Because the High School team where Coach Hobby coached was in a cold weather state there were too many times the team was forced to stay inside. It was a small school and the baseball preseason started during the basketball season so the amount of time the baseball team spent in the gym was very limited. So to overcome the problem the team and coaches would go to a classroom. Using chalk the coaches would list points and issues they wanted to convey on the black board. At some point the players started referring to this as 'chalk talk time'. As they said this was the time the coaches wanted to 'get into their heads'.
Chalk Talk is collection of those discussions put into writing. Most of which were concerning the effect the mental game plays on the physical game. The articles represent Coach Hobby's thoughts and the points he was trying to convey about the role their mindset like attitude, emotions and confidence plays. The themes are from sports incidents, articles from sports subscriptions like Sports Illustrated, sport psychologists and sports figures and how they responded to pressure, mistakes, slumps, etc. Coach Hobby's goal was to get the players to acknowledge the importance the role their mindset plays in their physical development and to convince them to commit to include some of his suggestions and thoughts when they are working on their physical game.
