There’s No Crying In Baseball
[This post is part of the Mental ABC's Of Pitching series. Check out the rest here.]
It’s an iconic scene, in an awesome movie about Baseball.
But is it true, is there really no crying in baseball?
Today we dive into this idea, and how emotions play a roll in your action on the field, and what to do about it.
Although, I doubt any of you have seen the movie, but in the film A League of Their Own Tom Hanks has a conversation in which he yells at one of the female baseball players, then she starts crying. He goes on to say:
Are you crying? There’s no crying in baseball.
So this begs the question when playing at any level, with so much much emotion poured into your effort, how do you handle those emotions when the game is on the line, and how do you execute in spite of it.
- Emotions. As a pitcher you are going to get emotional feedback from three primary sources:
- Your memory of past experience. Whether that is good or bad, and your assessment of the current situation, and how you performed in it last time.
- External sources. Whether that is hostile, heckling fans, runners in scoring position, or the league’s number one slugger at the plate.
- Internal sources. Things like tight muscles, sweaty palms and dry mouth fall under this category.
Your brain is going to interrupt these message differently. The resulting emotion can vary from self-doubt, tension, fear, confusion, panic or frustration, etc. To paraphrase Sun Tzu,”Know your enemies. Only then will you know how to combat them.” So, how to fight back? You fight back with awareness! You call time or get off the rubber/mound, gather yourself, take a few deep breaths, and redirect all that energy to the important task at hand – the next pitch.
- Execution. One of my favorite philosophies is the K.I.S.S. method. KISS stand for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” During my years of playing ball, whenever I got carried away with the environment, circumstances or emotions, I reminded myself of this method. The game of baseball is nothing but one pitch after the other, until one team has more points than the other in the time given. Execute the pitch, play or bat, at hand and let the rest take care of itself. Keep It Simple, just execute!
