Hello, my name is Dillon Van Oosbree, and you’ve landed on the only baseball blog run by a self-proclaimed Lefty PO. A title I hold despite being neither left-handed nor a PO. Here, I plan to give my opinions, make videos, and dive into the data about the things nobody cares about (which is going to be all baseball, of course).
To give my readers a background on myself, I played through college, graduating in 2021. After some arm injuries in my college career, I decided to hang up the cleats, and figure out what a non-athlete does after college. After about a year away from baseball trying to figure my life out, a few things became clear to me:
- I truly missed being around baseball
- It is incredibly hard to find an identity out of sports after college
Understanding many people have this same identity crisis, and my desire to get back into the game, I found two new goals for my personal life. 1. Get back in to baseball, and 2. help others cultivate their true passion.
Around January of 2023 I met one of my old teammates (shoutout Coach Dash) at a College baseball game at Globe Life Field. He told me the Rangers Youth Academy was looking for coaches.
For those of you who don’t know about MLB Youth Academies, MLB explains them like this:
“As a not-for-profit organization, the Urban Youth Academies aim to set the standard for baseball and softball instruction, teach and educate in Urban America, and enhance the quality of life in the surrounding communities.”
This perfectly checked both boxes for me. I applied for the job, and was hired on within a few months.
Over my two years at the Academy, here is a short list of things I have learned.
5 Lessons From Coaching
- Not everyone takes coaching advice the same way. Some people just don’t want to be coached at all.
- The Best Coaches Listen. You need to be stern, but you absolutely must have the ability to listen.
- Stories are My Favorite Way to Teach a Lesson.
- Effort is a Non-Negotiable. This is the one thing everyone can control.
- Don’t Punish Failure. You have to drive a culture that allows athletes to take risks without fear.
I clearly have a story for each one of those bullet points, but those are for another time.
Between coaching, I’ve also trained for baseball myself. I’ve had two separate tryouts with the Savannah Bananas (both were unsuccessful, and definitely great video content) and recently joined a Sunday League.
I enjoy playing, and I think getting back on the field allows me to keep some of the joy I had through my developing years. I don’t expect many of my articles and videos to be serious, but I wanted to establish who I am and exactly why I ever decided to work in baseball.
So what rant about baseball should I go on first? Happy reading,
The Lefty PO.