Here’s a section on motivation from my doctoral dissertation entitled “The Mental Aspects of Hitting” featuring my interviews with Hank Aaron, Rod Carew, Stan Musial, Carl Yastrzemski and Tony Oliva.

This is from the Discussion section after I’ve presented each player’s individual story…

Motivation is seen as the foundation upon which all other mental aspects depend. This is because motivation was the force that moved them to participate in baseball, and the loss of it precipitated their retirement. It is not possible to conclude, however, that motivation to play baseball and specifically to hit necessarily came first chronologically. That is, that their motivation to play led to their confidence, preparation, concentration, and game strategy. Rather, any of the five aspects could have come “first.”

The methods employed in this study did not attempt to determine such a relationship. In fact, my belief is that each element influenced each other continuously and
that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to tease out the primacy of one mental aspect over another.

This view is in agreement with the concept of mutual simultaneous shaping espoused by the naturalistic researcher (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

The initial motivation to play baseball for all of them seems to have been an internal factor, a love of playing.

In particular, they had a love of hitting. This love manifested itself in spending a lot of time swinging a bat. Each of them, either in the interview or their book, told of playing various forms of baseball for hour upon hour in their youth.

Both Oliva and Aaron mentioned hitting bottlecaps, while Yastrzemski spoke of spending countless hours alone swinging at a wide variety of objects. Carew opens his book saying “I love hitting. I always have” (Carew et. al, 1986, p. 1). I would say that this love of hitting was the cornerstone for the mental aspects of hitting for the participants in this study.

They may, however, have loved it for different reasons. Exactly what they loved about it was not discussed in the interviews.

A second internal element to their motivation was having a dream of someday playing in the major leagues and of being a star. Yastrzemski imagined being a big leaguer while doing his “gimmicks” when growing up, while Carew laid in bed dreaming of playing in Yankee stadium.

Musial pictured himself hitting big league pitching when in his middle teens, while Aaron aspired to the image of Jackie Robinson, and Oliva set his sights on becoming another Al Kaline. Both Oliva and Aaron said they were motivated by their desire to be the best. “I wanted to be to be one of the best players that ever played the game” said Aaron.

Pride was discussed by both Oliva and Carew as key motivators, and was also implied by the others. Pride is of great significance in this age of lucrative, long term contracts. Without considerable internal motivation, it could be easy to withhold the amount of effort necessary to maximize performance, particularly in the area of preparation.

Another key internal motivator was that hitting was fun. Oliva spoke of it being a game that is played, and that play was fun. Seeing baseball as fun also made the “hard work” that they mentioned less hard. Carew seemed to be speaking for the group when he said “I think we all know the fun that we get out of being able to hit. So we want to make it more fun for ourselves.

The more we worked at it the easier it became and the funner it was for us.” I got the impression they also enjoyed talking about it.

While the internal motivators dominated the hitters’ initial participation and doubtless continued to influence them throughout their careers, a variety of external factors also entered into things as their career progressed. Aaron and Musial adjusted their hitting styles slightly to hit more home runs and gain the external, primarily financial and attentional, benefits of being a home run hitter.

Musial said “Ralph Kiner came up in the late forties and started to hit home runs, more than anyone else, and pretty soon he was getting more money than anyone else. Well, that got me thinking…” Although it was not discussed in the interview, Aaron’s book makes it clear that much of his motivation in his final years was the desire to put him in a position to help blacks gain their rightful place in society.

In the end, it was the loss of motivation that precipitated their retirement. Yastrzemski was hitting .320 in his final year until the Red Sox dropped out of the pennant race. Without the possibility of winning a pennant, he lost his motivation to compete and with it went his ability to concentrate.

Aaron was still productive the year he broke the home run record, but without that motivator, he found his interest in playing disappeared. (Both Oliva and Carew left baseball before they wanted to. Oliva’s legs simply gave out and the Angels and Carew were not able to agree on a contract.)

In sum, motivation is viewed as the foundation of the mental aspects of hitting because it determined whether or not the hitters played baseball and it was the driving force behind their attention to the other mental aspects of hitting.

The primary motivators were internal, such as the love of hitting, pride, and fun, but external factors also played an important role in their hitting.