It's Opening Day, which clearly ought to be a National Holiday
Also, some information on how winning or losing can become a habit...
Today is Opening Day and I still can’t believe it’s not a National Holiday.
We’ve still got Columbus Day, which as history has now revealed, ought to be called National Racist-Murderer Who Didn’t Actually Discover America Cuz People Were Already Living Here And It Was More Like the Bahamas Archipelago Anyway Day and since that won’t fit in one of those small squares on our calendars, drop Columbus Day and add Opening Day and we’re all set.
I’m looking at you, Joe Biden.
Anyway…
This morning I read a Kansas City Star article in which the Royals Opening Day starting pitcher Brad Keller said the team’s goal is to win the World Series. Which might sound like bullshit, but there’s a solid reason Brad said that and as Ricky Ricardo might say to Lucy: “I got some ‘splainin’ to do.”
The Royals have not had a winning record since 2015 and the last two times they played a full schedule, lost over 100 games. So how overly-optimistic is it for Brad to say the team’s expectation is to win the World Series?
As Brian Cohen would say of how much he hated the Romans: “A lot.”
(And if you didn’t get that joke you probably ought to stop reading right now and go watch Monty Python’s Life of Brian, easily the most informative and honest movie about religion ever made which explains why so many people wanted it banned.)
But…
It’s important to believe you could win the World Series and not just in some Oprah Winfrey The Secret kind of way and apparently I’m going to keep making cultural references throughout this piece which comes as a surprise to me as well.
Nevertheless…
Royals manager Mike Matheny talked about the importance of winning spring training games which might sound like more bullshit. After all, if a week from now your team is still winless, nobody’s going to care if you won the Cactus League and if a week from now your team hasn’t lost a game, nobody’s going to care if you finished last in the Grapefruit League.
The way spring training game records aren’t bullshit – and this was Matheny’s point – is winning (and losing) becomes a habit.
Some sports psychologist whose name I can’t remember once said losing teams believe the first bad thing that happens is the first of many bad things that will happen that day (the Here-We-Go-Again Mindset) and that defeatist attitude actually leads to more bad things happening. Meanwhile, winning teams believe that anything bad that happens is an aberration (the Don’t-Worry-We-Always-Find-A-Way-To-Win Mindset) and that attitude actually leads to good things happening.
I’ve played on both good and bad teams and can confirm that theory.
On bad teams if we walked the leadoff batter in the top of the first inning, we were mentally done; clearly, we were going to lose yet another game. On good teams we could be down by four in the bottom of the ninth and if someone on the other team made an error, someone would say, “Here we go” and we would.
After 2015’s World Series Championship season the Royals were in a game making a huge bottom of the ninth comeback and Eric Hosmer walked down the bench and for the benefit of the players who hadn’t been there in 2015, announced some version of “See? This Is What We Do” and they did. Hoz understood the mindset necessary and was trying to instill it in his new teammates.
Belief can have tangible results.
In the middle of the 2014 season the Royals brought in Raul Ibanez who was considered a “Been There, Done That Guy” the younger players would listen to because (as the title suggests) Raul had been there and done that. Raul gave everybody a boost of confidence when the Royals had a closed-door meeting and Raul informed the Royals that he had been on other teams that had to face the Royals and those teams were afraid to play them.
Ibanez got the team to believe it was just that good.
Getting an organization’s mindset turned around isn’t easy, which is why some veteran ballplayers and coaches hate the idea of “tanking” to get better draft picks. Spend five years sucking to get the players you want and when it’s time to flip the switch and start winning, the switch might not flip. You just spent five years instilling a losing attitude.
You want to believe you can win no matter how unlikely it might be.
I once asked a veteran reliever if he had to have a Black Knight Mindset (cut off his arm and he’ll tell you it’s just a scratch) and the reliever said absolutely and I think that just goes to show you attitude means a lot and there’s no such thing as too many Monty Python references in one article.
A tangentially-related story alert
One of the things I figured out about covering baseball is if you (or your editor) have already decided what the story is, you will focus on that story and tend to get nothing but that story and quotes related to the already-decided-upon subject.
I wasn’t smart enough to plan it this way – which describes about 75 percent of my career decisions – but when I went to the ballpark I had no preconceived idea of what I might write about. I’d observe what was happening and conduct random conversations until the story idea presented itself to me and that usually occurred because of something a player, coach or grounds crew member said to me.
Turned out there were great story ideas that I couldn’t ask about because I didn’t know they existed and here’s one of them.
Opening Day pitchers
I was talking about a so-so pitcher getting an Opening Day start and thinking it revealed a weakness in the team’s pitching staff, when a catcher (OK, it was my buddy Jason Kendall) pointed out the guy wasn’t getting the start because he had the best stuff; he was getting the start because he was a veteran and best-prepared for the mental test of being an Opening Day starter.
Hadn’t thought about it, but as Jason pointed out, the Number One pitcher on your team will match up against the Number One pitcher on the other team and those One vs. One matchups will continue until days off and rainouts throw the pitching rotation alignment off.
Bottom line: an Opening Day pitcher can pitch his ass off for a month and because he’s matched up with some pretty good pitchers on the other teams, still be 0 and 4.
Which might destroy a young pitcher’s confidence.
Ballplayers grow up hoping they’re good enough to be in the major leagues and even once they get there, aren’t entirely sure they’re good enough to stay in the major leagues. And if a pitcher lacks confidence he might be afraid to challenge hitters and he’ll keep trying to make perfect pitches and hit half-a-microbe on the outer edge of the plate and if he does that often enough he’ll fall behind in the count and then have to come over the middle of the plate with something he’s sure he can throw for a strike, like a fastball.
Which is just what the hitter expects when the pitcher is behind in the count, so he doesn’t miss that fastball.
Lack of confidence leads to something bad happening and then the pitcher loses even more confidence and pretty soon he’s being sent to West Horse’s Breath, Wyoming to pitch for the Double A Horse’s Breath Glue Buckets and we never hear from him again.
As Jason pointed out, the so-so veteran pitcher was used to getting his ass kicked and it wouldn’t shake him and he’d probably wind up with a .500 record and a 4.50 ERA no matter where you pitched him and it turned out Jason was pretty much on the nose with that prediction.
And that’s why you have random conversations with ballplayers; they’ll make you smarter about issues you didn’t even know existed.
OK, time to wrap this up because I got some baseball to watch. Have a Happy Opening Day and don’t forget to write your congressman or congresswoman or congressperson (your call) about the need for a new National Holiday.
Play ball.
(Although big league umpires don’t actually say that; they just say “Play” or “Here we go” or just point at the pitcher, but none of that ends an article as well as “Play ball” so why don’t we just stick with that?)
Play Ball.