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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, all the rest of the month is available for your curiosity, about either baseball or Tarot. Leave a comment with a prompt if you want in. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
The Coaches of the various suits are the equivalents of the Queens of their stores in a Rider-Waite Tarot type deck. Their primary role, as Coaches are for, is to teach the new ways of their suit. The Suit of Balls is about the mental game, so any of the coaches, whether for batting, pitching, or fielding, can fill the role of this Coach, since mental things affect physical things.
At the professional level, a player that isn't swinging the bat well or isn't seeing the ball well needs the mental aspects coached as well as the physical ones - to relax, mentally, so that the swing becomes mechanically sound, as it had been practiced for so very long, instead of rushed or choppy. Pitchers need the same - relax, throw mechanically sound pitches where the catcher puts their target. Remember there are other fielders that will help you with the defense. Fielders that know how to collect balls and throw them to the right places. Or will need to relax and remember those things if they're hurrying throws or botching ground and fly balls.
It's at the learning levels that the coach that teaches the mental game is most apparent and most needed. What becomes routine with practice must first be taught, from what seems to be the simplest thing (which way is first base?) to a complex decision tree to determine where the ball well be going once it is caught in the outfield (get any outs from runners that you can, first, failing that, make sure the lead runner doesn't advance, if not that, stop the runner behind them, and so forth). As players advance in age and skill, they learn a little bit more about the complexities of the game, and they are expected to be able to act a bit more independently in their actions, based on their greater understanding. And to be able to pay attention a bit more, as well. What started as simple things (always throw balls from the outfield into the cutoff player) become bigger. Now that a player can throw all the way in from the outfield, if you can get an out by throwing ahead of the runner, do it directly instead of as a relay. Which means learning how to run up to a catch so as to already be moving in the right direction and impart some extra zip to the throw. For runners, it means being able to gauge how far the fly ball has gone so as to know whether to try and score/advance on it. For pitchers, throwing strikes now sometimes includes throwing pitches that aren't strikes at the right time to get the hitter to swing at them anyway. Balls start to get bunted, then there are leads from bases, and steals, and pickoffs, and all sorts of new things that weren't there even just the year before. The game, as the players age, becomes more and more like the one on television, cramming and compressing more data into the same space. Without someone there to guide them, the players would be horribly lost in trying to make sense of this strange new world. And that's without body changes, interest changes, and increased pressure in more competitive leagues and teams. The Coach of the new ways of thinking sometimes has to step outside the game and address the problems that are off the field to get performance to improve on it.
Being a coach is a thing that happens for love of the game at the learning leagues, but it also often ends up being work that affects lives long after the season has ended.
The presence of the coach in your reading is usually an indication of needing to find one, or perhaps to listen to the one that you already have a bit more closely. Learning new ways of thinking is the way to avoid getting into ruts, but it's also the way to avoid getting stressed out or caught in bad loops that create anxiety, depression, and a lot of the things that sap energy and make our lives miserable. It would be nice to be able to say they can be easily changed, but that's not the case and some of the worst things that need changing are the hardest to do. Be patient with yourself and believe in the coach - they do know what they're taking about, even if it doesn't look like it.
The other possibility is that you're being called to be a coach, to help someone else learn new ways of thinking. What can you teach them - and think beyond just things like technique or facts. When looking for new ways of thinking, it's often because there's something about the self presented to others that they find beget than the self they see in themselves. It's not a fair comparison (see also: duck problems), but you've got it, whatever it may be. Mentoring and coaching others has unexpected benefits - sometimes teaching others is the way we can teach ourselves and have it stick.
The Coaches of the various suits are the equivalents of the Queens of their stores in a Rider-Waite Tarot type deck. Their primary role, as Coaches are for, is to teach the new ways of their suit. The Suit of Balls is about the mental game, so any of the coaches, whether for batting, pitching, or fielding, can fill the role of this Coach, since mental things affect physical things.
At the professional level, a player that isn't swinging the bat well or isn't seeing the ball well needs the mental aspects coached as well as the physical ones - to relax, mentally, so that the swing becomes mechanically sound, as it had been practiced for so very long, instead of rushed or choppy. Pitchers need the same - relax, throw mechanically sound pitches where the catcher puts their target. Remember there are other fielders that will help you with the defense. Fielders that know how to collect balls and throw them to the right places. Or will need to relax and remember those things if they're hurrying throws or botching ground and fly balls.
It's at the learning levels that the coach that teaches the mental game is most apparent and most needed. What becomes routine with practice must first be taught, from what seems to be the simplest thing (which way is first base?) to a complex decision tree to determine where the ball well be going once it is caught in the outfield (get any outs from runners that you can, first, failing that, make sure the lead runner doesn't advance, if not that, stop the runner behind them, and so forth). As players advance in age and skill, they learn a little bit more about the complexities of the game, and they are expected to be able to act a bit more independently in their actions, based on their greater understanding. And to be able to pay attention a bit more, as well. What started as simple things (always throw balls from the outfield into the cutoff player) become bigger. Now that a player can throw all the way in from the outfield, if you can get an out by throwing ahead of the runner, do it directly instead of as a relay. Which means learning how to run up to a catch so as to already be moving in the right direction and impart some extra zip to the throw. For runners, it means being able to gauge how far the fly ball has gone so as to know whether to try and score/advance on it. For pitchers, throwing strikes now sometimes includes throwing pitches that aren't strikes at the right time to get the hitter to swing at them anyway. Balls start to get bunted, then there are leads from bases, and steals, and pickoffs, and all sorts of new things that weren't there even just the year before. The game, as the players age, becomes more and more like the one on television, cramming and compressing more data into the same space. Without someone there to guide them, the players would be horribly lost in trying to make sense of this strange new world. And that's without body changes, interest changes, and increased pressure in more competitive leagues and teams. The Coach of the new ways of thinking sometimes has to step outside the game and address the problems that are off the field to get performance to improve on it.
Being a coach is a thing that happens for love of the game at the learning leagues, but it also often ends up being work that affects lives long after the season has ended.
The presence of the coach in your reading is usually an indication of needing to find one, or perhaps to listen to the one that you already have a bit more closely. Learning new ways of thinking is the way to avoid getting into ruts, but it's also the way to avoid getting stressed out or caught in bad loops that create anxiety, depression, and a lot of the things that sap energy and make our lives miserable. It would be nice to be able to say they can be easily changed, but that's not the case and some of the worst things that need changing are the hardest to do. Be patient with yourself and believe in the coach - they do know what they're taking about, even if it doesn't look like it.
The other possibility is that you're being called to be a coach, to help someone else learn new ways of thinking. What can you teach them - and think beyond just things like technique or facts. When looking for new ways of thinking, it's often because there's something about the self presented to others that they find beget than the self they see in themselves. It's not a fair comparison (see also: duck problems), but you've got it, whatever it may be. Mentoring and coaching others has unexpected benefits - sometimes teaching others is the way we can teach ourselves and have it stick.
