It Just Kept Calling Me!
By: Douglas Bryant White
Tags: Universal Law, Baseball, Law Of Attraction, Love Yourself, Create Your Reality

It Just Kept Calling Me!

It was one year ago to the day that the GM of the Los Angeles Angels called me up to tell me he wouldn’t be needing my services anymore. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised when it happened, but not because of what most would assume. Normally after a season as terrible as we had it’s the norm that people would be fired. But we were all just brought together, it was our first year, and this was supposed to be the start of something special. Sure we had a lot of losses but we also had one seriously “unlucky” season. One of our top pitchers passed away, another few were injured. We were battling grown-ass men with some rookies and triple-A lifers, that definitely didn’t make it easy on us. Before all that, we actually were just five games out of the wildcard race.

But for me, none of this was the reason I was fired. You see, 2 weeks before the season was over I had a premonition. I thought, “Man, I’m not going to be here next year, am I?” Didn’t know how it was going to go down of course, but just knew it. At the moment I had that thought a complete calm rushed over me. If that was to happen, then I guess that’s exactly what I wanted.

If you don’t know me, which none of you would, I am 100% in on lots of things about our Universe. But I’m 1 million percent in on these three things, Vibration, Attraction, Emotions. It goes like this, we live in a vibrational based universe, which simply means we emit a frequency out into the Universe. We are vibrational beings and because we are, we emit an ongoing frequency every day of our lives. The type of frequency? Well, that’s ever-changing based on our thoughts. (I’ll get back to that) So we are a vibrational based Universe and we are vibrational beings. This is also an attraction based Universe, which means the Universe is yielding to us based on the frequency we are emitting. The example would be the lighthouse on the shore bringing the ships home safely. The light that the lighthouse is emitting is your vibration. The ships that are headed towards the light are the attraction-based part.

So we have vibration and we have attraction. Now comes the most important part (and in my example above this is like the staring the ship part) you are staring the ships to you by the way you feel, the vibration, the frequency you are emitting. Want to know what is coming your way? Well, that’s why we have emotions. By being able to decipher the emotion you are feeling you can know what type of vibe you are emitting to the Universe. And so this also means you are having a glimpse of what may be coming your way in the future. Sometimes the manifestations come quickly, others take more time for a myriad of reasons we won’t get into here. So there you have it. Vibration, Attraction, Emotions. We emit a frequency, the Universe yields that back to us and we can stare the ship by being aware of how we feel and by choosing to feel as good as we are able as consistently as possible.

The reason I had to go breakdown the Universal Law for you is cause First, it’s my story and I’ll write it how I want, and Second, it helps put my story in perspective for the audience.

So back to my firing and the real reason it happened…

Wait, more backstory first. I have to do this or you won’t understand the title and I definitely want you all to know that the title makes perfect sense. You see, when I was a kid I didn’t even like baseball. I wasn’t that good at first. When I was 8 years old I remember being jealous because I didn’t make the All-Star team in my little league. I distinctly remember to this day, I thought to myself, “well I don’t even care cause I love basketball anyways so who gives a shit.” When I was a kid I was so good at it, basketball that is.

I was a kid growing up in Suburban LA. Magic Johnson was leading the Lake Show in the’80s. What else would I have wanted to be except Point Guard for the Los Angeles Lakers? Oh, man was that a special time. It was Bird vs. Magic every freaking year. Kareem, Worthy, Rambis, AC Green, Coop-a-loop, I get so excited just writing this down! So you can see why I didn’t give a shit about baseball. Plus it was a slow-moving game and with basketball, I could have the ball ALL the time and be in total control. Constant action running up and down the court.

When I was 10 my parents moved me to a small town called Sedona, AZ. Land of Bell Rock and the Vortex and space ships and land of the Red Rocks. Great little town, so amazingly beautiful, but zero basketball. Do you know how painful that was for me, for a 10-year-old kid to not be able to play the sport he absolutely loved? There it went, right out the door. I now started to notice baseball a little bit more. Still wasn’t in love with it but it was definitely opening the door for possibilities. Let’s call this Call #1.

Fast forward to age 14. Right about this time I actually wasn’t that bad of a baseball player, although part of that was the small area I was from. I was a pretty solid athlete so I just outplayed most of the kids in any sport when I was younger. High School is where the separation starts for most and you can clearly see what direction you are headed in with sports and your future. I realize this isn’t true for everyone, it’s the only reason I can write this story, cause I’m one of those outliers. For the mass population, this is the sad truth with sports.

I’m going to call this Call #2. When I was 14 I started to work on my soccer game as well. I had some friends who were trying out for a travel team and I wanted to see if I could make it. Seemed interesting and it was a solid challenge so I went for it. I trained for a few weeks before the tryouts came and improved a lot in a short period of time. Good enough to make the A squad. If I took that opportunity though, then there was no more baseball. Travel soccer was a year round gig and so I was left to choose soccer or baseball. Not even sure I remember why I chose baseball. Maybe partly it was because deep down I knew Pele I was never going to be. For whatever reason, baseball was growing on me, and so, I went that route. At that time I decided to play the sport all year round.

That’s when high school started. I won’t bore you with the four-year process of high school but there are a few things you need to know about it to make the story stick. #1, I never pitched in a high school game but became an ML Pitching Coach. #2, I quit baseball my senior year, right before the last game of the season. The same game where if we won we would earn a trip to the state playoffs. Of course, I quit and they won the game, and off to state they go as I feel sorry for myself at Flagstaff High School. #3, this is a little longer explanation but it’s a good one and ties into the story so well so just keep reading. You see, for the first 18 years of my life, I was always the kid asking questions. I was so curious about everything. I wanted to know the behind the scenes stuff about everything. You know, the kid in the classroom always asking Why? Along with that thirst for deeper knowledge, I also was a sore loser, a victim, a cry baby. Always pointing out the unfairness or injustices of everything that happened in my life. It’s one of the reasons I quit baseball my senior year. I had gone through so much with the coach. I just hated the game at that point. What really happened is I allowed the coach to strip me of that, he didn’t take it away, I let him, I gave it to him.

I had just finished my freshman year in college and during the summer my parents sent me to a little thing called Lifespring Training. Lifespring was a self-awareness training created to allow anyone who chose to attend this lovely workshop, to see what was going on in their life. They had a way to show you how you let others, outside of your self, control you. How you would give your power away and lack responsibility or accountability for your own life. It also showed you what life was really about, to give and receive love. What a gift this training was for me. One of the stretches (they called them stretches cause it made you stretch outside your comfort zone) was to take back something in your life that you knew, from this new knowledge base, you let someone else take from you. For me, it was my love for baseball. Through that experience of Lifespring Training, I committed myself to get back into baseball right there and then. So I did. In high school, my arm was always my strongest attribute so at the age of 18 I started on a journey to become a collegiate pitcher. That’s when Call #3 started.

At the time I was living in Flagstaff, AZ, and attended Northern Arizona University. They didn’t have a baseball team so I needed to find a school that I could go play for. I ended up hiring a pitching coach in Chandler, AZ. Once a month I would drive down from Flagstaff to Chandler, have my lesson, then drive back home. I would train in the skydome at NAU at 6am on the days I needed to throw. Winters in Flagstaff can get pretty freaking cold so I had to beg the Athletic Director to allow me to throw in the dome before the other employees showed up. As long as I was in and out before anyone was there he would allow it. I trained and threw and saw my pitching coach for the next few months. He saw the improvements I was making and decided to reach out to a small school in Arkansas where he knew the head coach. It was someone who had played for him in the past. He agreed on a visit so off I went. I ended up going to this D3 school in Arkansas but right before I was heading out there the head coach had decided to move on. I still went to the school but the new head coach wasn’t promising me anything.

The next couple of years I spent going in and out of pursuing this quest to play baseball. Basically, my focus stunk and my perspective stunk. I never ended up sticking anywhere and eventually headed back to Flagstaff, AZ for summer school at NAU. Again, thinking baseball and I had finally parted ways.

If you are reading this story right now literally pulling your hair out asking why I keep going back to baseball, I don’t blame you in the least. Heck, I’d be saying the same thing, it’s over buddy, move on, be ok with doing something else. Here is the deal with this entire story until I eventually pull us back into the current day and time. I had a strong desire to play baseball and am sure I would have been fine with walking away if I knew inside I had lined up my focus and gave it my “best shot”. I was still very much entrenched in the woe is me story. At least, more so, then creating that consistent vibration of confidence, clarity, and knowing in who I was and what I was capable of. So of course my desire wouldn’t go away. I wasn’t fulfilling it. I was still being a victim of it.

When I got back to Flagstaff it was time for Call #4. I wanted to keep playing. I pitched in a summer league and eventually transferred down to Arizona State University to see if I could walk-on and make the team. I won’t put you through the entire story here but I do have a quick snippet for you. To walk-on, you had to attend a meeting to get all the info and meet the coaching staff. Pat Murphy was the head coach down there at the time and basically a legend in the community. When the meeting started Coach Murphy looked at me and asked me my name so I told him. Then he responded, “that right there is a big-league name.” That’s about all there is to tell about ASU and the next two years. I walked on twice but never made it. I still was training and pitching to try and keep the dream alive. I would pitch during the summer to make up for time lost. The summer before my senior year I pitched in the Arizona Summer Collegiate League. The manager of the team was George Lopez, the head coach at South Mountain Community College. He told me that if I didn’t make the team at ASU I could come play for him. That’s just what I did. I enrolled in both schools and for whatever reason, I was still eligible to play at a junior college even though I had been to my fifth school by this time. Yup, I said it, five total schools. I have so many college credits I should be a doctor by now, technically!

I loved playing at the JC. Our team was awesome. We were ranked in the nation and had players who went on to play at D1 schools, in the minor leagues and one even got all the way to the Bigs. I was a regular starter and logged 75 innings that season.

When the year ended I still wanted to play. I was 22 years old, I had graduated from ASU with a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism and had zero clue of what I would do besides baseball. Instead of growing up, I continued to pursue baseball and see if I could realize a dream of playing for a professional organization.

Here is the part I left out over the span of being 18–23 years of age. I couldn’t throw hard, AT ALL. The best I ever got to in a real game was maybe mid 80’s. As a right-handed pitcher, older graduate, with just 75 innings at a JC on my resume, there wasn’t much happening in the way of jobs in pro ball. Let’s just say nobody wanted me but I had zero clue about all that like I know now. I didn’t realize how good even the rookie ball kids were. Some of those kids came into organizations with ready-made big league stuff. All they needed to do was go pitch and believe in themselves. Me, I had zero business being there or even showing up to try. I had no clue, but how was I supposed to, I had no experience of any of it.

The next few years I spent training and trying to be picked up somewhere to play Indy ball. The players who were either released from an organization or were trying just like me to be “discovered” had to go the Indy Ball route. During those few years, I ended up logging 14 innings of pitching and a nice little shoulder injury. Needless to say, I was done playing baseball. I was 25 years old, had a significant shoulder injury, a degree I would never use and so now what?

Isn’t this just the coolest story ever? Of course, you already know the ending, I get to the big leagues as a coach, but from where the story currently is, can you even see the path of that being remotely possible? Cause I certainly don’t and I’m the author, but don’t fret people you will see here shortly.

The funny thing about all this is at the age of 25 I had spent so much time struggling and persevering trying to play baseball, never allowing myself to settle into the vibration, attraction, emotions game. Never really understanding the flow of all that and tapping into how I really felt about who I was and how I felt about myself and my desires. Amazingly, not 6 months after I gave up the struggle of trying to play baseball I had my first opportunity to be inside of a professional baseball organization. Yup, it’s true, I was hired as the pitching coach for the Gulf Coast League Expos. Which was the rookie ball affiliate for the Montreal Expos Baseball Organization at the time.

I know what you are thinking. You are like, wait, what? Did I just read that correctly? Did he get a job in pro ball? Yup, sure did. No doubt in my mind I was never supposed to be a player. A “coach” is who I am through and through, to the core of my being. After I gave up the struggle of thinking that me being a pitcher was the only way I would realize my dream of being in pro ball, the Universe yielded me this opportunity in no time at all. 3 months before I was released for the last time I met Mr. Brent Strom. Brent had been a Major League pitching coach for the Houston Astros and the Kansas City Royals before I had met him. Now he was the pitching coordinator for the Montreal Expos. Which means he ran the development of pitching for the organization.

Gotta squeeze this in here so it makes a bit more sense. From the time I started pursuing a pitching career, I also needed a faster fastball. I went through the gauntlet of pitching coaches to help me. Names like Mark Littell, Bob Welch, Steve Stone, Dick Mills, you name ’em I called ’em. Always pursuing the unattainable miles per hour. With Brent things were different. He had better information. He believed in me. At times with him, it really did happen. I did throw harder. I just didn’t have the time to allow it to completely sink in during competition. Brent had always told me I would make a great coach when I was done playing, so I took him up on it and it worked out. I got the job with the Expos.

So I coached for the Expos for a year, got fired. Went to Indy Ball for a year to coach, got fired. Then spent the next three years running my own business called Passion for Pitching. It was then, during those 3 years, I was able to hone in on what a “coach” truly should be. I was able to be a more, well-rounded instructor. I was able to study, read, research, and then train clients in a way where I felt could achieve results. Cause it was my business and if results didn’t come I wasn’t going to be able to eat. It was also during this time that Call #5 came, literally. Remember Brent Strom? Well at this point he had been hired as the Co-coordinator for the St Louis Cardinals and he needed some help, people he could trust. He called me up to ask if I was interested at all. Jeff Luhnow was the scouting director and director of minor league operations at the time and he called me for the interview. Needless to say, I got the job.

Now is where things really started to heat up for me, well kinda. I spent the next five seasons coaching at the rookie ball level for the St Louis Cardinals Organization. We won 3 championships in those 5 years and made it to the playoffs in 4 out of the 5 seasons. But I never moved anywhere. I spent those five seasons like I had spent my high school career and my so-called professional playing career. Doing the same thing to myself vibrationally. Asking with words to be somewhere and to accomplish something but never taking the time to truly line up with it vibrationally. Through my feelings, my beingness. With my words, I asked to be promoted or often had conversations with friends and family about why I wasn’t, but vibrationally all I was saying was either I’m not ready or please don’t promote me cause I’m being a big baby.

When I was 32 years old, my 3rd year with the Cardinals, I started a meditation practice. That was HUGE for me. Just doing 15 minutes of meditation a day was life-changing. Things I used to worry about or waste my time contemplating over just dissolved. I remember waking up one morning about 6 months into my practice of meditation and thinking, “holy shit, I don’t worry about this anymore or this or this or this.” It was a huge laundry list and I felt relieved and amazed by it all. Then it hit me one day, “Doug, what the fuck are you doing? You know the laws of the Universe. You know how to create your reality. You know what story to tell to bring you not only the things you want most in this world, to be in the big leagues, but you also know the road to get there is happiness.” I fully realized that I was exhausted by the struggle, the worry, and the wondering. When was it going to be my turn? How come they don’t promote me? Why don’t they like me? When I finally quieted that chatter things shifted greatly for me.

In the off-season of 2012, I asked the Cardinals if I could shop myself to the other teams. It felt right. It felt good. I wanted a change of scenery. I knew now how the organization felt about me and where I stood inside of it. It was time to go.

Eventually, I signed with the Houston Astros for the 2013 season. I started in rookie ball again but knew I was in a better place. First, by how I felt and second by what was going on around me. The team I was coaching for won the league championship, my 4th in 6 seasons. During that off-season, everything changed. It was December of 2013, I was speaking at the Texas Baseball Ranch thanks to the invite by Ron Wolforth. The representation of the Cleveland Indians “coincidentally” were in the crowd that day. It just so happened that instead of doing a normal talk about mechanics or pitch strategy, I chose something much different. I chose Vibration. The title was “Success is Rooted in Emotion.” Which meant success comes through the ability to feel it emotionally, vibrationally, and once that locks into place there is nothing that can hold you back. It just so happens the Cleveland Indians agreed. They called the Astros shortly after that engagement and asked if they could interview me for the double-A pitching coach position. That was quite a jump from rookie ball. Well, the Astros denied the permission unbeknownst to me. In baseball, any team that you are under contract withholds the rights to whether they will allow you to speak with another organization, even if it’s for promotion. They can deny permission any time they choose. But what the Astros did is instead of having me be the double-A pitching coach, they offered me better, they offered me the roving instructor position. This means I went from rookie league ball to management. If you look at it linearly I hopped 4 spots and was 1 spot away from the big leagues. I had spent 8 years in pro ball and never passed the rookie league. But once I realized my lack of focus was killing me and if I could somehow find a way to clean up my vibration some I pole-vaulted to being in the race.

3 years later I was finally in the big leagues as the bullpen coach for the Houston Astros. The same team with Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole. Just a few years back I was working with rookies fresh off the boat. Next thing I know I’m working with future Hall of Famers. Then the following year came Call #6. This time the call was to be the Major League Pitching Coach for the Los Angeles Angels. What was my current life’s dream at the time came true. Yours truly, from not even liking baseball, to never really even playing baseball, to never really even coaching at a level higher than rookie ball, then becoming a big-league pitching coach. Nothing like it in the world. And you know what’s the best part is I knew exactly how and why I got there. I can say with all my heart, I created my reality. I was all of who I could have been and I gave it all of who I was.

And so here we are, right back to where we started from.

It was one year ago to the day that the GM of the Los Angeles Angels called me up to tell me he wouldn’t be needing my services anymore. And so now I sit here from another perspective. You see this time (like I wrote in the story) I was all of who I could have been. I have no regrets, I held nothing back. The complete opposite of when I played. So here we are, it’s October of 2020, what is the next “call” going to be?