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This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Read Part 1 here.
3. Emotional injuries are injuries.
"90 percent of the game is half mental." — Yogi Berra
The back of the pitcher staring at his catcher, ready to take on the batter, is the definitive perspective anytime we watch a ballgame on TV. However, it is also the least accurate in getting a feel for what it is like to stand only 60 feet away from someone throwing a hard ball 98 miles per hour in your general direction. A fastball can get to home plate in less than four-tenths of a second, which is why if it were to be thrown right at you, you’d be in a lot of trouble with nowhere to go; every so often, this happens. There’s an unfortunate history of ballplayers getting hit and seriously hurt by a pitch—the worst being in 1920 when the Cleveland Indians' shortstop Ray Chapman died shortly after being hit in the head by a fastball. Dying is thankfully a rarity, but injury is not.
In 2009, Mets third baseman David Wright was hit square in the helmet by a Matt Cain fastball, dropping him to the ground. Wright was helped off the field and hospitalized overnight with a concussion. After three weeks, Wright’s physical injuries and symptoms had healed enough for the medical staff to clear him to play. But watching him return to “the scene of the crime,” he was noticeably uncomfortable. Ostensibly, Wright was trying to stare down the barrel of a gun, where he had last been shot, and now remain calm, believing he was safe. It then only makes sense that for days following his reemergence from the injured list, Wright struggled to get his bearings at the plate, a setting where he had been so steady before.
Just about any player that gets hit in the head, like Wright, has an identical experience. They are ready to play, and yet they are not. Because one injury has healed, while another still needs time—the emotional injury that the incident caused.
Whether it is getting hit in the head by a fastball or a relief pitcher giving up a walk-off homer in the ninth, a major part of baseball is healing from the emotional injury. This is why watching baseball for the majority of my life has taught me to take emotional injury seriously because so often we don’t. The loss of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, or even a fight with someone we care about are examples of situations that cause real injuries in our emotional world. So much of the time, we try to push past these injuries and get back to “normal” before that injury has healed. The idea that David Wright would have tried to stay in the game after he got hit in the head sounds absurd to us, and yet we often attempt the emotional equivalent. Emotional injuries have the same properties as physical ones, and they need to be treated as such.
4. Don’t look at what the guy behind you is doing.
"Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man has ever come to perfection." — Sportswriter Red Smith
Whether it’s stealing a base or legging out an infield hit, the number of plays at the bases that are hairline close make Smith’s quote hard to argue.
It is obvious that a ballplayer needs to get to whichever base they are running to as quickly as possible. You would think then that this happens every time. But it doesn’t. As the runner is booking it as fast as they can to the base in front of them, there is a small thing they will sometimes do that slows them down—look behind them to see where the ball is. Many times that look slows them down just enough to be out.
I’ve heard many an announcer say, “He would’ve been safe if he hadn’t looked behind him! Why did he do that?!” It’s a good question. And the answer is that it is really hard not to. As much as all ball players know intellectually that turning around will do nothing for them, the instinct to see how they are doing in relation to what’s behind them is so strong. This is why a baseball player has to train himself to go as hard as he can in the direction of the base in front of him and ignore the impulse.
This has been a big life lesson for me and my patients. It is a natural thing to want to turn around and see where we are in our lives in comparison to others. "Am I doing enough, making enough, and being enough compared to others around me?" are natural questions and feelings to have. Though they are natural, they are also not helpful. Just as in baseball, looking around to see where we are in terms of others does nothing but cause us to lose our focus and slow us down.
In fact, the ballplayer that goes hard into the base without looking behind him is physically embodying the stoic idea of euthymia: having a sense of your own path and the ability to stay on it while not being distracted by others that intersect it. As much as possible, this is how we should be. Looking around to see where we are and who’s gaining on us slows us down, blurs our purpose, and has the ability to put us into an anxious, chaotic state. Looking only at what’s in front of us is the quickest way to achieve what we’re aiming to achieve. It is also a way for us to feel what euthymia definitionally means: tranquility.
5. Be 100 percent behind your pitch.
"Pitching is both [art and science], and you have to put them together. You have to study the movement of your pitches. You have to learn to read bat speed against the speed of a fastball. If a hitter has a slow swing, I don’t want to throw him anything soft. I want to go hard against slow. If he has a quick bat, I probably want to be soft more than I want to be hard." — Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez
Author Nick Hornby on creating a mix tape: “A good compilation tape… is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker to hold the attention, and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch. . . there are [a lot] of rules.” Hornby is describing the delicate balance of art and science that goes into connecting with the music. Take the phrase compilation tape out of the quote and put the word pitching in, and you see that there really is no difference. Pitching is creating a mix tape, a beautiful blend of art and science.
Pitchers and catchers spend hours together going over what pitch they will throw in what scenario and what batter will or won’t get what pitch. As Nick Hornby said, there are a lot of rules. There is a sentiment in baseball that there is a right pitch to throw at the right time. And yet, there is a saying in baseball that I love: Better to be 100 percent behind the wrong pitch than 50 percent behind the right one. In a sport where a specific scenario dictates a certain rule for the pitcher, this other idea exists as well; all rules get thrown out for the truth. That is the art.
As much as a situation may call for an off-speed pitch, if the pitcher in that moment is feeling most confident and certain about his fastball, then he should go with the heater. Because knowing the “correct” pitch in a given circumstance means nothing if it is not fully invested in by the pitcher’s mind and body. The right pitch can be overruled by the true pitch.
In my work and in myself, I revisit this idea often. When we feel lost, it often comes from solving for the wrong thing. We tend to look for the right thing to do versus feeling for the thing we need to do—the thing that is grounded in our purpose. Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl said it is not for us to ask life, “What is the meaning of all this?” But rather understand it is us that is being asked by life, “What is our meaning?”
Answering this is hard, but if peace of mind comes from being fully invested in the pitches we throw—the things we do—we need to answer this question for ourselves. Whether it is the “best” thing to do may be secondary to the thing I can fully invest in with no regrets, regardless of the outcome. Or, as Sandy Koufax put it, "A guy that throws what he intends to throw, that's the definition of a good pitcher."
