I
have always been fascinated by people be it in sports or business and the route
they took to achieve career success. I admire the individual’s even more when I
find that they had to face a few roadblocks while out on their personal highway
or got lost along the way and needed directions to find their ultimate
destination.
Roy Halladay, a lock to enter
baseball’s Hall of Fame soon after his retirement, is one of those individuals.
Would you ever imagine that this man, a three-time 20-game winner and twice a Cy Young Award recipient as his sport’s
best pitcher, would have been removed from his Major League team and sent to
the lowest level of minor league ball to re-learn how to pitch?
By
the age of 22, Halladay was already pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays,
compiling a 9-7 career record at the time and was showing immense promise to
become a top-of-the-rotation hurler. Then came year three - the 2000 season - when
he was viewed as a complete flop? There were concerns for his 4-7 won-loss
record but the fact that he had set a new MLB record for worst ERA (10.64) in a
single season for a pitcher with 60 innings or more, set off the alarm buttons
in the Toronto front office. Their prize prospect could no longer find the
plate.
This
is the same pitcher, who when you go back 100 years or more through the Major
League Baseball record books, you find that Roy
Halladay is the only player besides the immortal Cy Young to ever strike out 200 batters in one season while having
fewer walks than starts! Yet he lost
complete control of his pitching mechanics? His confidence was obviously shattered.
The Blue Jays realized that they had to shut down their young star and reboot
his mindset altogether.
Even
Halladay’s wife, Brandy, was
concerned. During a shopping trip to a book store back during her husband’s
darkest season, she was looking for published material that dealt with
depression and self-esteem if that would help? Brandy, as luck has it now, also ran across a book that she bought
for her husband titled - “The Mental ABC's of Pitching” written by H.A. Dorfman.
The
Blue Jays’ baseball executives next called on one of their former pitching
instructors (Mel Queen) and gave him
the task of fixing Halladay. Queen wasted no time nor pleasantries when he
first met his new pupil. It was a “tough
love” exchange of words that seem to jolt Halladay before Queen set out to help
fine tune his pitching mechanics. What comes next is a portion of that riveting
conversation between the two as told to
Tom Verducci of Sports
Illustrated.Com.
"Now," Queen
told Halladay, "You can walk out of here if you want. You have a
guaranteed contract worth millions. You can walk right out of here, and you're
not going to pitch in the big leagues ever again. But if you want to pitch in
the big leagues again, you will do everything I tell you without
question."
"O.K.,"
Halladay said. "I'm ready."
"Good. Let's
start. How are you doing, Doc?"
"I'm good."
"What?! That's
why you're so stupid! You're in Dunedin (Florida at “A” Level Ball) with a 10
ERA, and you're telling me you're good? No! You're not good!"
Queen paused.
"O.K., now we're going to start."
While Queen tinkered
with Halladay’s mechanics (he would ultimately lower the pitcher’s release point when throwing from
the mound and speed up his delivery), the Blue Jays’ front office reached out
to (Harvey) Dorfman, who was a Mental Skills Coach for the Oakland A back in the late 1980’s, to also
work with Halladay. Both developments made
a significant difference as Halladay eventually worked his way back up to the
Big Leagues to complete a resume that will soon enshrine him in Cooperstown one
day!
Said Halladay when he
looks back on his time spent with Queen and Dorfman? “It made the biggest difference for me. The
first part was trying to rebuild that confidence in me, having a positive
mentality. The second part was to simplify things. Sometimes you get caught up
in the big picture—the seven innings, the three runs or less, who you're
facing—and you get away from what makes you successful, which is executing
pitches.”
"I think it says
a lot about his mental toughness," said Mike Arbuckle, who is with Halladay
now as the head of the Philadelphia Phillies’ draft day operations. "What
Roy did says a lot, to take not one step backward but multiple steps backward.
A lot of kids would have folded their tents."
Added Brandy Halladay:
"[Dorfman] really taught Roy to focus on one thing at a time. When he gave
up a hit, he learned to think about the next hitter. He helped him deal with
those mental stumbling blocks every person has to deal with. The book and
[Dorfman] helped his pitching career, our marriage, the way we looked at life
in general ... It absolutely saved his career."
As you can see, more than ever, focus as much attention onto your “mindset development” as you do with your workouts from the neck down. Your brain is the most sophisticated super computer in existence. Think of it as the hard drive and your body is the computer screen. You don’t want to continually save junk in the hard drive (or clutter up your mind with negative thoughts and distractions) as it will eventually slow down your computer’s ability (your body) to perform.
Translation: When your mind and body are on the same wave length, that is
when your true talents will be unleashed and allow you to perform at a much
higher level for a longer period of time!
All the best!
Jim Loria
E-Mail: jimloria0309@gmail.com
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PHILLIES PITCHER COLE HAMELS ON ROY HALLADAY AND HIS
LEGENDARY WORKOUTS:
"If
you don't want to be like him, you just don't want to be successful. The guy is
constantly going. I think I can hold my own running with him. But he's so
focused and determined. He made a workout feel like a workout. You see guys
work out and take breaks and talk and socialize. That's not working out. He
made me grasp that even more. Don't take that break. Keep going. Keep going.
Because that's what it takes. I saw it, I just didn't understand it. And once
you follow him, you feel really great in the end, because you're worn out and
tired as hell."
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“People
of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out
and happened to things” – stated by Elinor
Smith, the world’s youngest licensed airline pilot in 1927 at age 16
--------------------------------------------------------------
“To be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to
win & expect to win” – stated by Zig
Ziglar, Self-Help Author and Motivational Speaker
--------------------------------------------------------------
“History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually
encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because
they refused to become discouraged by their defeats” – stated by Bertie Charles Forbes, founder of Forbes
Magazine
--------------------------------------------------------------
“What The Mind can conceive, the Mind can achieve” – stated by Bo Schembechler, legendary college
football coach at the University of Michigan
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