Jonathan Papelbon, the Boston Red Sox closer, ended the season recently on a sour note. The regular season coming down to the wire and needing a win to stay alive in the Wild Card race, he was called on to close out the final inning. After striking out the first two Oriole hitters, he went on to allow two back to back doubles, and then a single. He blew it. Lost the game, and ended the season and playoff hopes for the Boston Red Sox.
I’m always curious as to how big time players deal with such pressure and failure at the Big League level. I did some searching on the internet and ran across this article that had some interesting thoughts on the mental process of Papelbon. If you haven’t the time to read it, let me give you a couple of the best quotes.
Papelbon was quoted, “I don’t think this is going to define me as a player. I don’t think this is going to define this ballclub this year,” he said. “I don’t know about anybody else in this clubhouse, but for me whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’ve always been one to always bounce back and not worry about myself or anybody else in this clubhouse bouncing back next year and going right after it again.”
And later in the article, _”I’ve got to let the offseason dictate that and whatever happens, happens. Like I said, this isn’t going to define me. You look at some of the greats, you look at Mo [Mariano Rivera] and he’s blown Game 7s and he comes back. I’ve always come back from outings that I have not done well and learned from them and it made me more of a competitor.
“As far as thinking about it all offseason? No, man. That ain’t me,” he said. “I’ve got to move on, man. You’ve got to learn from it, take it and accept it and keep going forward. For me to sit here and say this is going to beat me up or define my career, that’s not going to happen.”_
My point here is simple, Jonathan Papelbon wasn’t born with a higher capacity to deal with failure than any of us. It took work on his end, and the willingness to get back up and try again.
My encouragement this off season is spend the time working with your athlete on the importance of getting back up and trying again. Don’t spend too much time on yesterday, it can’t be fixed. So please, don’t forget to work your brain this season; it’s more important than you think in this great game.
Disk 4 in our DVD series is devoted to the mental game of baseball. You can have a look for yourself here. Finally, as a reminder, you’ve got a couple days left to pick up our Pitching Grips/Workouts DVD that is $10 off.
