The tournament bracket said 8:00 AM. Your son heard "8:00 AM" and went to sleep at 11:48. He is currently in your back seat eating a granola bar with both eyes still closed, and warmups start in eleven minutes.
The 6:45 Warmup at a Complex That Opens at 6:51
You are in the parking lot. It is 6:47 AM. The gate is locked. Four families are standing next to it with the energy of people who made a collective mistake and are quietly deciding not to acknowledge it. Nobody is going to call the tournament director because everyone already knows what he will say.
The gate opens at 6:54. The warmup that was scheduled for 6:45 starts at 7:03, which is fine, because the seven minutes of standing in a locked parking lot in the dark gave the team roughly the same preparation value as the warmup would have. Your son ate the second half of the granola bar during this window. He is now awake in the technical sense.
The Fire-Up Speech, Delivered to Twelve Half-Asleep Humans
The coach gathers the team. He says "let's get locked in." He says "this is where champions are made — before the sun's even up." Six kids are nodding. Three are staring at the outfield fence with the expression of people thinking about nothing at all. One is still chewing. One just remembered something he needs to tell his mom and is scanning the stands to find her.
The coach says "eyes up." Everyone looks at the coach. This is the highest concentration of focus the team will achieve before 7:45 AM and the coach knows it. He is giving this speech anyway because there is no good alternative, and he did not leave the house at 6:09 AM to be pessimistic about it.
First At-Bat
Your son leads off the bottom of the first. The opposing pitcher throws a fastball down the middle at about 57 mph. Your son watches it. Not because he was taking the pitch. Because his nervous system has not fully committed to the idea that this is happening yet.
Strike one. Another fastball, same location. Your son watches it. Strike two. The third pitch is a curveball that bounces eighteen inches in front of the plate. Your son swings at it. He was not fooled. He swung because he was starting to feel bad about just standing there, and doing something felt better than doing nothing. This is the only at-bat all season where you will not have notes for him on the way home. The kid was asleep four hours ago.
The Stands at 7:13 AM
You have your lawn chair. You did not fully unfold it before you sat down, so one leg is braced at the wrong angle and you have been listing slightly to the left for nine minutes. You have gas station coffee that is now lukewarm. The parent behind you brought a blanket from home — not a stadium blanket, a household blanket, still folded like it came off the bed. Nobody says anything about the blanket. The blanket is correct.
The sun is just high enough to be at exactly the wrong angle. You pull your hat down. You take a sip of the lukewarm coffee. The Marucci bag is eight feet away and you cannot remember if his water bottle is in it. These are the things you are managing right now.
The Umpire Is Also Working Through the Morning
The home plate umpire arrived at 6:58. He has a large coffee. His strike zone is running about three inches outside in the first inning. Nobody is going to say anything about it because everyone out here is on the same timeline. He missed a called third strike in the second and said "no swing" with such authority that the catcher did not even turn around. The batter had clearly swung.
The umpire will have a better second half than first, the same as everybody else. By the third inning his zone will be consistent. By the fifth inning he will be calling a tight corner he definitely could not have found at 7:08 AM. This is a reasonable arc and everyone accepts it without comment.
By the Third Inning, He Is Fine
Bottom of the third, your son is tracking the ball out of the pitcher's hand. He fouls off two pitches — real contact, not accident — before hitting a sharp grounder to short. He ran to first at full speed. He looked over at you in the stands and his face said nothing, because nothing needed to be said. He was fine. He was better than fine.
This is what 7 AM games eventually teach, without ever trying to: the pre-game ritual matters less than you think. The warmup, the speech, the granola bar eaten with both eyes closed — none of it determines what happens in the box. The nervous system comes online on its own schedule. That schedule is approximately the bottom of the third inning, regardless of what time first pitch was.
The Bottom Line
The pre-game routine that actually helps is the one he does the night before, not fourteen minutes before first pitch.
Mind and Muscle has a three-minute Daily Hit — a short audio session he can do Friday night, Saturday before bed, or in the back seat with both eyes closed. The nervous system picks it up either way. You do not need a locked parking lot for it to count.
P.S. — He finished 2-for-3 with a walk. The granola bar was Quaker Oats Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, eaten with the wrapper still half on it. He has been doing this for three tournaments now. This is his process. It is working.
The 7 AM game posts on the bracket Wednesday night. You will be in the parking lot at 6:47 regardless.
Originally published at Mind & Muscle
Train your mind. Dominate your game.
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