I heard the crack of the bat before my eyes found the ball. It shot up into the clear Arizona sun in a soft, lazy arc. I instantly thought, "that's going to be trouble." Panda, our soft-spoken yet intense right fielder, was already moving when the pitch struck the bat. He'd gotten a good read on it, but he was so far away. The smart play would be to slow down, let it drop and give up the single. But Hollywood had thrown a perfect game to this point. No hits, no walks, no one had reached base. It would be a shame to see it end this way. But Panda showed no signs of slowing down as the ball arced through the perfectly blue sky. Holy crap, he was going for it. He had fully committed. This was going to be either a spectacular catch or a multi-base hit. The angle of that ball would make it almost impossible to back him up. The center fielder who was sprinting like mad likely wouldn't reach the ball if Panda missed it until the kid was standing on third. I held my breath as Panda left his feet.

Can You Have That Experience with Video Games?

Seeing Panda leave his feet drew a sharp contrast in my mind. I had started a competitive video game league called Bravous Youth Esports. I wanted to create the same kind of environment and camaraderie for video gamers that I'd had coaching youth baseball. I naively assumed all I had to do was provide the same structure. Coaches, Practices, Matches. The results for the kids would be the same, right?

I could not have been more wrong.

I remember being excited to run our first "practice." We picked League of Legends, an uber-popular team game. I joined the game myself — I wanted to feel what the kids would experience. There were three of us, and two other players joined our match to fill out our team of five. The game started, dazzling graphics, and we swarmed toward our assigned positions... and then it was over. Our two new teammates said something nasty and quit before the match had really begun. "What was that!?" I asked. My coach explained, "That's Solo Queue." We played for three hours without completing a single match. Not one. Forget commitment, let alone supporting each other. Online, people bailed at any time for any reason. Or no reason. There was no practice. Just raw, unfiltered competition. The philosophy seemed to be, "To play at a high level, you had to play at a high level."

And if you couldn't, "shame on you."

Literally. Not one time did a player leave our matches without disparaging me and the rest of our team. This wasn't Win or Learn; it was Win or Humiliate. I had never participated in anything so toxic. And this was a game!?

The Leap to Commit

Playing those games made me feel exactly the opposite of how I felt watching Panda stretch out for that ball, both arms extended. He looked like Superman without a cape. Nothing in the online games gave me that sensation, nothing raised those kinds of feelings within me. But why? Why not?

It's the Environment, Stupid

It took me years to piece together what I was seeing. The clue that cracked the case for me was watching the same exact kids I coached in baseball change their behaviors radically when they played video games.

Environment shapes behavior. The human brain is wired to look for support. When supportive relationships are available, everything is easier. A psychologist named James Coan at the University of Virginia calls this Social Baseline Theory. His studies show even something as simple as walking uphill feels easier with a friend! You don't even need to hold hands or push each other. Being present is enough. When you don't feel like you have support, however, you're running in hard mode.

Coan's Social Baseline Theory says we flourish when we have access to relationships with three critical characteristics: interdependence, shared goals, and joint attention.

The baseball game had all three of those in spades. The video game, in contrast, had none of them. How can you be interdependent with someone who can vanish mid-match (and frequently does)? What is the shared goal when everyone is optimizing for their own rank? And what kind of attention is really being shared with someone through a screen, anonymously and asynchronously?

Players might believe video games are just as significant as sports, cognitively. However, the research shows the brain does not register the experience as supportive for the reasons outlined above. The structure, the environment doesn't allow for it. In fact, the video game environment actively undermines it.

And this is why I never saw a video game player act the way Panda did. It was too risky, too socially dangerous. Without support, it was all downside, no upside.

The Catch

I did not even know I was holding my breath until the ball hit Panda's mitt as he hit the ground. I exploded in a loud cheer, which no one heard because they were cheering too. He closed the leather of his glove around the bright white ball, sealing the out and preserving the perfect game!

When I asked him later why he'd gone for it, he said simply, "I wasn't going to be the one to ruin Hollywood's perfect game." And there, in a nutshell, was everything Coan's research revealed: interdependence, shared goals, and joint attention. Panda didn't quit mid-game because he was bored. He didn't dive to show off, and he wasn't distracted in the heat of the moment. He was present, committed, and ready.

You know, as a coach, and a dad, I really thought I knew who all my players were, including Panda. But I'll never forget what he taught me that day: Kids will absolutely shock you if they're given the right environment.