How Home Run Derby champion Cal Raleigh learned to compartmentalize: ‘You have a lot going on all the time’

Atlanta – Aaron’s judge left a little smile slip on his face.

He knows the feeling, when the game slows down and each pitch seems to be a full moon. You clearly see the ball. You feel everything. The euphoria, the domination, the crawling paranoia of when everything could suddenly stop. It’s baseball, after all. Failure is not only present; He takes control of the wheel. It is a corrosive companion, if you leave it.

“You just hope it does not end,” said the Yankees slugger on Monday afternoon when the star media availability. “You just try to stay in the moment. Stay locked up. Do not try to think about it, because you will be good for a few weeks. Then you might have a few bad weeks, but as long as you try to stay consistent, don’t leave yourself too high, too low, I hope you can sort of out these difficult storms a little more easily and do what you need to do.”

For Cal Raleigh, the newly crowned Home Run derby champion, the sky still holds back. The receiver of the navy has just turned in a historic first half, striking .259 / .376 / .634 with a 1,011 OPS, just behind the judge. Its 38 circuits are the second highest of the first half, dragging only Barry Bonds. He is underway to beat the Home Run record of the American league of judge judge. In a baseball landscape of very few giants, Raleigh this season has become such.

The captivating part was a fact for the winner of the Platinum glove. But that? It’s something else. Not only does Raleigh do it better than almost anyone else, but it does it while having to order the most important position on the diamond. Oh, and he is also a switching striker.

“You know, I only worry about managing a swing,” said the judge. “He must try to manage two swings on both sides of the plate with the pitch staff. It is an incredible and incredible achievement.”

The slow heart rate that should exist in sensors is always present in it. He does not see what he does as incredible in himself. It is more so immersed in the work of all this because there is no time to breathe.

“It is simply a question of compartmentalizing,” said Raleigh, who was named All-Star this year for the first time in his career. “You define a good routine, obviously. You take care of yourself physically, mentally. Capture comes first, hit then comes next. And you just learn as a receiver, you have a lot of things all the time, so you learn to compartmentalize yourself very well and not to take other things elsewhere.”

In other words, you do not take the bats on the ground, nor the field on the plate.

There is no secret sauce that Raleigh added to his entrance. Just development. Even at 29, Raleigh still had a lot of room to grow and potential for liberation. With Julio Rodriguez, which takes place more higher than the average than the superstar as the navy hoped, Raleigh was put under the spotlight. He has taken control of an organization that prides itself on launching, displaying one of the best employees in all of baseball for a few years now.

“I think a lot of launcher and hood relationships are just a confidence,” said Seattle Starter Bryan Woo, who, like Raleigh, is participating in his first star match. “I think that in today’s game, everyone has good things and everyone can throw. But for us, it makes our work much easier if we can simply enter and be like,” everything he drops, I trust and I can get involved. “If it works, it works.

Confidence surrounded Raleigh, who said that he had more family in Atlanta that he could not count. He grew up in North Carolina, but Georgia is a home for baseball talents, among the best in the country. Raleigh therefore crossed a few state lines to the south to obtain the exhibition he needed to get into the ranks.

The summer holidays were minimal. Just Dreams imagined and then replied. Dreams fed by his parents, Todd and Stephanie Raleigh.

“I think [about my parents] And their continuous support, “said Raleigh.” I have the impression that parents cross him as much as children. “”

Raleigh had another dream by participating and winning, the Home Run derby on Monday and he brought his family again. Todd was rewarded with the work of throwing him. His 15 -year -old brother Todd Jr. took the usual place of Cal behind the plate.

It was their success as much as his. Raleigh has progressed beyond the first round, ahead of Brent Rooker. The two finished with 17 circuits, but the longest traveled 470.62 Raleigh feet – just barely at the top of the Rooker 470.54. In the second round, he faced another giant at Oneil Cruz, whose production did not quite match his bizarre capacity to acquit a baseball. Raleigh did a quick job of him, launching 19 circuits in Cruz’s 11. He set the tone in the final round with 18 and even the Junior Electric Caminero could not catch him.

In a season full of moments, it is at the top of the list.

So much so that he also cracked a smile.