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00:00:01
Rachel Balkovec
170 Plays6 years ago
Such an enjoyable conversation with New York Yankees hitting coach RACHEL BALKOVEC!
Rachel is a deep thinker whose ability to both challenge norms and seek deeper truths have served to forge her path. She notes that "by trade I'm a hitting coach, but in reality, I'm a student, athlete, minimalist, feminist and nomad. Those are things that I resonated with long before my career and will be with me long after my career in sports is over."
Rachel and I explore the art and science of hitting a baseball by exploring both the mental and physical aspects that drive a complicated passion. The conversation covered a diverse range of topics that include the importance of mentorship (especially for young women), the complicated history of the American National Pastime, her podcast 'Theta Wave" explorations and the meaning of making history.
Rachel manages the Tampa minor league affiliate of The New York Yankees.
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Transcript
Introduction with Peter Bauer
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Volante, editor and producer Peter Bauer. This is Ken Volante with Something Rather Than Nothing and this week we have Rachel Balkovic who is, this is just a really exciting interview for me.
Rachel Balkovic's Historic Role in Baseball
00:00:29
Speaker
She is
00:00:30
Speaker
the first hitting coach, female hitting coach, Major League Baseball history. We're all anxiously waiting baseball to start. And I think it's, for me, it's personally a nice feeling to be able to talk to you, Rachel, and really wanted to welcome you to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. Well, Che,
00:00:57
Speaker
appreciate being on a unique podcast and some podcasts that doesn't have to do with sports necessarily. And I'm definitely a broad big picture person. So I like to be, you know, having a hand in different realms. So I appreciate you having me on thinking and thinking about me for this. Yeah. Yeah. And, um,
00:01:19
Speaker
We'll get into it in a moment, but I'll ask you a little bit about your podcast and about some of your thoughts and your training and what I can see with what you're doing. It's kind of like trying to put everything together kind of in the pursuit of excellence. And I think it's a really exciting conversation.
Breaking Gender Norms in Childhood
00:01:40
Speaker
But first, Rachel, I always ask guests what they were like as a young child.
00:01:48
Speaker
whether that you feel like you're now like you used to be, I mean, we were always into sports or what were you like? You are one of, I would say like two or three people that have asked me this question directly and
00:02:05
Speaker
I'm so glad, but I'm also so disappointed sometimes by the interviews I'm on because people don't ask the question. It's as if my life started when I was hired by the St. Louis Cardinals, or even now when I was hired by the Yankees, people don't have any idea of my background. And frankly, my childhood, my opinion was very much meat and potatoes. Almost literally, I grew up in the Midwest. Very normal, I guess you could say.
00:02:31
Speaker
A mom and a dad, two sisters, Midwest, not rich, not poor, just really middle of the road, middle class. Pretty normal, but I wasn't normal. I was really just a different kid, and I knew it from a really, really young age. And I could feel this, like, I would say, chip on my shoulder or just understanding that I was different than other young girls.
00:02:59
Speaker
probably in a way, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm straight, but probably in a way I hear people talk about it when they knew they were gay at a young age and they say, well, I knew I, when I was five, like I knew when I was five that I had a purpose. And as like a very concrete example of that would be in fourth grade, I guess that means I was 11 or 12.
Ambition to Become First Female NFL Kicker
00:03:21
Speaker
I, you know, we did the like, what do you want to be when you grow up assignment? And I said that I wanted to be the first female kicker in the NFL.
00:03:29
Speaker
All right. Yeah. And you, you just break that down and it's like, God, I wish I could go back to my 11 or 12 year old self and go, how did you get that idea? Like, how did that come to you? I want to know, I want to know where this came from. Because you break that down. It's like, Oh, I wanted to play in the NFL. Like that's enough in itself. You know, I want to be a professional football player. And if any young boy said that, you'd be like, well, but you know, it's a typical young boy thing to say, right? But first of all, I'm a girl saying it, but also I actually said,
00:03:56
Speaker
I want to be the first female kicker in the NFL. I don't even know how I knew that there weren't girls in the NFL. Like how did this thought come to me? So I always just had this little thing about me that was like, girls are not separate and we can do the same thing as guys. And this isn't some cheesy.
00:04:19
Speaker
Boys, you know anything you can do I can do better It's just like I never saw myself as different and I think it always bothered me from a young age that other people thought I was gonna be limited by my gender so That was in me very young and it kind of I don't know why it didn't go away by any means I was a softball player at the Division one level I was very strong always took to the weight room. That's kind of what led me into strengthening conditioning and
00:04:48
Speaker
My parents, I think were probably, I don't know what planted the seed really, but my parents, let's say my parents fostered that, right? They didn't tell me I couldn't be a kicker in the NFL. In fact, my dad bought me a tee and a football for my birthday at one point, and I would go out and kick fake field goals in my backyard.
00:05:07
Speaker
So he didn't tell me I couldn't be, even if behind closed doors, they were like, yeah, that's cute, Rachel. Like you're never going to do that, but okay. Like they just let me think it. And I think that in itself is very important. And so I grew up in a household where my parents are, we're not dreams or entrepreneurs or whatever. They, like I said, middle-class worked pretty normal jobs and went to work every day and didn't, you know, worked hard and we're gritty people, but,
00:05:35
Speaker
For us, I say us, my sisters and I, they never put limitations on us. So whatever we said we wanted to do, I think they supported it. And that is just so vital. Because I hear other women say, well, when I was young, my dad told me, girls don't play sports. Or my mom told me, hey, don't get too big. You weigh too much. You know, you're in that athletic body, right? Whereas, like, I come home and
00:06:03
Speaker
from my first semester of college, and I had put on 12 pounds of muscle. I mean, I had genetics to put on muscle very easily. And my dad was like, geez, Rach, what are they feeding you down there? You look great. You look athletic. Just very celebratory of being powerful, being open-minded, and going after what you want. So that, in a nutshell, is my upbringing as it relates to who I am today. And it's everything, honestly. It's who I am, and that's why
00:06:34
Speaker
I'm able to be
Empowerment from Family Support
00:06:35
Speaker
sitting here on this podcast as a hitting coach for the New York Yankees. It's not like, Oh, I became a hitting coach and then all of a sudden I'm empowered and I'm, I have this vision and I'm powerful person. Like, no, it started way, way before that. Cause I had to go through some shit to get here and I would have never made it through that. If I hadn't already had a foundation of my upbringing and early mentors that really, you know, me open-minded and
00:07:02
Speaker
and thinking powerfully. Yeah, that's it is. I love that story. And I think it's so important what you pointed out. And I've talked to other guests about this, where, you know, the parents or whoever, you know, whoever is kind of like the primary person you look to, it could be teachers, it could be parents. And when they say, when they don't say no, number one, right, to what you want to do, but when they also encourage you, make you feel like honored as you are,
00:07:33
Speaker
Now you have permission to do more things. And I think it's such a powerful thing. There's that quote of, you know, my teacher said I was smart, so therefore I was smart. You know? Absolutely. Really just creating the basis for you to be who you want to be. And well, it was up to you to keep going with that. And you've done it. But that's a great foundation.
00:08:03
Speaker
Well, so I just briefly mentioned at the beginning, uh, about your, about your podcast and I've listened to some episodes and I, and I love it. The, the main, the main dynamic I love about your podcast is, um, like you are seeking and I see myself as seeking like kind of like answers of like whether it's higher performance or flow, um, that, that you've, you know, that you discuss in that podcast.
00:08:30
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, creating the podcast and your guests and what you're exploring?
Exploring Flow State Podcast
00:08:38
Speaker
So yeah, my podcast is called the theta wave podcast. And basically for the listeners, the theta wave is the brainwave associated with the flow state.
00:08:46
Speaker
And so, you know, usually that's like lucid dreams or sometimes it's said that you can achieve it while you're awake. And that just means, I mean, after talking to some neuroscientists and people that are deep into this research, they basically just said like, yeah, it's when you're having fun. And so, but realistically, it's like attached to big wave surfers and people who are doing these extreme sports who
00:09:12
Speaker
you cannot be thinking about every single moment you're just like in the in the flow of the of the moment whereas like one one second flows into the next closer to the next and at the end of the event you go how the hell did I just do that like it's on your cognitively thinking
00:09:30
Speaker
as you're surfing a big wave, okay, now I got to put my foot here and now I got to lean back a little bit and oh, I got to speed up. I got to lean forward. Like you're not thinking those things. You're just almost unconsciously doing it. And so I try to interview people that are essentially like I view to be visionaries or people who are just thoughtful humans that are thinking differently than other people that are really bringing new information or different information to
00:09:56
Speaker
the world. And that could be anyone. I've interviewed Olympic athletes. I've interviewed business people, just people who are thinking differently. And I tried to, as I've said already, as I've alluded to, I think that people's backgrounds are very important. And if you really tease out the details of their upbringing and understand where they came from, you're going to understand why they are how they are today.
00:10:20
Speaker
And so I try to kind of dig into their backgrounds and go, okay, you're this phenomenal person. How did you get this way? How did you even think that you could be a phenomenal person that you could do something that no one's ever done before in business or in sport or whatever? How did you even get empowered like that? You know, that's what I want to know. So that's the idea behind the podcast. And it's really just my own curiosity, feeling the people that are on there.
00:10:47
Speaker
I listened to one and it certainly reminded me of there was a gentleman on one-year episodes. He played for the New England Patriots, I believe. And he was from Fall River. I grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on the East Coast. Oh, okay.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of uh, what he had to talk about and kind of his experiences growing up and stuff I was like And I could really I could really vibe with that as an east coast kid and but also I think he had a similar statement I forget it was a coach or his teacher or something said, you know, you're gonna play for the new england patriots and you know Play for the new england patriots, right? And he said he he said um, that might have also been true but he actually when he was a child said
00:11:31
Speaker
I want to play for the New England Patriots. And if you know Mark Meghna or you follow them at all, like he is a powerful force in the world and his mother and his mother set him up that way. So interesting guy. Yeah. Thanks for that. That's right. He did say, and then I think it was like a little bit of the dynamic was that then he was affirmed by, by others or important people that were, that were around, uh, that were around him. Well, I look forward certainly to, um,
00:12:01
Speaker
listen in more of your podcast. And, um, it's, it's, it, that's been a joy to listen to. But, um, back to, you know, I mean, part of, part of your, part of your story is, um, you know, I'm fascinated to, to talk to you for a variety of reasons.
Ken's Baseball Passion
00:12:17
Speaker
Um, uh, but I love baseball, um, as I've conveyed to you, um, huge Boston Red Sox fan. I lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Wisconsin for about 10 to 12 years. So,
00:12:30
Speaker
I adopted the Brewers as my team. I have one team in each league. Um, just, you know, uh, baseball, baseball, geek, uh, a lot of books about baseball stories. Uh, I grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which was the triple a, uh, affiliate, uh, for the Boston Red Sox. And my dad and my brother went to the longest game in baseball history.
00:12:58
Speaker
Well, 1981, that was 33 innings. Um, so, uh, we didn't stay all 33 innings, but, uh, we were at the longest baseball game ever, but so I'm excited to talk to you a bit, uh, about baseball as well. Um, hitting right. You're hitting coach is, is there an art of hitting? Yeah, everything's art, isn't it?
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's an art. And I think the mental game is something that everyone talks about a bit. And so it's obviously prevalent in hitting as well. I would say that the real art is the development of the human that's doing the action of hitting. And so to see them evolve and go through their learning process, I think learning is actually one of the most
00:13:58
Speaker
amazing art forms that there is because you're building, and this is just to the, you know, to the namesake of your podcast, you're building these building blocks in your brain. And it's just fascinating to see people work through these, you know, times where they're trying to learn something new and they're trying to put a lot of things together at once and building on little successes and moving forward. And I mean, it's phenomenal to see these players grow.
00:14:28
Speaker
You know, it's hitters, but also as human beings. So that's the most fascinating thing about it. I think the, the just general concept of winning is actually the art form that we're seeing take place within the batting cages. Yeah. The, um, uh, I've read a lot about the art of hitting and I want to talk, you know, get on to the other side too. Cause I see them both as integrated, um, you know, for you kind of like the science and the science, the technique.
00:14:58
Speaker
the data, the tangible evidence of how somebody's hitting and how they're doing things right or wrong. But before going into a little bit more of that science, I want to ask you the general question, you know, as far as with the art of hitting, but what is art for you? I mean, just in general, you're a creative person. You help people with creative acts of, you know, performance. So what is art?
00:15:26
Speaker
I mean, I always say like, even so I do a lot of weightlifting and just that's my background is in strength and conditioning and training in the weight room. And sometimes I'll put something on Instagram and I just, it's me lifting. And it's just, I just say body art, you know, this is, it's really just like, I think art is probably combining. Um, I'm going to say combining raw materials, but I don't think you have materials as.
00:15:52
Speaker
cloth and paint and this and that. I think of materials could be cognitive processes, you know, so you could combine two different cognitive processes and all of a sudden you have this brilliant idea, which is art.
00:16:05
Speaker
it's really just combining things or getting something to work together harmoniously and be something beautiful when by itself it'd be nothing or it'd be something that's not viewed as beautiful and you see it all the time in a very literal sense with like art projects that are scrap metal put together and it's this really beautiful ornate sculpture or statue but the same thing goes for again something like
00:16:32
Speaker
weightlifting or you see like aerial yoga or you're seeing these people put really probably basic movements of the human body into this extremely intricate or complicated sequence to create something that couldn't have been possible without every little thing, the timing of every little thing going perfectly. And so I mean, I think art is everything and everything is art. You know, that's a very hippie thing to say. And not many people really get to hear my
00:17:02
Speaker
this side of me because they don't ask me these questions, but I'm very much into the idea that art is everywhere. It's everything Yeah, that's part of the it's it's part of the it's part of my appreciation of like the answers that I get for for the question because I think it's it's one that engages a lot of folk and and I think sometimes it's kind of
00:17:30
Speaker
cool, not to chat, you know, chalk everything up to experts, right? Like we read the textbook on what qualifies as an art piece because things are in proportion here and there and elsewhere that, you know, we have our working definitions and we're all appreciators on, on, on some level. Um, and, and so that's the art side of things. And of course you're from, you know, my, the way that I see, you know, your role or just listening to you talk and seeing
00:17:58
Speaker
you know, how you help train athletes, there's the science side of everything you're doing. And there's an increased, you know, as we know, you know, amount of, you know, video analysis, and, you know, strength and conditioning, which is your background, moving that into hitting all these pieces that are analyzed and pieces of data. So how did
00:18:22
Speaker
you know what what is what is the science of hitting uh... for you and how does that integrate to the to to hitting's role as an art say that there's like a few key components of that and it's
Scientific Approach to Hitting
00:18:39
Speaker
measuring the body and then also measuring the ball and so basically what that means is like i'm just going to give two examples so
00:18:48
Speaker
measuring the body would be like measuring how fast the hips are moving. And so you can put sensors on the body and see how fast the hips are rotating. And in theory, that should correlate to how far the ball is being hit. And then the ball. So nowadays, basically, there's technology that can measure how hard the ball is being hit. And so now we know that if a player hits a ball 120 miles an hour, that's usually major league power.
00:19:14
Speaker
Or at least potential to be in the big league You know like that's what you would do because if you hit the ball 120 miles an hour and you hit it in the air It's probably going to go out of a lot of major league parks, so that's kind of how that works Okay, so measuring so that's like an example of how you would measure ball flight to understand the hitter to evaluate a hitter and
00:19:33
Speaker
And then evaluating the actual body is like, I mean, you could, you could measure a lot of things with that, but there's also like the bat sensor. And so there's a sensor that goes on the end of the bat and you can measure how fast the bat is moving. And so basically these are all cues or I like the word that used evidence, like these are all cues or evidence or clues that are leading us towards evaluating a hitter and understanding
00:19:56
Speaker
where he's at today. And then a month from now, once we've done all this training, or this, you could say painting on a canvas, we look at these numbers and go, okay, do we like the way that these colors have all blended together to make this product? And so I think science just gives you a way to evaluate where I think in a traditional sense, art, you know, how do you evaluate an art project? Well,
00:20:22
Speaker
I don't really know. I don't have that answer. I'm sure somebody out there has that answer. I don't have that answer. But really, it's subjective. There's a lot of subjectivity to traditional, what people think traditionally is art, where, oh, I like that song, or I don't like that song, or, oh, I really love that painting, and somebody else doesn't like that painting. And it could be a beautiful painting to somebody, and absolute trash to somebody else. However, in sports,
00:20:45
Speaker
We have more objective ways, we think, I said we think on purpose, of measuring how successful a hitter currently is and how successful they can be. And that's really helpful. And it shows the kind of intricacy of the whole process.
00:21:10
Speaker
intricate enough sometimes that, uh, creators, but let's talk here, hitters can fall into a slump. Right. Well, what do you, what do you do about a slump? It's the most miserable, most taxing. How do you know how to help with that? Well, I haven't,
00:21:37
Speaker
yet because I'm so early in my hitting career, right? I haven't had to deal with this, but I will say like, as a player myself, I went through the yips. And if you are a baseball fan, you know what that is for people who are listening, who don't understand what that is. The yips is basically, um, performance anxiety. And so basically, I mean, I threw a ball my entire life until I was 18. And then all of a sudden, um, basically you can have that skill fall out of your head.
00:22:07
Speaker
So I couldn't throw the ball back to the pitcher as a catcher and dealt with that. And so I, and unfortunately the time mental skills wasn't really the hot topic that it is these days of mental health. It wasn't. So my coaches just kind of were working with me on mechanics and that was not the problem. Like it just was not the issue.
00:22:27
Speaker
So it just continued to get worse, and my career actually ended up ending because of the yips. So all this to say, what would I do with a guy who's in a slump? And, you know, I answered this question in my interview with the Yankees, and I said, well, I think the best thing to do is to pull that person out of baseball activities and take away some of the pressure. And they were like, what if this guy's a prospect?
00:22:51
Speaker
Does this prospect need to get more at bats or does he need to get more quality at bats? So does he need to have a mental process? And so for me, it always, because I, because I had firsthand, really intense experience with some, some mental processes that were not good for me. Um, I just know a slump is much more than mechanics. I mean, it can't, it can be mechanics, but.
00:23:16
Speaker
more likely than not it's something that's going on mentally and so using the resources that we have with mental skills especially like i said these days like mental skills mental performance is a huge hot topic and mental health in general is a hot topic especially in sports and so using the resources that we have just being able to get somebody using a slump
00:23:35
Speaker
to have a consistent mental process before they go up to bat to understand maybe, is there some anxiety attached to going up to bat, which no 20 year old boy likes to talk about having anxiety because they all want to be tough.
00:23:48
Speaker
So being able to have those conversations and talk about it as if talk about the mental side of things, just as if we're talking about physical mechanics, because it is the same thing. We're just making an adjustment to some kind of process, but people don't see it that way. And it's a little more like, there's a little more shame attached to, Oh, I have like some mental anxiety when I go up to the plate.
00:24:10
Speaker
then oh well I'm dipping my shoulder and that's getting me off plane and like it's so much easier to talk about the mechanics and the body and the science than it is the mental side but for me personally it's like when someone goes into a slump for sure mental side is the first thing I would go to yeah I found I found what you had to say there to be um I don't know it's just it seems like there's a more holistic approach to like looking at
00:24:37
Speaker
say in this case, the hitter is like actually a human being, right? Like, like actually, you know, impacted by, you know, uh, by other factors. I, when I played baseball, I stopped playing baseball, like when I was 12 or 13. And I always kind of wondered, like, when I stopped, I think it was something along the lines and maybe just being like anxious in front of people, you know, not necessarily like not being able to play or anything like that, just kind of like not wanting to be in front of people, which is,
00:25:07
Speaker
actually a pretty common reaction that people have. And I think that as the sports mature, like you think about it in a more sophisticated, intelligent way, like you're doing and bringing in these other factors that like, let's look at the factors that are contributing to this as a whole.
00:25:31
Speaker
So baseball, so that's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of mental stuff in baseball, right? And one of the questions I had for you is, you know, talking about some of these things, conceptually, you know, in your role and, you know, what you'll be doing, you know, working for the Yankees and being a hitting coach. Why do you think like, baseball,
00:25:53
Speaker
get it attracts so many kind of like thinkers and intellectuals and people who are commenting and commenting upon the comments and on the comments. I come from I'm come from Boston and the Boston sports press is the worst thing in the entire universe. I mean, it's it's too much. It's too obsessive. It's it's it's
00:26:16
Speaker
So it's crazy, but I think it's kind of like an outcropping of like constantly analyzing, constantly thinking about this sport. Why do you think baseball, I think everybody thinks so much around baseball or about baseball. I think, you know what, it's just such an intricate game and it's a thinking game. I don't want to take anything away from like football per se, but you can be big and you have a better chance of being
00:26:44
Speaker
good at football just because of like the physicality of it. Whereas baseball, like you have to have strategy and you also have to have finesse. And so I think to really appreciate baseball and be a baseball fan, you have to know the ins and the outs, right? You have to appreciate the pitcher and the sequence that he used to get the hitter out, or you have to appreciate the hitter and the fact that he just
00:27:07
Speaker
took a ball on the inside corner. That was a strike, but he took it on purpose because he knows the situation of the game. You know, like you have to, you have, if you really want to truly enjoy baseball, you have to like know the intricacies. Otherwise you're in the game is going to be boring to you because you're going to like, I think we're going to get to this, but it's like, there's really not a lot going on sometimes. But man, even when nothing happens, like a pitcher throws a pitch.
00:27:33
Speaker
And a hitter takes it. It could be a fabulous pitch, you know, in the right situation at the right time. And a lot could have happened to go into that one pitch. And if you don't know that, then it's easy to kind of glaze over and go, oh, nothing happened on that pitch, but plenty happened on that pitch. Yeah. And, and on that point too, I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned that I, um, you know, I,
00:27:59
Speaker
about baseball and, you know, one of the questions I had broached with you is, you know, there's this constant pressure and it seems, you know, over time for, for baseball to be more of a high scoring sport. You know, you think about the success of the NBA and there's like a lot of pressures, societal pressures to have, you know, more runs, more home runs and things like that, which I see as a very, for me, interpreting that as a very like American, you know, system phenomena.
00:28:28
Speaker
And one of the things that I've served and read about books and kind of got interested in was the popularity of baseball in Japan. And I think in my view, there's a different approach there about more of a Zen appreciation for the nothingness that's going on. Like you said, the downtime.
00:28:53
Speaker
Um, whether it's between pitches, between innings, stepping out of the batter's box, you know, things like that, just kind of the rich, um, you know, kind of like a lot of like what exactly is happening. And, um, so what, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you see that? I mean, is, is baseball a game of, uh, of something or is there actually like a lot of like nothing going on? Am I making wrong assumptions? Well,
00:29:22
Speaker
Interesting about Japan. I think that it has to do with their culture quite a bit and just like the reverence and respect for grittiness and just like the Kaizen, you know, attitude of like, get better at every moment, even when there's nothing going on. Right. And, um, I'm definitely a person where my mind doesn't shut it off. I actually, phenomenally, so I don't have the problem of not turning off to sleep.
00:29:50
Speaker
But there's never a dead moment in my head and I don't watch TV. I haven't owned a TV myself in like, I don't know, six or seven years. I usually fill things, but it could seem like if you didn't know, if you were watching me throughout a day, it could seem like maybe I'm not doing a whole lot, but I might just be on my computer or whatever, but I'm constantly moving.
00:30:14
Speaker
And so I would, I would definitely err on the side of like baseball is a game of like, there's always something going on, even though it might seem like there's nothing. And so again, just going back to you watch a pitcher throw a pitch and you're like, Oh my God, like, wow, that slider. Think about how much work he's put in to change that slider, uh, from a, from like a gyro or bullets in slider to a more traditional sweeping slider over the off season. Like it's a completely different pitch and wow, that's incredible.
00:30:42
Speaker
But to the onlooker who may not understand the thought process or may not understand all those intricacies, very easy to say that nothing's going on. So I definitely think baseball is a game of something. Having said that, I also know that from a big picture perspective, I think it would be good for the game if we, you know, we have to take something and understand something from the steroid era. People like home runs.
00:31:11
Speaker
So they, you know, but even though the steroid era may have had is, is marred and looked at as this negative time or black mark on baseball's history, it told us something, you know, people love the pizzazz. They love to watch a game like that. And so I do think it is positive that we, you know, people say all the time, or you hear, you hear athletes and organizations say, wow, thank you so much to the fan. Thank you so much to the fans. Well,
00:31:39
Speaker
Then we need to give the fans what they want. And I think that we should respect that and go as hitters and as hitting coaches, just to go, Hey, like chicks dig the long ball. Like people like home runs, you know, so like let's, and I like home runs, right? Don't you don't, don't the hitters like home runs? You know, that's phenomenal. So.
00:32:00
Speaker
I think we should move towards trying to have the long ball be a part of our game. And, you know, the ball hits the warning track and the crowd gets a little bit loud. And is it going over? Is it not? It kind of gives them something like that cherry on top to really, to really look forward to every game. And I think that's important, but also it's just as important to understand those intricacies behind the game so that when there isn't that pizzazz, you can still really and truly appreciate
00:32:27
Speaker
the art form goes back to that, the art form of throwing a ball and spinning at a certain way and using physics to your advantage to create this, this like impossible pitch to hit, you know, and then you appreciate the hitter even more if you understand how difficult that is. So I think it's a game of something. You just have to know what's going on. Yeah. I, it is, it made me think about a lot of, a lot of the components, um,
00:32:53
Speaker
lot of components of the game. And yeah, people love home. I mean, that's the home runs hit. You see the ball going deep. Everybody stops. Everybody's a fan stops. Everybody looks, everybody tracks it down. It's exciting. I remember, remember the, the home run, the Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire and home run chase. And I forget exactly when that was happening. It was like in the mid nineties or something like that. I remember being at County stadium, I got tickets, the Cardinals are in town against the Brewers and
00:33:23
Speaker
McGuire came to town, it was McGuire coming to town and he had something like 65, 66 home runs. And it was the old county stadium in Milwaukee. And I'd never seen any phenomenon like it. I mean, thousands of, you know, flash bulbs flashing at the time, you know, when he's swinging and it was, it was crazy. It was an absolute craze is a phenomenon. Yeah. The, the, the home run, the home run, right? So, um,
00:33:53
Speaker
uh One of the things that I that I wanted to ask you is what does it mean for
Reflecting on Role as First Female MLB Coach
00:34:01
Speaker
you? Uh to be identified as the first female hitting coach in major league baseball history You know, it's uh, uh so many emotions I guess but it's it's an honor it's a
00:34:18
Speaker
responsibility. But I'm proud that I get to have that responsibility. And I know that it goes all the way back to, like I said, my upbringing and just who I was from the get go, you know, that I know that I can handle this. It makes me proud to think like, my, you know, both my grandmothers have passed away. But what would they say, you know, both my grandmothers,
00:34:47
Speaker
grew up in a time where women couldn't vote. And they forget playing sports. I'm not even sure they would like that I played sports at the high level that I did. They were alive, I guess, until I was probably 16 and then 20. And so they saw me playing competitive sports and even took me into a couple of games and stuff, both of them.
00:35:13
Speaker
But just gosh, I mean, they both need, both of my grandmother's fairly graduated from high school, you know, and didn't go to college. And here I am, I have three degrees and I'm a hitting coach for the Yankees. Like, God, what would they say? I wish they knew. You know, and then you think about my mom who she grew up in a smaller farming town outside of Omaha, Nebraska. And she said, like growing up, there was only one sport for girls and that was track. She ran track.
00:35:41
Speaker
but there was no other opportunities for sports for her in Nebraska. You know, that's one generation. So I just think, I think of myself, not as like a pioneer, but more of like a result of many pioneers before me. And that all the way, that goes all the way to RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg fighting for equality, you know, in, in the workplace in the seventies, I believe that was, and it's like you,
00:36:06
Speaker
You think about women who are doing things at a very global level, a large macro level, but then also like other women who just seen seagulls. She was an instructionally for the A's for a month as kind of a guest coach. Like that was, she was the first woman coach ever in Major League Baseball. Wasn't a full time situation. It wasn't, you know, full season. But she was there and that, that little, you know, it's like this chipping away, chipping away, chipping away and then the floodgates open, right? Like, so I'm,
00:36:36
Speaker
a full-time hitting coach. There are also two other women who are in fourth coach positions that are basically, for the listeners, fourth coach is kind of an assistant coach on the staff. And then Alyssa Neckin is at the majorly level for the Giants as a supporting coach as well. So I might be the first full-time hitting coach, right? But there's
00:36:57
Speaker
It's like, gosh, there's four women who are in uniform this year. So I don't see myself necessarily as a pioneer. I see myself as a result of a lot of other things that have happened in society to, to give me this opportunity, you know? And so there's definitely like a, I feel responsible not only to make it better for the women that are coming after me, but also to do it right for the women that came before me and got me this opportunity.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, and that's I appreciate how you connected back to the history and a lot of things that lead to this and your connection to that. Three more questions, but this one is kind of a follow-up to that. What's it like for you right now just waiting to, I mean, you have this, the way you've talked about it, obviously a historically important moment for you
00:37:55
Speaker
in the sport. Personally, baseball for me is like a rhythm in my DNA. It's missed amongst many other things that are missed. It's missed very deeply. What's it been like for you with the pandemic and everybody waiting and looking up and saying, when are we going to see the things that we would expect to see? What's it been like for you just kind of waiting?
00:38:26
Speaker
Um, I'd say, you know, I'm fine. I, I've been getting asked this question. It'd be insanely like selfish of me to say, well, I've worked so hard and now my first spring training as a hitting coach, kind of where I put on hall. I was there for five weeks training with guys and then we were all sent home, but you know what? I'm fine. And baseball is going to resume at some point. And there are so many people who have much bigger issues than
00:38:53
Speaker
are we going to play a game or not? Or do I get to coach or not? You know, and baseball, I'm more worried about like the stadium workers that are attached to the baseball season than I am about the actual players playing. Um, so I think, I think we just need to take a step back and like, this is bigger than sports. It's bigger than all of us. And so I'm, I'm fine. I always do very well with alone time and, and, um, space away from baseball because
00:39:20
Speaker
I think in a few ways, it's like my identity is not wrapped into baseball. I've never been a fan of baseball per se. I'm working in a sport because I'm fascinated by human development and that could be in any company. But it so happens for me and my life experiences that led me to baseball. And so my identity is not wrapped into, well, if I don't have baseball, I don't know who I am. That's not how I operate. And so thankfully,
00:39:50
Speaker
You know, they sent us home and I was like, okay. And then I recorded podcasts and I'm on podcasts and I'm writing and I'm reading and I'm, you know, watching video. It's this amazing opportunity for me as a new coach with the Yankees to be able to study the hitters that I'm working with and what they've done up to this point. So I'm watching hours and hours and hours and hours of video of these players. Whereas in spring training, you don't get that time. And so you're just,
00:40:13
Speaker
you see what's in front of you, but you don't understand like the history of their swing and how they've done at each level to get to that point. So I've had a lot more time to study the hitters, uh, that I wouldn't have had. And so for me, I'm fine. I feel like this is a blessing. I feel like in some ways it's what the world needed in some ways. Um, so wake up, call in a lesson for all of us. And so,
00:40:38
Speaker
I'm good and I'm definitely excited to get back, but I'm also excited for the opportunity in front of us. Yeah, and I really appreciate your answer and obviously the impacts that it has. I think everybody's kind of making different adjustments, re-prioritizing things. It's obviously a significant impact on everybody.
00:41:07
Speaker
You know, I think from, from sounds, what you've been able to do is kind of like, for me, it seems like, you know, you develop your own mind, develop your own perspective, develop your own knowledge and, you know, just kind of prepare for when, you know, when things, you know, resume as we would, um, expect them.
Creativity and Improvement Inspired by Laos
00:41:24
Speaker
So from that to the big question, Rachel, uh, that I ask all guests and name it a podcast, why is there something rather than nothing?
00:41:38
Speaker
We can't help ourselves, you know We can't help ourselves I was fortunate enough to go Three no a little over two years ago. I visited Laos and I visited a village it's not even on Google Maps, you know and In the middle of nowhere in Laos and I found the village because there was a a
00:42:05
Speaker
a school for teaching English there. And I went and I thought, I'm going to go and I'm going to improve these people's lives. I'm going to teach them English and they're going to be better. And, you know, what an American way to think. You know, I just, I went there and I was there for three weeks, stayed in a basically kind of a wooden structure and had very little, I mean, no running water, a little bit of electricity. I don't even, by God's grace, we had
00:42:32
Speaker
I don't even know how that happened in that village. But I'm gonna make this a little bit longer of a story. The village itself came from, it was absolutely fascinating because they had just gotten internet probably five years before I got there in 2010, let's say, or 12. And so they're essentially like 15 to 20 years behind on the internet train, you know?
00:43:02
Speaker
Basically, you're seeing this village and the older people in the village, and by older, I mean anyone like mid 20s to 30 and up, dressed traditionally, very basic clothing, women, no makeup, hair, just down or in a low ponytail. Very simple, very, very simple. And then you're seeing the teenagers in the village.
00:43:27
Speaker
They're wearing fake Adidas, they're wearing makeup, their hair's all done, their hair's dyed blonde, they're trying to make themselves westernized and the owner of the school
00:43:44
Speaker
He saw an opportunity to teach English in the village to get these people jobs in tourism and in hotels because these Western tourists are coming over and wanting to come to Laos. And tourism in Laos is booming and coming up. And it's not like Thailand. It's pretty far behind Thailand. So Thailand is a very popular destination, but Laos is still pretty untouched in a lot of ways. And so there's an example of like a very macro level, like making something out of nothing, right?
00:44:14
Speaker
before the Internet, before maybe 10 or 15 years, they just lived this very simplistic, communal, even tribal lifestyle where they didn't want anything. They didn't want to make anything. They just wanted to live. You know, there was no striving for better. And then in itself, that's better.
00:44:36
Speaker
in my opinion, sometimes, right? Like if you're not striving and I have to get better and I have to have more and more money and I have to learn more and I have to do more and I have to be more, more followers on Instagram and more downloads on my podcast and more and more and more. I just have to climb that ladder and you go to this village and you just realize like they have everything they need to just live. Everyone shared the animals. I've never seen in my life the way that animals and people interact as if they're friends.
00:45:04
Speaker
The human and animal interaction was just phenomenal. It was untouched. And I think that in itself is something to actually strive for. So why do humans want to make something and not nothing? I don't know. I think it's this proverbial keeping up with the Joneses. And it's so pervasive and it's something that I myself fight because I'm in professional sports and there's wealth and there's
00:45:34
Speaker
Everyone wants to climb the ladder and be in the big leagues and be this and be that. And it's a fine line for me of climbing in my career, but also going like, I have everything that I could ever need to be happy. I don't need to make more, make something when there's nothing. I don't need to do that. So it's a constant matter. And I think, I think what's going on with Corona is just fascinating because we're all forced to just stop in our tracks. Like we're forced to stop climbing, not all of us, but some of us.
00:46:02
Speaker
are forced to stop climbing and go, wait, can I be happy if I'm not making something? Can I be happy with nothing? And sometimes that's literal. Can I be happy with living in a village where you walk into these people's homes and there's like no furniture and they all have like a couple pieces of clothing and can I be happy with nothing or do I have to have something? I think that's the battle that I fight and I
00:46:31
Speaker
I'm glad that I fight it and I'm aware of it, but I don't think a lot of people even fight the battle. I think that a lot of people just think that they're happy trying to make something when just the act of not making something is actually beautiful within itself. Yeah. And then, and I think, you know, in the background, as far as, uh, from what I've heard, you know, that you find yourself, you know, striving for answers and, you know, exploring areas, but it's also important, um,
00:47:01
Speaker
you know, to, to look at what is that you're seeking? Like what is the, you know, what is, what is the goal? And I think, uh, some of your comments point to it is like, you know, all those somethings, like I have lots of somethings, you know, therefore I'm more of something and there's that kind of dynamic that, um, I think our culture gets, um, uh, kind of, you know, tied up with, um, that that's in, there's some level of dissatisfaction with that, uh, that I found over time. Absolutely.
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah, there definitely is. So, Rachel, this is the part at the end here, I wanted you to share, you know, I know you, gosh, you work on a bunch of different things. I know you have a mentor ship, you know, program, I, you know, for, I'm
00:47:52
Speaker
Worked as a mentor for you know of philosophy students at Marquette University and even as far as what my union work I kind of bargain mentorship programs for various You know job classifications and such so I know that's something else you do but this the this time is yours if Whatever you'd like to share with the audience as far as how to connect with you the things that you do your podcast and
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah, so so tell us what you like the listeners to know about you and what you do sure You know first and foremost if you can spell bokkeveck you can find me anywhere. So Luckily have a unique name. It's Slovenian and if you get you know, it's Rachel bokkeveck on Instagram and something Rachel bokkeveck on Twitter and Rachel bokkeveck comm so you'll find me but I would say first and foremost just with what's going on I'd like to say that I
00:48:48
Speaker
I've started a fund and basically I've pledged five dollars of my own money for every day that Major League Baseball is off. And I'm just, I put it in a GoFundMe every week and then I ask
00:49:00
Speaker
whoever out there is called to do the same. I have a GoFundMe link in both my Instagram and my Twitter bio and just to throw in. And so every week I've been donating to a different cause. Last week, for example, was Blessings in a Backpack. So this company basically is providing meals to kids who are at home. And sometimes on the weekends, they don't have food, right? Or if they're not at school and they're not getting provided meals, and I know a lot of schools are still providing the meals to pick up, but their parents can't get them there to pick up.
00:49:30
Speaker
There's a lot of kids that are in a huge, huge need right now. So just getting, getting food to them and getting to medical supplies. But yeah, I'm donating weekly and I just let the GoFundMe fill up and then I should dip it off to whoever needs it. So that's going on right now. Um, I would love to talk about femme, which is, I'm so excited about it. And it was going off in November and probably is not going to happen in November, but, um, it's coming down the line. So I'd love to speak on it, but basically.
00:50:00
Speaker
My heart is really with mentoring people in general and in my job that's mentoring the players that I come across, but mentoring young women is something that is very close to my heart and just women in general, not even young women, but people who are wanting to have a career.
00:50:17
Speaker
And so with my friend, Jen Wiederstrom, who's also in the sports space, we formed femmes. So it's female executive mentorships. And basically the idea is like, Jen and I both went through our careers in sports with very few, if any, women mentors. We had all male mentors and myself and her had phenomenal male mentors that really fostered us and supported us. But we both just think that there are some times when it'd be nice if you could have
00:50:48
Speaker
a woman to call on and go, hey, is this normal? Have you experienced this? What do you think about this? Is this okay? Do I need to say something? All of those questions, good and bad, just someone to celebrate with, but also someone to bounce ideas off of. We're creating an event. It's called Femme. Basically, it's going to be application only, 30 women that we're going to select. They're going to come for a weekend. We're going to have six speakers or what we're calling six mentors really.
00:51:16
Speaker
that are there and accessible all weekend long. And it's going to be a very small and intimate event where women who are probably a bit into their career and wanting to take the next step or just a woman who is in a male-dominated industry or at a C-level position where if you are at a C-level position, even if you're not in a male-dominated industry, you're in a male-dominated room. I can guarantee that.
00:51:39
Speaker
So just for women who are in their careers and wanting guidance basically in any way. So that is scheduled for middle of November is likely going to be in January in Montana. And it's kind of an outdoors, indoors retreat where we're kind of getting our hands dirty a little bit, maybe doing some hiking, those kinds of things, but also getting a lot of like practical workshop takeaways for mentorship in your career. So
00:52:05
Speaker
That was a long way of saying it's basically an awesome, rad support group for rear-minded women. Yeah, and I noticed some of the material you had for that, and it sounds like such an exciting, great opportunity that you're offering. But it's also, I'd imagine it's probably for you too, right? You'd be able to connect with these folks and offer some of your learning experiences. Yeah.
00:52:34
Speaker
And so, Rachel, I gotta tell you, for me, I was super excited when you said you would do the podcast. I've been following your story and just learning more about your approach, the way that you think. I appreciate chatting about baseball, but the thinking and about other social issues and kind of how you're trying to
00:53:02
Speaker
impact all of these things. And I'll say a sentence that I never expected to say, I wish you great success in your Yankee career. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say that. I wish you great success as a hitting coach. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. It means a lot coming from someone like you. Rachel Balkovic, thank you so much for joining something rather than nothing. And
00:53:30
Speaker
I hope you have a great day. Thank you very much. Bye now.