BRUCE BOLT BLOG

The developmental years have a lot of built-in pressure. Kids contend with academics, physical and emotional changes, and jockeying for social position. Uncertainty, inexperience, and FOPO (fear of other people’s opinions) create choppy seas. Sports magnify these things. For some kids, staying under the radar is an effective survival mechanism, so resist the urge to perceive it as a failure of assertiveness. Passivity provides emotional, physical, and psychological safety. Don’t worry, assertiveness and passivity aren’t an either/or proposition and they aren’t fixed traits.  What is Assertiveness? We teach our kids to be nice, share, and put other people first. As...

[Also featured in USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, and Sports Business Journal] Perhaps you’ve noticed that, every time Aledmys Diaz steps to the plate this season, he sports a pair of mismatched batting gloves—one blue, one red. They don’t integrate quite perfectly with the trademark green and gold of his new team, the Oakland Athletics. Aledmys’ teammates on the A’s have noticed. “They asked, ‘Are they Cuba colors?’” the utility man said with a smile in a recent conversation. While blue and red indeed adorn the flag of Aledmys’ native land, his sartorial choice speaks to something more personal than...

  * * *   Catch the recap of the World Baseball Classic and our BRUCE BOLT community meetup in Miami, Florida on the day of the championship!   Listen to this new episode of the BRUCE BOLT Podcast now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  * * *   Founder & CEO, Bear Mayer, is on his way to Miami, Florida for the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic this weekend! Catch up with Bear and find out who he'll be meeting up with when he arrives.   Listen to this new episode of the BRUCE BOLT Podcast now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Announcing the 1st Limited Edition Glove Design Winner Lakelan Harris "My glove design is inspired by Miami. The glove consists of 3 main colors (blue, pink, and orange), something I haven’t see done much in the baseball industry. The glove has blue piping with an orange lighting bolt that has a pink outline. I think this glove would sell very well because I know a lot of players love this type of color palette. What I’m sending you is a digital mockup of one of your original gloves changed to fit my design. I hope you really consider my design...

As parents, we want sports to help our kids learn teamwork, become leaders, build mental toughness, and develop social skills. We want sports to be fun. Sometimes this doesn’t align with the way we assess their performance. Instead, we measure by winning/losing, mistakes, and comparison to capabilities and expectations. Viewed from the bleachers and the folding chairs, repeated mistakes, bad decisions, and perceived subpar performance cause us to heat up. Threat sensors in the primitive part of the brain fixate on what’s upsetting us. This information becomes brighter, louder, and crisper than everything else. We dive headfirst into a negative thought/feeling loop, creating a...