Ben Zobrist is a three-time MLB All-Star, a two-time World Series champion, and the 2016 World Series MVP, known as one of baseball’s pioneering “super utility” players for his ability to excel at nearly every position on the field. Ben joins Adam to share his journey and his best lessons and advice. Ben and Adam discuss a wide range of topics: habits for success, versatility, developing mental toughness and a winning mindset, leadership, coaching, culture, performing under pressure, and much more.
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Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Ben Zobrist.
Episode Summary
Ben Zobrist graduated high school in Eureka, Illinois, with zero scholarship offers and no real plan to keep playing baseball. His high school coach, Bob Gold, called him after the season ended and talked him into a fifty dollar scout day near Peoria, telling him he thought there might be more in store for him athletically. A college coach from Olivet Nazarene University noticed him there and called about a week later with a full ride. Ben describes trusting that opportunity as borrowed belief, since he did not yet believe in his own baseball future the way his coaches already did.
Once he committed to the sport, Ben trained himself to practice with the same intensity he expected to feel in a real game, arguing that raising your effort only when a crowd is watching leaves you unprepared for the moments that matter most. He also credits an unusual ability to stay fully present, rarely dwelling on an earlier at bat or a mistake from that morning, a trait his eventual manager Joe Maddon also prized. That same coachability made him willing to learn brand-new infield positions on request, which became the foundation for the super utility role that defined his career.
The clearest example of Ben’s larger point about culture change is the Tampa Bay Rays’ turnaround from worst to first between 2007 and 2008. The roster brought in genuine winners, including a rookie named Evan Longoria, but the deeper shift was psychological: the team rebranded from the Devil Rays to the Rays, and deliberately built a scrappy, fun identity, right down to a teammate hiring a mariachi band after a Cinco de Mayo loss and a literal brawl with the Yankees in spring training that signaled the team would no longer play the league’s doormat. Joe Maddon protected that looseness while still demanding results, at one point asking Ben, a switch hitter who had not batted right-handed in five or six years, to face a right-handed pitcher anyway. Ben trusted him and got a hit.
Ben’s own definition of leadership centers on humility and flexibility rather than command. He argues that great leaders take the blame and none of the credit, and that they cannot ask a team to regulate its emotions if they have not learned to regulate their own first. He closes by reframing confidence itself: he treats it as faith in his own process rather than faith in any particular outcome, since a bad day under that definition says nothing about whether the next one will go well.
What You’ll Learn
- Why Joe Maddon was more likely to put Ben in the lineup during an 0-for-12 slump rather than less, based on simple statistical logic about who was actually due for a hit.
- Why Ben reframes fear as a sign that something worth achieving is within reach, rather than something to avoid, citing the idea that real flow requires real risk.
- What Ben means by calling himself a tinkerer in the batting cage, and why that daily process mattered more to him than performing in front of a crowd.
- Why Ben believes a losing culture cannot be fixed by player attitude alone, and has to start with a change in leadership at the very top of an organization.
- Why Ben deliberately limited his own comfort as a young athlete, treating skipped weekend nights out as part of his actual training rather than a sacrifice.
- What lesson about mental toughness Ben credits to his father, a former military man turned pastor, and how he applied it to slumps and failure on the field.
About Ben Zobrist
Ben Zobrist is a former Major League Baseball player, a three-time All-Star, two-time World Series champion, and the 2016 World Series MVP with the Chicago Cubs. Known as one of baseball’s first true super utility players, he played nearly every position on the field at a high level including a pivotal role on the Tampa Bay Rays’ 2008 worst-to-first turnaround under manager Joe Maddon. Ben grew up in Eureka, Illinois, the son of a pastor, and received no college scholarship offers out of high school before earning one to Olivet Nazarene University. He is the author of the new book, Prepare for the Pressure.
Related Episodes
- Episode 345: Major League Soccer Founder Alan Rothenberg
Alan describes surrounding himself with good people and giving them real autonomy, the same trust Joe Maddon placed in Ben when he asked him to bat right-handed against a pitcher he had not faced that way in years. - Episode 340: General Gary Brito
General Brito insists there is no substitute for hard, standards-based training when it comes to real motivation, the same discipline Ben describes practicing with game-level intensity long before facing real pressure. - Episode 213: PEAK6 Co-Founder Jenny Just
Jenny built a trading firm around treating calculated risk as the price of real opportunity, the same reframing of fear Ben describes using before high-pressure at bats. - Episode 344: Former E*TRADE CEO Mitch Caplan
Mitch describes leading a team through genuine crisis by staying relentlessly optimistic in the face of setbacks, the same mindset Ben credits for the Rays’ worst-to-first turnaround. - Episode 346: Techstars Co-Founder and CEO David Cohen
David argues founders fail less from running out of resources and more from losing touch with what is actually working, a similar diagnosis to Ben’s account of what separates winning and losing team cultures.
