Almora <\/a>was just 22 years old when he became part of Cubs history, reaching the major league mountaintop as a rookie.<\/p>\n“I was like, ‘oh, we’re going to win every year.’ Then, when you lose, you really learn to appreciate it even more when you do win,” Almora said.<\/p>\n
After five seasons with the Cubs and years experiencing the highs and lows of professional baseball, Almora says his approach to training goes far beyond swings and stats.<\/p>\n
At his new velocity training center in Addison, the focus is just as much mental as it is physical, helping young players learn how to handle failure, pressure and confidence.<\/p>\n
“This is a game of failure. And if we can learn how to control that and learn how to master that, then all you gotta do is work hard,” Almora said.<\/p>\n
Almora’s work ethic helped him win a ring, but it’s the pressure, success and failure that now shape how he mentors young athletes both on and off the field.<\/p>\n
“If I can still give back to the game in a different way while being with my kids, I think that’s just as valuable for me,” Almora said.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADDISON, Ill. (WLS) — Former Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr. wasn’t eying retirement this spring. But when an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[345011,64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-709518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-345011","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}