The Last Three Outs When closers choke
By Russell Westerholm
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements of a degree in Writing
Professional Writing, Journalism option 1 May 2012 Thesis Advisor: Prof. Briggs
1 Abstract
This thesis is a long-form journalistic piece about why baseball closers choke.
Pitchers in baseball have always had the reputation of being neurotic and closers are more so because their job is the most stressful in the game. Experts say there are two ways a closer can focus; one is good and one is bad. Focus, confidence and execution are the most important tools for a closer, and without all three, he is destined for trouble. This project looks in depth into how brain processes affect focus, confidence and execution and what actually happens in a closer’s mind in the ninth inning.
2 Table of Contents
Terminology and basic rules of baseball – 4
Focus, confidence, execution – 7
The Great Rivera – 11
Preparation – 16
Team Chokes – 19
Brain Processes – 25
The Postseason – 29
What can be done – 32
Works Cited – 35
3 Terminology and basic rules of baseball
• Blown save: when the reliever surrenders the lead in a save situation.
• Choking: in sports, choking is when an athlete fails in a situation where
success means winning the game and failure means losing.
• Clutch: a term used for athletes who are very good and consistent under
pressure.
• Double play: when two outs are recorded on one defensive play.
• ERA: stand for Earned Run Average. It averages how many earned runs a
pitcher gives up per nine innings.
o ERA is one of the main ways in which fans and analysts measure a
pitcher’s success.
• Extra innings: If the game is tied after the third out of the ninth is recorded,
extra innings ensue. Extra innings continue until one team takes a lead and
holds it through the bottom half of the inning.
• “Game 162:” refers to the last game of the season, as there are 162 games in a
season.
• Inning: consists of two halves – top and bottom – the away team hits in the
top half and the home team hits in the bottom half; both halves consist of three
outs. Each baseball game is made up of nine innings.
4 • Leagues and Divisions: Major League Baseball (MLB) has two leagues and
six divisions.
o American League (AL): East, Central and West
o National League (NL): East, Central and West
o The main difference between the two leagues is the designated hitter
rule. In the AL, a designated hitter hits in place of the pitcher. In the
NL, there is no designated hitter, pitchers have to hit.
• Long reliever (long-man): a relief pitcher whose job is to pitch more than
three innings at a time. Long-men are typically only used when a starting
pitcher has a short outing.
• Middle reliever: a relief pitcher who pitches one inning a game, sometimes
two, in the middle innings of a game (4th-7th).
• Pitching rhythm: a sequence of events in which a pitcher throws a pitch, gets
the ball thrown back to him by the catcher, gets the sign for the next pitch
from the catcher, then throws the next pitch.
o Many things out of the pitcher’s control can interrupt a pitcher’s
rhythm such as hits, home runs and foul balls. Pitchers can also ruin
their own rhythm by taking extra time between pitches and walking
around and kicking dirt around on the mound.
• Save: a save occurs when a reliever ends the game after entering the game
with the tying run due up.
5 • Scouting report: detailed report on any given hitter or pitcher listing
strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.
o For hitters: Report used by pitchers that lists details such as pitches the
hitter hits well (or poorly), what areas of the strike zone they hit well
(or poorly), if the hitter is patient or aggressive and any other
tendencies.
o For pitchers: Report used by hitters that lists details such as strongest
and weakest pitch, how often they throw each pitch and in what kinds
of situations and any other tendencies.
• Starting pitcher (starters): a pitcher who starts the game. Starters are usually
expected to last six to seven innings.
o Fun fact: relievers are a fairly new position, before relievers, starters
had to pitch the entire game no matter what.
o Quality start: when a starter pitches at least six innings and gives up
three or less runs.
• Triple play: when three outs are recorded on one defensive play. These are
extremely rare.
• Walk-off: when the home team scores the go-ahead run in the bottom of the
ninth or later. It is called a “walk-off” because the teams walk off the field
after the run scores because the game is over.
6 Focus, confidence, execution
In Yankee stadium, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” begins to blare over the loud speakers and every fan in attendance knows that marks the entrance of Mariano
Rivera.
In Boston’s Fenway Park, during his time spent as a Red Sox, once Dropkick
Murphys’ “Shipping Up to Boston” filled the stadium, everything else stopped. All in attendance stopped to watch Jonathon Papelbon run onto the field.
In San Francisco, during the 2010 World Series, Brian Wilson was finishing his warm up tosses when countless “Fear the Beard” signs began to go up. Soon after, the crowd was roaring as the thickly-bearded closer ran onto the field.
The closer entering the ninth inning in a save situation is the climax of any baseball game. There are many things that heighten the stakes in the ninth inning of a close game. The crowd noise grows, the adrenaline pumps through the fans in the stadium, the closer and the hitters. The outcome of a close game rides on the closer’s performance and there is no point in a game where the crowd is louder than in the last inning of a close game.
A closer needs to master three elements to be successful: focus, confidence and execution.
In such close situations, with immense crowd noise, closers need focus on the catcher’s target. Closers also need unshakeable confidence; they need to believe that they are good enough to get any hitter out. Lastly, closers need to execute their best pitches in precise locations because one mistake could lead to a blown save.
7 Closing pitchers have perhaps the most stressful job in baseball and one of the most stressful jobs in all of sports. Their job is to get the most important three outs of the game: the last three.
The last three outs are the most difficult and most important because they are what stand in between a closer’s team, and a win. In the other dugout is an entire lineup that will do everything they can to beat the closer.
Doubt is a closer’s worst nightmare. When doubt creeps into his mind, a closer cannot help but visualize giving up the big, game-changing home run. In the ninth inning, every mistake is magnified; hitters have heightened senses and reactions due to the high amount of adrenaline. If a closer cannot match that level of focus, adrenaline and confidence, doubt takes place. When doubt takes place in a closer’s mind, he chokes.
Choking is a term more commonly used for athletes. It is used to describe when he fails in a situation where success is imperative. Taking a step away from baseball for a moment, choking exists in all types of professions and everyone experiences pressure at some point in their lives. The mouth gets dry, palms start to sweat, the mind races and all it can focus on is not choking. Paradoxically, the desperate need to not choke, is exactly what causes people to choke.
“When the worries begin, [people] try to control their performance and force an optimal outcome,” Sian Beilock, author of “Choke: what the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to,” wrote.
8 Choking usually occurs when a person is highly skilled at something, usually a professional, and it follows a certain procedure. First, when people become nervous, they become self-conscious, when a person is self-conscious, they try to avoid failure, when they try to avoid failure, the brain tries to micro-manage basic motor skills of the body.
For closing pitchers, choking occurs when they think about their throwing motion or the point where they release the ball. When the pressure is high, the brain focuses all its attention on making sure these automatic motor skills are done perfectly instead of focusing on the task at hand, inducing paralysis by over-analysis.
“I have this vision of what I think choking is. I think most fans do. Athletes have a slightly different perspective because they know the pressure that they’re dealing with all the time,” Dr. Shane Murphy, professor of sports psychology at
Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) said. “It’s a pretty thin line between success and failure.”
Murphy is the former psychologist for the Colorado Sky Sox, a triple-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox and before that, he was the first full-time psychologist for the U.S Olympic committee.
Murphy said that sports psychologists tend to define choking differently than fans do. He said they have a different perspective because they try to define it operationally. The two definitions Murphy gave were anxiety-based and brain- process-based.
9 Anxiety-based is what common sense tells us. Common sense says that an athlete chokes because he let his anxiety get the best of him. Murphy said the brain process explanation is gaining strength research-wise and can more accurately tell us why pitchers choke.
In her book “Choke,” Beilock detailed the brain’s reaction to high-pressure situations. “Your heart rate goes up, your adrenaline kicks in and your mind starts to race – often with worries,” she wrote.
10 The Great Rivera
Mariano Rivera stood stoic on the Yankee Stadium mound. It was a regular season game against the struggling Minnesota Twins, but Rivera was one out from making history.
Rivera has made a career out of throwing one pitch, the cutter. The cutter is a fastball that moves in towards a left-handed hitter and away from a right-handed hitter. Rivera sometimes throws other variations of a fastball like the two-seamer
(moves the opposite direction of the cutter) and a straight four-seam fastball. He makes it work because of pinpoint control and a rock-solid psychological approach.
A closer has the most stressful job in baseball because the score is always close when a closer comes in. With the way managers order the lineups, the team’s best hitters often come up in the last inning. If a starting pitcher gives up three runs over the duration of seven innings, it is considered a quality start. For a closer, so much as one run surrendered could be a blown save.
This kind of psychological stress is too much for young pitchers and, along with the physical toll, weighs too heavily on older pitchers. Trevor Hoffman will always be considered one of the game’s greatest closers, but as he arrived at the end of his career, he simply could not get hitters out. When Hoffman turned 40, his ERA went up to 3.77 and when Rivera turned 40, his ERA was 1.80. Hoffman retired after the 2010 season at the age of 42, his ERA that year was 5.89. Rivera has entered the
2012 season at the age of 42.
11 Murphy said that different closers have different ways of handling pressure.
Pitchers like Papelbon throw their energy outward whereas Rivera has strategies for keeping it inside. Murphy believes Rivera’s psychological approach is to not let the hitter know what he is feeling. No matter the situation, Rivera always looks the same whether it is his facial expression or the pitch that leaves his hand.
The cutter has allowed Rivera to be one of the most consistent pitchers of all time. The pitch requires no wrist movement, therefore places no stress on the elbow.
It is easy for catchers to catch for him because they know what pitch he throws; they just need to give him a target. His delivery is simple and smooth and places no unnecessary stress on his shoulder or anywhere else.
Rivera’s name is written all over the closer’s record book and especially in the
Yankee record book. One record had eluded him until Sept. 19, 2011: the all-times saves record previously held by Hoffman, a pitcher who featured baseball’s two most basic pitches: a fastball and a changeup.
A changeup gets its name from what it does, it is a change of pace. Pitches such as curveballs and sliders are thrown with a flick of the wrist, creating a different spin than a regularly thrown ball. Hitters can identify a slider or a curve by the way the ball spins, each one looks distinct. Fastballs and changeups are thrown with no wrist flick so neither one has a distinct spin. The changeup is arguably baseball’s most deceptive pitch because it is thrown the same way a fastball is thrown, but with four fingers placed on the ball, drastically slowing the pitch down.
12 Each closer has a signature pitch, a pitch he throws better than anyone else.
Early on in his career, Papelbon has developed an exceptional splitter, Hoffman had the changeup and Rivera has his cutter.
All around the Panamanian-born closer fans stood cheering and flashing cameras, but Rivera was as calm and collected as he has ever been. His calm demeanor is something that he has become known for in his 18-year season. Rivera has won five World Series titles, he has the most postseason saves of all-time, but never does he ever look anything but calm.
In Murphy’s heart monitoring research he did on the U.S figure skaters, he learned that no matter what the skater’s demeanor was, skaters experienced the same kind of rise in heart rate. Even though Rivera was on the brink of achieving the greatest honor there is to achieve at his position, Rivera kept his mild, calm demeanor even though his heart rate was probably racing.
Rivera comes from a generation of mild-mannered closers. After recording a save, Rivera will calmly walk toward his catcher, shake his hand and then high-five his teammates. Hoffman was the same way, as were many of the closers from the
1990’s.
When the 2000’s came around, the closer position changed, Rivera did not. A pitcher named Francisco Rodriguez came through the Los Angeles Angels system who helped make famous the high-energy persona.
Along with a new, more intense persona, more and more closers started developing extra pitches. All relief pitchers, closers, set-up men, middle relievers,
13 only have two or three pitches that they throw really well. Because they are only in the game for an inning at a time, there is no need for a larger pitch arsenal.
A growing trend among closers is the development of more pitches.
Rodriguez was one of the first to start throwing as many five different pitches in an inning. He could throw a fastball, a changeup, curveball, slider and a two-seam fastball. Jonathon Papelbon is known to feature four pitches: fastball, curveball, slider and a splitter.
Rivera does have a wrinkle to his game and his psychological strength. He is not very good in non-save situations. For example, a common managerial move in tied game is, if the team is at home, to bring in the closer to pitch the ninth. Managers like this move because their team can win the game in the bottom half of the inning and bringing in the closer all but ensures a scoreless half inning. These are precisely the types of situations where Rivera is at his worst.
From a psychological standpoint, it is an entirely different ball game because there is an even smaller margin for error. As is proven over and over again, the smaller margin for error, the more athletes push themselves to be perfect.
Rivera has pitched 781 and one-third innings in save situations and carries a
1.92 ERA. In his 605 career saves, Rivera has an ERA of 0.66, meaning that his ERA in save situations is boosted by his blown saves. In 383 and one-third non-save situation innings, Rivera has a 2.35 ERA.
In the eight inning, Rivera has a career ERA of 1.76 and a career ninth inning
ERA of 2.02. In innings 7-9, or the “clutch innings,” Rivera’s ERA is 2.00 and he
14 averages nearly five-and-a-half strikeouts per walk. However, in extra innings,
Rivera’s ERA goes up to 2.98 and opposing batters hit for an average of .248. Give
Rivera a situation he is not familiar with and even the greatest of all time will struggle.
With two outs in the inning, Rivera threw a straight fastball on the outside corner for a strike. The next pitch was his cutter thrown in on the lefty hitter, who pulled it foul for strike two. The third pitch was back on the outside corner and the hitter just looked at it for strike three. The all-time record was his and Rivera did what he always has done, he walked to his catcher, shook his hand then received congratulations from his teammates.
15 Preparation
For a closer, physical preparation is just as important as mental preparation.
Even though they have to be as mentally tough as they are, they also need to master their pitches. It is difficult for a closer to succeed without exceptional pitching ability.
If a closer stays healthy and maintains a high level of pitching ability, he makes his team that much better. If not, it is a detriment to that team, an incredibly difficult obstacle for a team to work around.
There are many ways a closer must prepare himself for the mental and physical toll he is about to endure. Physical preparation effects mental preparation and vice versa. Having confidence in his pitching ability gives a closer confidence on the mound, which often leads to better focus. When a pitcher is under-prepared, he will not be able to execute and lack of execution leads to a vicious cycle of lack of focus and confidence.
Murphy said that part of being really good at your respective sport is being really honest. A closer must look at his work and ask himself, “Was it enough?”
Honesty in the first place is one of the best ways for a closer to recover from choking.
If he is up front with himself about the amount of work he put in and feels he has done everything he can, then a choke looks more like an isolated incident instead of a long-term problem. Being honest about physical preparation also determines if it is a technical problem or a focus problem and that is where sports psychologists come in, to help with an athlete’s mental preparation.
16 Beilock has conducted numerous studies on athlete’s mental preparation and has found that golfers made more high-pressure putts while distracted than when they were left alone. Some methods of distraction included playing a series of words over the loudspeaker and every time the golfers heard a word, they had to repeat it. This was meant to draw the golfer’s attention from the putt itself and to the word, letting the golfer’s motor skills take over.
She also described similar study with basketball players taking free throws.
When the researchers played music for the players taking free throws, they were distracted from over-analyzing the thing they knew so well how to do and just did it.
Dr. Nicholas Gallucci, professor of Sports Psychology at WCSU, disagrees with this method of distraction.
“I think it’s a better strategy to think about what you want to do,” he said.
Murphy disagrees as well, comparing it to treating an injury. Murphy said if a pitcher has a tight arm, he would not distract himself with anything, he would treat his arm to get it loose. According to Murphy, imagery works well with pitchers.
Getting pitchers to associate success with certain cue phrases like “let it go” are effective.
What Gallucci and Murphy said confirms research done by psychologist Bill
Morgan. Morgan studied runners at the University of Wisconsin and he believed that his athletes should practice association rather than disassociation or distraction.
Morgan believed athletes should learn to focus on the right things instead of distract themselves entirely by paying attention to what they need to correct. Both Gallucci
17 and Murphy say that athletes should focus on the desired outcome and visualize their desired outcome.
Morgan referred to this as association vs. disassociation. Association meant the athlete focused on the right things (strategy focus) in high-pressure situations.
Disassociation meant the athlete would try to distract themselves during tense moments. Morgan found that his runners performed better when focusing on strategy instead of technique, than when they distracted themselves completely.
That is not to say that Beilock is wrong. Her research garnered positive results, as has Morgan’s. In fact, Murphy’s cue phrase strategy ties in with Beilock’s strategy of having golfers repeat cue words. These two strategies are very similar, but differ in one way: association vs. disassociation, both have been proven effective.
18 Team Chokes
Jonathon Papelbon could have sent the Red Sox to the playoffs, he could have stopped one of the worst team collapses in baseball history, but he did not.
Since becoming the Sox’s closer in 2006, Papelbon has been one of the best.
As a closer, he has not had less than 30 saves in a season. He has a career ERA of
2.33 and has just over a strikeout per inning pitched.
That is not to say Papelbon deserves all of the blame because his team simply could not win games in the month of September of 2011, finishing with a 5-17 record from Sept. 3 – Sept. 28. On Sept. 3, the team held a nine game lead in the American
League wild card over the Tampa Bay Rays. On the last day of the season, Sept. 28, the two teams were tied.
The Red Sox were experiencing a “team choke.” Murphy said that when a team chokes, it is anxiety-based. When a team starts to play poorly when they cannot afford to play poorly, feelings of anxiety can easily spread throughout the clubhouse.
“Everybody starts to press a little,” Murphy said. “The more you try, the worse it gets.”
In a video titled “Psychology of Loss” by Gordon Edes, Adjunct Professor of
Psychology at Mercy College, George Kemp said, “It’s hard to look at the decline of a unit, a body, and watch it fall and be a part of that and not identify yourself as a contributor to this fall [and say to yourself,] ‘There is something wrong with me as well.’”
19 Murphy said the idea of a team collectively choking under pressure better fits the anxiety-based definition. When a team is not playing well when they really have to be playing well, a player might start to harbor doubt. This kind of tension can and does spread to the other players in the rest of the clubhouse.
The ’04 Yankees
The 2004 New York Yankees fits the definition of a team choke as well as any team ever could. They held a three-games-to-none lead against the Boston Red
Sox in the ALCS, one win from advancing to the World Series. Instead, the Red Sox surmounted arguably the greatest comeback in the history of the sport by winning the next four games.
Alex Rodriguez said he was embarrassed and Mariano Rivera said what most people found obvious: the Yankees lacked pitching that year. The rest of the team simply do not like talking about it any further.
A “team choke” differs in definition from an individual choke, which tends to be more of a brain-process approach. When an individual athlete chokes, it is usually because he gets caught up in his own thoughts or his own self-doubt.
Sept. 28, 2011: “Game 162” Boston Red Sox vs. Baltimore Orioles
Nolan Reimold, a career .246 hitter, was up with a runner on second base.
Papelbon’s first pitch missed high and outside, the next pitch also missed high and outside, the third and fourth pitches were high and outside and in the strike zone, but
Reimold swung and missed both pitches.
20 There are two reasons a pitcher would throw four straight pitches to one area of the strike zone. The first would be because the hitter is exceptionally weak in that zone and the second would be because he is consistently missing his target, which might suggest a problem with pitching mechanics. Papelbon was likely attacking
Reimold in a zone where he believed Reimold was weak. Papelbon knew Reimold to be a hitter that feasts on pitches in the middle or inside part of the zone.
The fifth pitch was in the strike zone, it was not high and outside, it was right in the middle of the strike zone. Reimold did what any professional hitter does with a fastball down the middle, he hit it hard. Reimold doubled and the tying run scored.
Red Sox – 3, Orioles – 3
The next batter was Robert Andino, a career .245 hitter who had played his first season as a full-time starter. Papelbon’s first pitch to Andino was a slider that missed high, not even threatening the strike zone. The next pitch was a fastball down the middle for a strike; the count was one ball to one strike. The catcher’s target for the third pitch was set at the hitter’s knee level, a pitch that often results in a ground ball. The pitch that Papelbon threw ended up belt-high and Andino hit a line drive to left field. Carl Crawford slid to try to catch it but could not. He popped up and tried to throw Reimold out at the plate but was too late. The Orioles won and the Red Sox were headed home.
Former Red Sox manager Terry Francona is known for his honesty and his integrity as a baseball manager. In interviews he is transparent with reporters, always
21 answering truthfully, and after the game he confirmed what Murphy had to say about a “team choke.”
“There were some things that did concern me, as the season progresses, there are events that make you care about each other and this club didn’t always have them as much as I wanted them to,” Francona said.
Strategy vs. Technique
After the game, Papelbon said he felt great during his outing and by all appearances he looked great. However, Papelbon did something that a lot of athletes do when they choke. They talk about it afterwards.
One sign that an athlete is over-thinking a situation is when he can tell you what he did wrong, he micro-manage skills that are automatic. When an athlete performs well under pressure it is usually harder for him to verbalize what they did or what he was thinking because he does not know.
"It's the location. I was trying to go in, off the plate on the first double. And the second double I was trying to go down and away and the ball ran in,” Papelbon said in a Providence Journal article.
When a professional athlete is doing something he has been trained to do, something he has practiced extensively, he does not need to think about it and can become fully immersed in what he is doing. These two frames of mind can be categorized into two types of focus: strategy and technique.
22 Papelbon said he was trying to go down and away to Reimold (the second double), when ESPN’s virtual on-screen strike zone showed all five pitches to be elevated in the strike zone.
In her book “Choke,” Sian Beilock said, “in pistol shooting, a rifleman focuses on the target he is trying to hit rather than his trigger finger.”
There is no way to truly know what Papelbon was thinking on the mound unless someone was to strap him to a chair and wire him up to a lie-detector. But when looking at physical signs like kicking the dirt or taking extra time between pitches, it becomes apparent what a pitcher is thinking.
Dr. Nicholas Gallucci, professor of sports psychology at WCSU, believed
Papelbon might have been stuck in technique focus.
“Papelbon might have thought about how he learned to pitch and how to place a pitch instead of letting his mind go free,” said Gallucci.
Gallucci also connected technique focus to declarative knowledge, which is the type of knowledge that can be explained or put into steps and procedures. He said it is counterproductive for athletes to use declarative knowledge when competing.
Strategy focus is a deep level of concentration that requires focus, concentration and execution. Of course, for professional athletes, the execution is second nature, given their extensive history playing their sport.
When a pitcher does not consider the things he already knows how to do, like throwing a ball or locating a pitch, he does not worry if his delivery was smooth, or
23 his release was right. The pitcher thinks about what pitch he should throw and where it should end up.
The full immersion concept is also known as an out-of-body experience because afterwards it is hard for people to explain what they felt or were thinking.
This kind of experience is necessary to be a successful closer.
“There is no separation between what they’re doing and what they’re thinking
[in an out-of-body experience],” Gallucci said. “They’re not analyzing, they’re just doing it.”
24 Brain Processes
The Atlanta Braves’ closer Craig Kimbrel found himself in a situation very similar to that of Papelbon. On Sept. 5, 2011, the Braves had an eight-and-a-half game lead in the National League Wild Card race over the St. Louis Cardinals. The
Braves lost 20 of their last 30 games to end the season and found themselves trying to save their season on the last day, just like the Red Sox.
The Braves’ collapse did not garner much attention compared to the Red Sox.
The Braves were up four runs to three over the Philadelphia Phillies, a team, who like the Orioles, was not playing for anything. In the top of the ninth inning, in the
Braves’ home stadium Turner Field, Kimbrel had a chance to stop his team’s huge collapse and send them to the playoffs.
Kimbrel surrendered a single to the first hitter he faced, struck out the next and walked the next two after that. The bases were loaded and there was only one out.
Kimbrel was experiencing a tell-tale sign of a pitcher who cannot focus: loss of control. The next batter hit a sacrifice fly out and scored the runner from third, the game was now tied.
The Braves Manager took Kimbrel out of the game and the reliever ended the inning. Later, in the top of the 13th inning, Braves pitcher Scott Linebrink surrendered a run, giving the Phillies a one-run lead, but the Braves had the last at-bat. They could only muster one base-runner who was quickly erased on a season-ending double play.
After the game Kimbrel said, “Part of being a closer is being able to bottle up your emotions and harness them.”
25 Despite his inexperience, Kimbrel makes a very good point about what it takes to be a top closer. Emotions are a dangerous thing for closers, letting the wrong ones take over can lead to an outing much like the one Kimbrel experienced. But the second half of his statement is much more telling.
It is not enough to bottle up emotions; a closer has to be able to harness them.
A closer has an emotional job, there are a lot of emotions he must deal with. Anxiety and doubt are two of the most difficult to handle.
According to Murphy, what occurs in this over-controlling brain process is the use of conscious control. This means that people are consciously taking control of something that has been second nature. When Kimbrel started feeling anxious, he probably used his brain process to try to control his anxiety instead of thinking about what pitch to throw and where, or visualizing what outcome he wanted.
Heart Rate
Murphy was the first full-time sports psychologists for the U.S Olympic
Committee, he served with them from 1986-1994. During his time there, he and his team conducted research on the figure skaters.
Skaters wore heart-monitoring equipment while performing their routine.
Murphy found that 60 seconds before they began their performance, their heart rate would go up to about 200 beats-per-minute. Throughout their performance, they would maintain this abnormally high level.
26 “I would not doubt that the same thing is happening for a pitcher,” Murphy said. “Maybe not 200 beats-per-minute, but they’re experiencing a lot of physiological tension in a really close game.”
Uncontrollable and unpredictable
Another aspect of choking is when something happens that simply cannot be stopped. Some elements in baseball cannot be predicted or controlled by the players.
For example, many times a hitter will hit a fly ball 400 feet and the outfielder will catch it for an out. On the other hand, speedy hitters can bunt the ball four feet in front of home plate and make it safe to first base.
Linebrink was the pitcher on the mound when the Phillies’ Hunter Pence hit the single in the top of the 13th inning with runners on first and third that eventually won the game. Linebrink is not a highly-touted closer, he is not even a closer, but he ended up with the loss and allowing the winning run to score. However, the swing
Pence took on his RBI single is not the kind of swing he will ever try to do again.
The pitch would have been called a ball inside had Pence not swung. It jammed him as well as an inside pitch could have, but Pence got his bat on the ball.
Pence took such a max-effort swing, he fell to his knee after taking it. Off the bat, it looked like a weak flare, a pop-up to the infield. Pence got from his kneeled position and began to run hard, he saw the Braves’ second baseman Dan Uggla sprinting toward his pop-up.
The Braves’ first baseman, rookie Freddie Freeman, was positioned parallel to first base. The ball scooted right past Freeman on his right and continued toward
27 right. Uggla, sprinting all the way, finally got to the ball when it was in shallow right field. By the time he picked the ball up, Pence was safe at first and the runner had crossed the plate. It was a perfectly placed hit.
In “Choke,” Beilock told a story about U.S gymnast Alicia Sacramone in the
2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Sacramone was ready to start her routine on the beam during the all-around team finals and the U.S and China were both vying for the gold medal. Sacramone was held back twice by the judges before she could actually start he routine. She ended up falling on her initial jump onto the beam and had to start from the floor. This cost the U.S team insurmountable deductions and prevented them from winning the gold.
Uncontrollable and unexpected things happen many times in sports, especially baseball and especially for pitchers. There are countless instances where a hitter hits the ball three feet from the plate, but beats out the throw to first. There are also numerous times where a hitter will hit a fly ball 400 feet and it is caught by an outfielder for the out. In this case, Linebrink made a great pitch, but Pence hit a lucky jam shot into a spot where no defender could get to it fast enough.
28 The Postseason
Dennis Eckersley is one of baseball’s all-time greatest closers, but he spent the last 10 years of his 24-year career as one. For the first part of his career, he was a dominant starter, a power pitcher who racked up strikeouts, but also allowed his fair share of runs and walks. In the midst of his career that was being threatened by declining skill and focus due to alcoholism, Eckersley reinvented himself as a closer.
1988 was the first year he spent as a full-time closer. The Oakland Athletics
(commonly known as “the A’s”) were taking a chance on Eckersley who was fresh out of rehab. In ’88 Eckersley recorded 45 saves in 51 opportunities and surrendering just 11 walks with 70 strikeouts. He helped the A’s to make the playoffs that year and in the second round (ALCS), the A’s swept the Red Sox. Eckersley saved all four games and won the ALCS Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.
In game one of the World Series, facing the Los Angeles Dodgers, Eckersley surrendered one of the most famous home runs in the history of the postseason. With two outs in the ninth inning in the Dodgers’ home park, Eckersley walked Mike
Davis to bring the potential winning run to the plate: Kirk Gibson.
The count was three balls and two strikes, a full count, but before the pitch,
Gibson called time. The umpire granted Gibson a timeout and Gibson went over to the dugout to speak with the Dodgers’ scouts. The scouts told him that Eckersley has a strong tendency to throw a backdoor slider on full counts. Gibson was a left-handed hitter, so a backdoor slider would have looked like it would miss outside then dart inwards and catch the outer part of the strike zone at the last moment. Gibson stepped
29 back in the box ready for what was likely to be the dreaded Eckersley slider. Sure enough, Eckersley threw it and Gibson deposited the pitch into the right field bleachers for a walk-off home run giving the Dodgers a one-game-to-none lead in the series.
Although it was only the first game, the A’s did not come back and Dodgers won the ’88 World Series. Eckersley, however, did recover.
Game one of the ’88 World Series is one of the most famous, and most unlikely, instances of a closer choking to lose a game. However, Eckersley laid the ground work for how to recover from such a devastating loss. Choking has been known to ruin careers by destroying a closer’s confidence, but not Eckersley.
Eckersley was on the wrong side of an uncontrollable and unpredictable situation. When Gibson called time with the home plate umpire, Eckersley’s pitching rhythm was interrupted. Also, Gibson spoke with scouts who have been watching
Eckersley closely and knew what he wanted to throw in that situation. When
Eckersley threw the slider, and Eckersley’s slider is one of the best ever, Gibson was not expecting to see anything else. By all appearances, Eckersley was able to accept the fact that he was beat by a scout and hitter who capitalized on Eckersley’s tendencies. Then Eckersley moved on from that game and had a career-defining 10- year stretch as a closer.
He went on to record 390 career saves including a historic season in 1992 when he won the regular season MVP and Cy Young award (awarded to the league’s
30 best pitcher), an award seldom won by relievers. That year Eckersley recorded 51 saves, carried a 1.91 ERA and struck out 93 hitters along with just six walks.
Eckersley only had a limited amount of postseason experience, but in the postseason, he did not fare well compared to his dominant regular season stats. He had a 3.00 ERA in all his postseason games combined. In three different World
Series, he had an ERA of 5.79 and only recorded one save. Eckersley is not alone amongst dominant closers who do not fare well in postseason play.
31 What can be done
Hap Davis was the team psychologist for the Canadian national swim team and he had an idea to help prevent the swimmers from failing. His strategy was to make the swimmers watch a tape of their failed races.
Beilock described the system that Davis put in place in her book “Choke.”
First he would have the swimmer watch a tape of his failed race, then he would talk with Davis and would express feelings about the tape, verbalize what he could do better and imagine the same race with a better outcome. After the “intervention,” as it was called, the swimmer would watch the tape again.
“When the swimmers initially watched their own poor performance before the intervention, they showed more activity in in several emotional centers in the brain,”
Beilock wrote.
Most of the activity in their brain came from the prefrontal cortex, which is often at the center of most chokes. The prefrontal cortex controls the orchestration of actions and thoughts in accordance with internal goals. When a pitcher is exercising conscious control, he is using his prefrontal cortex heavily.
“When the swimmers watched their failed races again after the intervention, they had less emotion-related brain activity and more activity in important motor regions of the brain,” Beilock wrote.
This means that something occurs in the intervention phase that gets athletes to think differently about how they perceive failure. Dr. Gallucci had a similar method to help athletes recover from choking.
32 “I would have a frank discussion to see what is on his mind, what he thinks of himself, what goes through his mind and why he doesn’t perform well under pressure,” Gallucci said.
Murphy said that after a pitcher would choke, he would talk to the pitcher.
“Right after the game, I’d probably leave him alone,” Murphy said.
Next time they worked together, they would come up with strategies to help the pitcher relax in game situations. Strategies would also include getting pitchers to focus on the right things, like the catcher’s mitt.
“That’s all you need to think about, once you’ve chosen your pitch, you just need to relax and throw the pitch,” Murphy said. “From that point on, thinking too much is probably a detriment.”
In each instance, the solution is reached through a one-on-one discussion. In each instance, the athlete has to verbalize what he believes he did wrong and how he thinks he can medicate it. To do this, the athlete must use his prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that orchestrates actions and thoughts in accordance with internal goals. The part of the brain that is over-used when an athlete chokes is the same part of the brain an athlete must use to get over that choke.
The prefrontal cortex is the root of all problems when a closer chokes. It is also responsible for expressing people’s personality. The way Rodriguez pounds his chest, or when Papelbon dances his Irish jig, or the way Rivera stays calm and collected, are all functions of the prefrontal cortex.
33 There are many ways to medicate a choke and many have been proven to work. Perhaps no single one is better than the other, but choking is part of the game and always will be.
34 Works Cited
Murphy, Shane. Personal Interview. 15 March 2012 Gallucci, Nicholas. Personal Interview. 14 March 2012 Beilock, Sian. "Fixing the Cracks in Sports and Other Fields." Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have to. New York: Free, 2010. 207-32. Print. 1714sandstorm. "Baltimore Stuns Boston in the 9th - 2011 -." YouTube. YouTube, 28 Sept. 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2012.
35 "Psychology of Loss." ESPN. Ed. Gordon Edes. ESPN Internet Ventures. Web. 17 Apr. 2012.
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