Art and the Psychology of Baseball (or Vice Versa)

Abstract

Art and the Psychology of Baseball (or Vice Versa) Jerald (Jay) Thomas (bio) In the summers of 1982 and 1983, after my junior and senior years in high school, I found myself in the most enviable position (for a high school baseball player, anyway). I was working as a clubhouse attendant and batboy (in other words I picked up bats and washed lots of uniforms) for the visiting teams at Wrigley Field. I was a bright kid, a decent athlete, and a good student. But spending ten hours a day among twenty-five elite athletes reminded me of just how remarkable top-tier professional athletes are and how it takes more than natural athletic ability to become a top- tier athlete. I came to understand the importance of the mental game as well. High doses of tenacity, resilience, creativity, and a hint of arrogance are needed to take skills to the level of professional sports. Not quite a decade after my “major league career,” I finished graduate school and landed a job as a high school counselor for students gifted in mathematics and science. And I also coached my first of fifteen years of baseball. One of my first observations in this elite environment was that the students were, of course, not just bright but also artistic, athletic, social, creative, and very committed to their endeavors. The genesis of this article is a baseball player from my first year as a coach. We fielded a decent team, but this particular player, John, brought exceptional talent and contagious energy that led us through three seasons of fifteen- plus wins. After his senior season, John was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates as a catcher, but he wanted more than one road to success. With the savvy of a major league agent, John negotiated a contract that would allow him to attend Harvard University in the fall semester and to play minor league baseball in the spring and summer. He grew tired of bus trips and twenty- dollar per diems, so he enrolled at Yale Law School, which led him to a career as a distinguished litigator. The last time we got together was a few years ago at a Milwaukee Brewers game. I was there with my dad, a professional tennis player [End Page 49] and coach, and John and my dad spent several innings sharing the secret handshake that amateur athletes can only appreciate. The inborn talent of professional athletes can be developed but not taught. I have long wondered about how elite athletes approach other highly specialized pursuits, about what makes them so successful. I have also puzzled over whether the way athletes develop their skills parallels in other, unrelated fields. Baseball players tend to excel in other sports, and Major League Baseball players very often were stars in several high school sports before committing to baseball. But what about their talent development in altogether different domains, like music, art, literature, acting, or television announcing? Does the training and preparation necessary for success in baseball follow the same paths as that of musicians, for example? Do they derive the same satisfaction and accomplishment in composing a song as when they hit for the cycle or strike out the side? For this article, instead of writing about players from different fields, I chose to interview players who are visual artists, anticipating that I would find some common threads in their artistic vision and experiences. Bob Tewks-bury, Gene Locklear, and Blake McFarland, during and after baseball, all turned to art as a vocation or avocation. In each interview, these ballplayers and artists reflected on how their skills and routines as athletes translated into their experiences as artists. What emerged from the three very different conversations was that these players learned their artistic styles and skills in the same ways they “learned” baseball. The motivation for both art and sport runs equally deep. bob tewksbury— art as a healthy distraction Bob Tewksbury, by many measures, might be a Renaissance man in the world of professional baseball— gifted athlete, artist, writer, and distinguished Certified Mental Performance Coach—yet behind his range of talents is a deep sense of self- discipline and self- reflection...