Kris Bryant's Mindset Completely Destroys Traditional Superstar Thinking

When I was in high school, I was lucky enough to have parents that believed in using sports to help teach me life lessons the only way that sports could. Overcoming adversity, being part of a team, winning respectfully and losing humbly, and putting the team ahead of your individual goals were all lessons I learned that helped shape me into the man that I am today. Unfortunately, my generation and the current generation of athletes couldn't be any more different. And if you're curious what "my generation" is -- I graduate high school in 2001. Playing sports literally changed my life and left such a mark on me that I decided that I wanted to "payback" all of the lessons I've learned by becoming a coach. I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to instill some of those same life lessons that I learned playing high school sports to the thousands of kids I've coached in the past 11 years. However, I quickly came to realize that the kids I was coaching had a very different mindset then what I had when I was their age. This generation of athletes are being raised in a "me first" society that places individual accomplishment over team success. Society doesn't want kids to go through failure so the participation ribbon has completely destroyed teaching kids that losing is unacceptable because even kids that lose still get a ribbon for their "effort." So if everyone gets a trophy or ribbon, why work hard? I could continue to write another 3,000 words on the reasons this has happened (*cough parenting *cough) and the dangers that it presents but I think I'd just be beating a dead horse. Furthermore, it doesn't help that kids today are looking up to athletes that are more concerned with the name on the back of the jersey than they are with the name on the front. The athletes I looked up to (Jordan, Bird, Walter Payton, Sandberg, etc.) were some of the most competitive, yet selfless, athletes of their time. They played hurt, sick, and tired because they knew their teammates were relying on them to help the team win. Today's role models will "rest" when they are completely healthy, get carried off the court from cramps, and flop around like a dead fish when they are barely touched (you know who you are.) Times have changed. Professional sports have become more about the brand then about the game. Endorsements, huge contracts, and money have become the driving force behind most of the athletes that kids look up to today so the value of  a "team first" has slowly been fading away. Then a guy like Kris Bryant bursts on the scene and completely destroys that mentality. Melissa Conrad sat down with Bryant recently and got some insight into his mindset as one of the best players in the game today. Keep in mind here, this is the same guy who has won the Best College Player, Best Minor League Player, Rookie of the Year, and MVP in four consecutive years so he's not exactly some run of the mill player here.

For me, it’s definitely the team before the individual.

Bryant mentioned the word "team" over five times in an interview that was only five questions long. Coming from a guy who many consider to be one of the purest hitters in the game, it'd be easy to talk about his MVP numbers or the fact he's a World Series winner at the age of 25 but he doesn't -- he just wants to talk about his team's success.

Team success comes first. When you start focusing on the success of your team, your own success will follow because you’re not so focused on doing well – you’re just focused on winning.

Statements like this exemplify why Theo Epstein designated Bryant as one of his four "pillar players" that he needed to help change the culture of the Chicago Cubs when he took over in 2011. Look, Bryant clearly is a damn good ball player but everything I've read and everyone I've talked to will tell you that he's an even better person. He's turned into the poster boy for Epstein's motto of "character counts" and in my opinion is the face of the Chicago Cubs. So why is he different? How come you don't see Bryant bat-flipping any of his home runs? Why is he so driven by a "team first" approach? Look no further than lessons he learned playing high school sports. Obviously, Bryant's parents, Mike and Susie, played a huge role in helping Kris understand the power of the team over the individual but let's not write-off the influence of his high school career either. Bryant played high school ball at Bonanza high school from 2006-2010 so I thought I'd call his old head coach, Derek Stafford, to get some insight as to why Bryant is so driven by team first. Like clockwork, Stafford automatically started deflecting the credit away from himself. He praised Kris, his coaching staff, the teachers, and damn near anyone else you can think about before he gave himself any credit. "He was raised by awesome parents, had a high school program that didn't cater to selfish, me-first type players, was team-first, and then to maximize his talent and work ethic he played in what I consider to be one of the best college baseball programs in the country. I believe USD's coaching staff really did an exceptional job of molding Kris into greatness." Sounds familiar right? The only praise Stafford took (and he really didn't want to take it) was the fact that from Day 1, he preached team first during his time at Bonanza. "We always preached team first, and individual accolades are for your bedroom walls, type of stuff. We made sure all of our players dressed exactly the same for practice and for games. Each kid had clean up duty before and after games. Kris was easy, he was treated just like every other kid. Team was always going to be first, that was the expectation, and Kris never wanted to be treated differently. I think what the Chicago fans see now is exactly what they would have seen ten years ago if they watched him in high school:  constantly focused, hustling everywhere, taking every at-bat seriously, and deflecting praise to his teammates. Kris has always been that way, probably always will be." And that right there my friends is why Kris Bryant is the type of person that young kids today should model their mindset after. In a "me first" type of world, the reigning NL MVP's focus lies solely on the success of the team instead of his personal accolades.