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Key points
- A change in batting order of a baseball team can lead players to think and perform differently.
- Novel situations lead to dopamine release, which can increase pleasure.
- There are many psychological ways to help improve players’ performances.
This post discusses lessons that I learned about the psychology of athletes when I recently reviewed one of my own teenage experiences with my patient.
As a senior in high school back in the 70s, I took on the role of scorekeeper and statistician for our varsity baseball team. I never had a chance to play baseball on a team because my father discouraged my participation in sports. This likely related to his growing up in a different culture in which athletics were held in poor esteem.
As the statistician, I calculated the various statistics associated with baseball including batting averages, fielding averages, and earned run averages. This was in the days before personal computers. I made my calculations using a calculator, and then I typed up the averages (on a manual typewriter!) and posted them in the clubhouse once weekly. Of course, the players were very interested in their performance statistics.
Our team started the year with several losses. I enjoyed studying how our various players performed and thought that perhaps a line-up change based on their performance statistics would be helpful. (A line-up is the order in which the nine baseball players bat in a game. Typically, the best players hit at the top of the order because this gives them a chance to bat more often during a game.)
I approached our coach, who was a former minor league player in the Baltimore Orioles system, and suggested alternative line-ups. He thanked me for my initiative, but said he wasn’t interested in following my suggestion.
However, once the team lost its seventh game out of nine, he asked me to suggest a new line-up. I studied our statistics carefully and then recommended a major line-up change in which the order of the batters was changed dramatically. For example, the hitter who used to be in the fourth position in the line-up, which usually is given to one of the best players, was lowered to the eight position, which usually is reserved for the poorest hitters. Meanwhile, the former eighth hitter was moved up to the second position, which typically is assigned to one of the best players.
The team won the next game. As is true for many baseball players, our coach was superstitious. So, he asked me for a line-up for the next game. I obliged with some more tweaks. We won again. And so it continued.
The team went on a seven-game winning streak. We came up to the last game of the season with a record of 9-7, and if we won this game we would make it to the playoffs, as a reward for having a good season.
I worked hard on proposing the best possible order, and ended up submitting a line-up identical to the one the coach had used at the beginning of the season. We were leading 4-2 heading into the last inning of the final game.
Unfortunately, our best pitcher then ran into trouble because the home plate umpire was making erratic calls. Our pitcher became so frustrated that he strode up to home plate and cleaned it off, ostensibly to help the umpire improve his call-making.
Our pitcher was promptly ejected from the game. The relief pitcher then gave up a grand slam home run and our team ended up losing 6-4, which kept us out of the playoffs. It was only at the end of the season that our coach told the players that I had been creating the line-ups. He didn’t want to tell them beforehand so that the players would not badger me.
I was happy that my line-ups appeared to make a difference in our team’s fortune, and even wrote a letter to Charlie Finley, owner of the Oakland A’s, offering to similarly help that professional team.
Mr. Finely was a known maverick in baseball, as he had introduced colorful uniforms, tried to introduce yellow or orange baseballs so that they could be seen more easily, and also championed nighttime playoff games so that they would be seen by more fans. I thought Mr. Finley might like to utilize statistics-based line-ups (in the days before statistics were widely used in baseball to decide how the players might be best utilized.) However, Mr. Finley never responded to my letter.
Did the Line-Up Changes Lead to the Winning Streak?
I have discussed with my patients how the line-up changes might have been related to the team’s winning streak. Several possibilities come to mind:
- This was a coincidence. Streaks happen all the time in the game of baseball, and my suggested changes made no difference.
- The change in batting order likely led players to think differently. A demotion in the line-up of a good player might have led to him working harder to regain respect in the eyes of the coach. Meanwhile, a poor player who was promoted might have been incentivized to work even harder to maintain a high spot in the line-up.
- The line-up change made the coach look differently at our team and helped increase his enthusiasm. This could have occurred because novel situations lead to dopamine release (the pleasure neurotransmitter), which was further enhanced as the team went on a winning streak.
- The coach’s superstitions may have reinforced his belief that the line-up changes made a big difference for his players, and this could have improved his enthusiasm as well.
- Similarly, the players may have developed increased enthusiasm because of the novel batting order. As I kept tweaking the batting order the novelty persisted.
Takeaway
Major League Baseball teams today use statistics extensively to decide which players to draft, who to play in a particular game, where to place players in the line-up, and even how to position players on the field.
However, much less attention is paid to the psychology of the players at the professional level. As demonstrated by my high school experience, paying attention to the impact of managerial decisions on the psychology of the players is an important and even essential part of achieving optimal success in sports.
Of course, there are many other psychological ways to help improve players’ performances other than line-up changes!
