"It’s easy to find the talent. The key is to find out what’s inside them."
Marc Gustafson, the Senior Director of Scouting for the Colorado Rockies told me this before I spoke to the coaches and players during spring training this week.
Marc and his fellow scouts crisscross the world to watch the most talented high school and college baseball players and determine if they have what it takes to make it to Major League Baseball (MLB).
While talent is easy to spot, it's a more investigative process to attempt to decide if a player has the mindset, character, attitude, work ethic, grit and resilience to overcome adversity and failure in order to succeed at the highest level of the sport.
It's not a perfect science but scouts do their best to predict what kind of person and player a young man will be in the future.
The interesting thing about trying to decide what’s inside someone is that I believe everyone has greatness inside them. I believe deep down every player has the potential qualities that every scout is looking for. I believe everyone is born with grit. If you were a child learning to walk and kept getting up after falling down, you had and have grit. If you kept your promises or admitted when you didn’t, then you have lived with integrity. If you loved the game, before it felt like a job to live up to the expectations you and others have placed on you, then you’ve had a love for the game.
So, I think the deeper question is, "Are they someone who has discovered the power inside them?"
Are they someone who realizes that there is greatness within them? Do they know they are more powerful than their circumstances? Have they tapped into the love, joy and goodness within them? Do they feed the positive or negative inside them? Do they allow fear to inhibit them or love to propel them?
Everyone has this power inside them. Everyone has the power to work hard, be resilient and gritty, live with character and integrity, stay positive and be an overcomer.
The ones who thrive are those who tap into it and unleash it.
