This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

It’s like a plot for a Batman movie. The penguin is on the loose in Gotham city. And unless he’s paid an incredible sum of money, he’s going to inject stupid gas into the clubhouse of the New York Yankees. Making them helpless and forgetting entirely how to play baseball. It’s gotta be a gas! These aren’t the slugs of baseball. These are some of the best players in the game. Thunderstruck unable to catch a baseball and oh, god help us! He’s going to try to throw it. (hint) If you want to catch a souvenir baseball, sit in the eighth row behind first base.

Throws to second base, wind up in centerfield. Throws to first base, in the eighth row. And it’s all a part of the psychology of the game. A months-long human drama fought out day by day. Taking a toll on the team’s psychology. Twenty-five players plus coaches all striving collectively for one goal while under a microscope. When it goes well, everybody’s happy. But when it goes bad… Someone call a doctor. This is the time of the year when that dream starts to slip away for some teams.

These are fierce competitors who don’t like to lose. Coming to terms with “oh well, maybe next year” that must be sort of difficult. Teams begin to press and then someone makes a mistake. Then someone else makes a mistake until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The team psychology becomes “Don’t fuck up!”  Don’t throw it over the first baseman’s head, again. The other night it was nine walks and four errors in a regulation nine inning Yankee game. These are good players, but there is something wrong here. Check the water supply for lead. The old baseball adage goes, “Good pitching stops good hitting and vice versa.” Well, good catching and good throwing are important too.

Nine walks sounds like a pitching staff afraid to throw a strike. With don’t fuck up! Ringing in their ears. Don’t throw them anything good to hit. Because they are afraid, they won’t catch the ball if they do hit it. Or they’ll throw it away or make some bone head play. So, the pitching staff begins to press, trying to be extra careful not to make that mistake until you have nine walks. They know how to throw strikes, but they choose not to. Why?

Everyone on the team is in full clench, living in fear. “Oh god, don’t let it happen to us again tonight!” The Yankees weren’t a good fielding team to begin with. Individually and statistically, they are good players. But somehow when you put them together on the field, it just doesn’t work. It’s got to be the team psychology. A disturbance in the energy force somewhere. I can sense their anger. The Yankees won five straight and thought maybe the dark cloud was lifting. Then being swept and embarrassed by the Red Sox at home.

It manifests as the Charlie Brown syndrome. “No matter what I do. Someone will fuck it up.” The we can’t win syndrome; the gods are against us. Which further manifests into “Because of you, we can’t win!” When the Brewers came to Wrigley Field and swept the Cubs. You could see the air was let out the Cubs. They were humbled by the Brewers. Their season was over, and the Cubs now knew it. The Cubs played average, and the Brewers won fourteen in a row. You just can’t catch them like that.

The Brewers have the opposite psychology. “We’re just good and we know it!” The team of destiny and probability. Unless they’ve peaked too soon. I’ve seen that happen plenty of times! A team goes storming Norman through the schedule, only to be eliminated immediately in the playoffs. Playing baseball every day for months, then suddenly having three days off before the playoffs begin. Nothing cools a hot bat quite like time off. Autumn nights cool a baseball’s travel in the denser air. It would have been a homer in July, but it’s just a fly ball tonight. Arms are growing tired. Ernie Banks used a lighter bat after the all-star game. Getting progressively lighter trying to compensate for the tiredness.

Batting helmets being thrown down and more arguments with umpires about a called third strike. It’s that time of year! The pressure’s on! Time to start thinking about next year. Today’s stats are tomorrow’s income. It’s the time of year of rookie phenoms are called up from the minors who play the same position as you. A time for management to plan for the future. A time of the year when management plans new management. If a team manager can make it through September without that dreaded phone call to come upstairs and talk. They’ll probably be alright.

But promises were made that were not kept. A team of all stars struggles to stay average. How can you explain that? Twenty-five type A egos. The clubhouse is a happy place or a powder keg. You lost 1 to 0 and only had three hits all night. The Yankees never got a man to second base. The following night was a nine walk and four error extravaganza. And it has nothing to do with their physical skills, it’s about mental skills or the group psychology. The Bronx Exploders are an extreme case where it just becomes too obvious. The team is angry with management and with each other and the management is unhappy with the team.

It has nothing to do with hitting a fastball or catching a line drive. They are infested with the psychology of losing. The fear of fucking up or of striking out. The certain knowledge that someone somewhere along the way will let the team down. The problem isn’t in their bats, it’s in their belfries’.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
― Yogi Berra