An open letter to Employee #16: Dear Josh, I want you to succeed here and lead us to The Promised Land as much if not more than any fan, but Im afraid the evidence indicates that this MLB thing just is not going to work out for you -- in Oakland, Boston, with the Seibu Lions or even in the pickup Little League Game in DeFremery Park in West Oakland -- unless you transform your mental approach to the game of baseball from the ground up. First thing is you have to come to a rational realization about what the task is at hand and what your poor and reactive attitude is gaining you on the field: wholly nothing. Your body language at the plate (and body language is 70-90% of human communication) illustrates a level of discomfort and frustration that opposing pitchers literally salivate at when they see you moping into the box for yet another humiliation session. You must GROW UP and look around you and decide that this is NOT an opportunity that you are willing to let slip through your fingers at the hand of your own self-limiting reactions. Fact: this is the HIGHEST level of this sport currently played on the face of the Earth. The guys heaving the baseball at you from sixty-plus feet away every night are the toppermost possible competition in the world... even the lowliest of MLB pitchers will get the other guy out 7 of 10 times on a consistent basis. This, as you know, is a game defined by the choices players make in the moment as per their disposition to Failure... and Failure is the only way humans learn anything. You will either respond appropriately and formulate a discipline at the plate (see: Jed Lowrie) where you are able or become able eventually to LEAVE THE NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF A PREVIOUS AB in the past where they belong, or you will founder in a spectacular and distressing fashion at the worst possible moments on the field, to the dismay and mounting anger and frustration of yourself, your teammates, your coaches, the fans, the vendors, the parking attendants and the Team Store clerks. And Banjo Man, but who cares what that two-faced Giants fan thinks? :D Its the most important choice you make as a player moment to moment and game to game: do I REACT in an obviously frustrated fashion and slam the helmet down in a fury after every failure, or do I introduce my cards to my chest a bit more and decide to RESPOND by challenging myself to improve my approach between my ears and make an effort to fine-tune my mental state and disposition to an at-bat each and every trip to the box, as if all the other ABs dont really exist except as building blocks from which to glean POSITIVE indicators and ideas about what must be done to break through to real and lasting success? Our lives in every meaningful aspect as human beings -- whether we are ballplayers, line cooks or proofreaders -- are defined the most by the choices we make in situations between reaction and response, and when I see you on the field these last 1.5 years, I see someone who is really struggling to stay positive and motivated to bring their best, least self-defeating self out to do business between those white lines every day. You need to grow up and learn that it isnt the quantity of the challenges we face, but the QUALITY of our responses to those challenges, that makes us what we truly are as people and circumscribes our possibilities in terms of what we can accomplish. And thats just the tip of the iceberg your personal Titanic is running aground against. Honestly? My job is to speak the hardest and most undeniable truths in the most impactful and articulate way to power and to let you know that your act, as it currently stands, is not getting it done and is most assuredly and observably NOT appropriate for a Major League Baseball player in several fundamental and unavoidable ways. To wit: youre not a professional wrestler.... professional wrestling is a phony, irrelevant spectacle and a simplistic hero vs. heel construct designed for entertainment purposes only. Toting around a championship wrestling belt when you are staring down at ten fingers with no rings is NOT the appropriate way to carry yourself as a guy trying to make his bona fides and stick at an elite level in this game. You are a professional baseball player at the toughest and most elite level of one of the worlds most popular and revered sports. You are NOT in the WWE and although its cool to have fun and let your hair down with the wrestling stuff, once you come to the yard that mess has got to stay on the outside of the Coliseum so you can get down to the brass tacks of playing and succeeding at the game of baseball, with all the laser-beam focus and red-ass inability to take no for an answer that such a Herculean task requires. All extracurricular elements must be left at the door, or they are absolutely guaranteed to become distractions and will inevitably begin to develop into resentments -- among fans, teammates, whoever -- towards the behavior being displayed. Its the same with the postgame pie antics and the costumes and whatnot. Now dont get me wrong: we all LOVE LOVE LOVE the walkoffs and the mayhem you initiate after a particularly thrilling team win... pie is easily our favorite and most anticipated dessert. But when its always you doing the honors, it becomes easy for people to open the door to the perception that you are too concerned with the mayhem part and not concerned or mindful enough during the three hours that lead up to the pie-ings.... the three hours called The Baseball Game. The more elaborate the goofiness becomes, the more you open yourself to the perception that your game needs to reach similar levels of elaboration. Again, its subtle but so are so very many things about this game, and its the nuances like those of which I speak that determine what Devils lurk in what Details. To sum it all up (and I do apologize for the length of this screed) I look at you on the field and I see someone who is the living embodiment of the Own Worst Enemy archetype. Please make up your mind that as hard as it may be, it is time to change your approach and attitude and come to an implicit understanding that these pitchers are the MFer dudes of the Universe and if you go up there fighting yourself and tripping like you know you do off of what happened in the previous at bat 23 minutes ago, you have LESS THAN NO CHANCE to succeed. You simply cannot swing the bat properly when both hands are metaphorically weighted down with the psychological baggage of the immediate, or even the distant, past. Not against these guys. And to be honest this is a game... you are forgetting the fun of playing a childs game, and sometimes when I see you react to failure it almost seems like theres literally ANYWHERE youd rather be than on that field. Thats a ticket to total collapse and despondency, and we both know you deserve way better from baseball and from life than the perpetual despair I see you manifesting in-game on all-too-frequent occasion. My advice: get back to where you once belonged. To the inner Field of Dreams that formed the basis of your love for this game since you can remember all the way back to age Single Digits. Make the conscious decision that you REFUSE to allow the contents of previous failures at the plate to define your ideation towards what can be possible in the context of the current one.... in the moment of NOW that is about to happen. Because the NOW is where everything happens... its the only moment in time at any given time that we know we truly have. And if you refrain from the attempt to live in a past you cannot recreate and in a future you cannot imagine, the NOW in all its eternal possibility and novelty will open up to you. All of us WANT you to succeed here and help this franchise -- easily one of the sports most cherished and historically successful -- get further down the path to winning the whole thing and everything (new stadium especially) such a glorious result in October would bring all of us, from the players on the field to the fans in the stands. I want to believe you can make this alteration and turn the corner towards a productive and potential-fulfilling career in the MLB. Its up to you to take the bait and get it straight. Signed in Green and Gold colored blood, Josh Chase aka Emperor Nobody
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 02:13:57 +0000
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