. They worked together daily, and at the end of every session, Foley hit 10 balls as hard as he could at the 6'2", 210-pound third baseman. If Longoria bobbled one, he had to make a smoothie for Foley in the clubhouse, and if Longoria fielded all of them cleanly, then Foley made the smoothie.

Longoria quickly became a team leader. Rays VP Andrew Friedman walked into the clubhouse one day and saw him caught up in a moment of Guitar Hero genius, his teammates gathering around as he played at stunning speed. "Longo, is there anything you're not good at?" Hinske asked. Of course there is. But when Longoria struggles, he leans on structure. Last August he got hit by a pitch, broke his right wrist and was on the disabled list for a month while his teammates tried to hold on in the AL East. Ravizza was watching the Rays on TV and caught a shot of Longoria in the dugout pulling his batting gloves out of his pocket. Later, Ravizza called with a question: "Were you mentally preparing for your at-bats?" Longoria told him yes, that each time his replacement came up, he would put on his gloves and visualize the entire at-bat, pitch by pitch. And when the AB was over, he'd take off the gloves.
In his first postseason he smashed a home run in his first playoff at-bat, against the White Sox, and then again in his second. He homered in four straight ALCS games against the Red Sox. But then pitchers started executing the scouting report, moving his feet off the plate with inside fastballs before spinning breaking balls low and away. Longoria descended into a postseason abyss and went hitless in his first 17 at-bats in the World Series against the Phillies. Slowly, however, he tunneled his way out. There was no rookie panic, no drowning in the tidal wave of the postseason.
During the outset of his second season while in spring training, and a reporter has stopped to ask Longoria questions about himself. Teammates are sitting nearby, within earshot, and 20 minutes into the interview, his answers become clipped, and he glances around the room. It becomes clear: He's not comfortable talking about himself in front of the other Rays, out of respect for them. "He understands his place in the game already," says manager Joe Maddon.

Ron Washington Leading Texas Rangers To The Top

No matter how great the talent level, teams won't consistently win without trust between a coach and his players.

Trust is established over time. It must be earned and shortcuts don't exist.

"Trust is huge. It's everything. It's the foundation for any kind of chemistry," Michael Young said the other day. "When you have trust, everyone is pulling in the same direction. That's half of the battle when it comes to wining ball games."

The Rangers trust their coach.

It's among the reasons they're in first place in the AL West midway through May.

BOBBY SCALES - IT TOOK 10 YEARS

A champagne bottle was in Bobby Scales' locker Tuesday to help him toast his first callup to the Major Leagues after 10 years in the Minors.

The gift was from Brian Sweeney, a pitcher who was Scales' teammate in 2004 at Triple-A Portland. Sweeney began playing professional baseball in 1996 and didn't get called up to the big leagues until 2003 with Seattle.

Scales hasn't spoken to the pitcher in two or three years, but Sweeney didn't forget his friend. The bottle of champagne was a reminder of their perseverance.

The note attached said: "All the hard work paid off."

Scales, called up to the big leagues for the first time Monday, made his first Major League start Tuesday for the Cubs, got his first Major League hit, scored his first Major League run and whiffed for his first Major League strikeout.

Scales will still treasure the game ball and lineup card from his first game, well deserved after more than 1,000 Minor League at-bats.

"Nobody can ever take it from you," said Scales. "I got it, I earned it. I'm just fortunate to have it."

He struck out on four pitches in his first at-bat in the second inning, but he delivered a single to left with two outs in the fifth. As he got to first base, he could exhale.

"He threw me a fastball and I was able to get on top of it," Scales said. "There's no rocket science behind it. It found some grass.

Teammate Micah Hoffpauir said. "He's put in the time and has paid the price. He deserves everything he's got."

"The thing I had to work the most on, I had to work on my defense if I wanted to make it to the majors," Scales said.

He credited two coaches -- Tony Franklin and Bobby Dickerson with polishing his field work.

"Early on, Tony had a lot of work to do and he did the heavy lifting," Scales said. "It was one of those things where you think you're good and you're not."

The Padres apparently wanted to move Scales to the outfield, but Franklin lobbied to keep Scales in the infield.

"His belief in me, I can't tell you what it means," Scales said. "I don't have words for it."

Scales' time in the big leagues may be limited. Scales knows his role.

"I just have to do what Skip asks me to do," Scales said. "He called for me, so however he sees fit to use me, that's what I have to do."

He's come a long way. In the offseason, Scales is a teacher in the Alpharetta, Ga., area, and this past winter, he handled a physical education class and four health classes. Playing in front of 39,497 at Wrigley Field is a lot different than being in front of high schoolers.

"I knew for a fact I could play here and I could contribute to a big league team," Scales said. "That never wavered. Whether guys get opportunities, that's not up to me. There are guys at home, good players I know, who had better numbers than me and never had a chance. You wonder if that day will come but there was never a doubt I could play."

Piniella keeps calling Scales a "kid." In baseball terms, 31 is not considered young.

TIM LINCECUM - NOT RESTING ON HIS LAURELS

Five years ago, Tim Lincecum was on his way to earning Freshman of the Year honors at the University of Washington.

Today, he's getting ready for his first season since winning the Cy Young Award in November of last year.

Nicknamed "The Freak," the 5-foot-11, 174-pound Lincecum isn't resting on his laurels.

"I always want to get better," said Lincecum, who had a league-high 265 strikeouts last season for the Giants. "I come into this year, I'm not just sitting on my ass hoping everything's going to be all right because of last year. I've got to come out here and work and become better. That's what it takes to be a good major-league baseball player."

KEN MACHA - Milwaukee Brewers Manager

Milwaukee Brewers manager Ken Macha on what he values as a coach:

"What you need to do is let these players know what is important to you. Playing good, fundamental baseball is important to me. Going out there and grinding it out every day is important to me. Putting a good day's work in every day and trying to get yourself improved is important to me.

I believe in process. You've got to think what you're going to do every day to get yourself better and go out and follow that process. If you follow that process over the course of the whole year, you're going to see results. You go out and play hard and prepare yourself properly and you're going to get the most out of what you have."

LEADERSHIP - Aaron Rowand

Below are six points from a story about Giants outfielder Aaron Rowand, who is "THE LEADER" of the team according to teammates.

1. Players recognize other players who've paid the price: "Nobody in this game deserves respect," Rowand said. "You have to earn it." Said one of Rowand's teammates: "He talks the talk, but then he does it on the field." Rowand arrived early to training camp and helped establish the clubhouse rules for the season. Said Rowand: "I'm not better than anybody else in this clubhouse. I don't think anybody else puts himself on a pedestal. We're all equals."

2. By nature of their experience, veterans should lead: All the veterans should lead. Either you're a vocal leader or you lead by example or you do a little bit of both. At some point in the season, you need everybody to step up and pull his own weight. It's up to the older guys on the team to help the younger guys out, to mentor, to police, to be the guys who are responsible for bringing everyone together for one common goal, to win ballgames together as a unit.

3. Leaders aren't necessarily the most popular players on the team: Being a leader, you've got to not be afraid to call people out, not be afraid to ruffle some feathers. A good leader isn't somebody whom everybody likes, but somebody everyone respects.

4. Coaches rely on players who can "lead from within": On every club, you need guys to take on that role because the players are the ones spending the majority of the time with each other.

5. With leadership, comes responsibility: A lot of people want the title of being the leader but don’t want to do the stuff that a leader has to do. It’s easy to talk the talk but can you back it up.

6. The ability to manage strong emotions is important for a leader: Panic and anger are not good examples to set for someone who views himself as a leader. You have to know when to keep everybody together and when to get on someone.