The Career Path to Pro Tennis Often Passes High School By
Answers to Life’s Worries, in Three-Minute Bursts
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On August 14th David Ortiz decided he had enough. Before the game against Texas David Ortiz sat down with the team psychologist and got some things off his mind. After this meeting he unloaded on the media about his fustrations on how quickly they turned on him. All of this, along with the reports that he has be down due to Manny Ramirez being traded, has clearly being weighing on him.
Since this change he has hit 13-38 (.342) with 4 doubles and 7 homeruns. This is a phenomonal example of how much psychological issues can affect physical performance. Maybe more people will start to look at psychology a little more seriously in the sport’s world, unlike this example.
Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
John Smoltz coming to the Red Sox seemed like a good idea. I liked the potential of having a veteran who could give you a handful of quality starts. He may have been more successful in another division or back in the National League but just can’t get it together in Boston. He is in good shape and still throws pretty hard but his fastball is flat.
I feel bad for a few reasons. It must be extremely frustrating to have such a great career and struggle. Watching him pitch poorly and get hit all over the park I don’t get mad or frustrated as I would watching other hometown pitchers. I would like to see him turn it around but at the same time I would like to see the Red Sox win more games.
It’s hard to be at the end of your career. Esspecially when you feel like you can physically still perform at a certain level. Sometimes our expectations don’t match our physical output.
(see in today’s NY Times: The Sad Fall of a Pitching Giant. Sums up how a lot of fans probably feel.)
Is ANYONE surprised?
I’m not surprised. There is not another name in pro baseball that would be surprising to me at this point.
Here is this issue I have with all of these allegations and releasing of names from a test 6 years ago, either release them all and move on or let’s call it a “wash” and assume there were a lot of players using PEDs and stop this slow parade of listing names.
This is affecting more than just the players and their future, it’s affecting the fan base. Fans are becoming jaded and tired of this. Baseball news is more about negative issues rather than playing baseball. The NFL did a great job by being swift in handling player/league issues (in most cases). But MLB has continued to let the league get stomped over by those in the media and the fan base simply because they cannot work out their issues.
As a baseball fan, I would like to see some changes across the league that focus on putting the best product on the field. Viewership numbers have gradually decreased in many markets due to the 100s of options for entertainment. For baseball to grow and regain popularity there needs to be an action that clarifies and puts this issue of the 2003 tests in the past. Focus on figuring out player’s salaries and cleaning up the multiple bad market teams.
Time to move on and play baseball.
This probably looks easy now
It’s hard to have a life and professional athletes. Just ask Bernie Kosar. The story comes up time and time again in the news about how athletes either in trouble with the law, have physical and/or mental issues, have financial trouble, or experience domestic problems. And after reading the article about Bernie Kosar it becomes more apparent that there needs to be some type of support system for former professional athletes after they retire.
Many athletes are retiring by the age of 30, the same age where many people are starting a career. That disconnect between what the majority population is dealing what a few select people are experiencing seems to be causing a rift in their personal lives.
Besides the obvious of being hurt and experiencing various physical pain, many players are struggling with how to live life. There needs to be a better support system created by the leagues to help these players. While some systems are improving they have a long way to go. (Look back at a post on “why football players have unique issues”. It gives some insight into why there is such a struggle to live “normally”).
In an upcoming post I will outline my thoughts on how the systems can be structured to benefit the players the most.
For more information about mental performance, as well as overall athletic performance enhancement, check out our websites. Also check out my new workbooks for improving your mental skills. The links are on the right of the homepage.
Who was doing all of the exercise?
The BBC posted a story on a study on how much exercise younger children were getting. The problem was that many of the kids who participated actually tricked the researchers. They fooled them by attaching their pedometers to their pet dogs, which greatly inflated their scores. This was found out when obese children were not losing any weight despite the high numbers of steps recorded on their pedometers.
This is a great example of why it can be so difficult to do research. Performance related research, outside of a laboratory setting, involves careful checks and balances. In this case, the researcher’s attempted to account for the use of dogs but despite this it still changes the outcome of the data.
As a reader of various research studies, this situation exemplifies the importance of not only analyzing the results of a study but also the methodology. Understanding how the research was done provides many insights to what the results are saying before you read the discussion. Take care with what you are reading and if you are doing research be extra careful with how you are doing it.
