AJ, this is a rebuttal to your rebuttal to my reb…, oh, you know what I mean.
I recall Charles Einstein in his book “Willie’s Time,” about the New York/SanFrancisco Giants’ centerfielder who was arguably the greatest player in the history of the game, writing that as Mays kneeled in the on-deck circle with Bobby Thompson at bat in the third playoff game for the 1951 pennant, he was praying he wouldn’t have to bat in that pressure-packed situation. So I do believe that players — “humans,” as you call them — experience fear and nerves and all the rest of those emotions and reactions that “clutch” situations may arouse.
Are there “clutch” players? My answer is yes. All Major Leaguers are clutch players. They’ve been tested since they were nine years old in every single type of pressure situation. Those who succumbed to fear and nerves have long since been winnowed out of the talent pool by the time their peers reach the bigs.
In fact, I’ll suggest that the single most pressure-packed moment in a Major League player’s career is his very first at bat in his first spring training game. Yup. Nothing he’ll ever encounter in the game will present such a challenge for him. Think of it! He’s got to be thinking that this may be the only time his manager, coaches and general manager may allow him to show his prowess with the bat against the real pros.
Let’s project the kid’s future modestly: he may last six years in the bigs. The major league minimum salary in 2010 will be $400,000 per year. He gets a token raise in his second year to $450,000. He stays the same for his third year during which he emerges as a useful platoon player. He gets $750,000 for his fourth year. He tears up his knee sliding into second in July, has surgery, rehabs, and comes into his fifth spring training at $750,000. The injury causes him to alter his swing, he has a miserable slump, and goes into his final year arbitration eligibility at $800,000. he doesn’t do terribly much better in year six and finds himself in the minors, his Major League career finished.
So, he has made $3.6M in his career. The average male today earns about $55,000 annually in the United States. Were our ballplayer not a ballplayer, he’d have to work 65 and a half years to make what he made in the Majors in six years. Considering that pro ballplayers are not necessarily known for their acumen in academic and business matters, he’ll likely to earn less than the average.
In other words, AJ, that first at bat may mean the difference between a life of hard work at low pay or a secure future of leisure.
Obviously, anyone who has achieved the opportunity to bat in a spring training game has grown up with a self-assurance he’ll be a star. So lets assume that as he steps into the batters box, he feels he has the talent to last 17 years in the majors, meaning he’d probably be looking to earn upwards of $85-100M over the length of his career. He and his posterity would have to work until the middle of the 37th Century to earn that haul.
So forget the tie game in the ninth inning, the playoffs, the World Series or any other so-called clutch situation. As a “human” — your word — the ballplayer never, ever, ever faces a more pressure packed situation than that first at bat. He knows it, too.
By the time two team meet in the World Series, the ball field, the thousands of fans roaring around him, the dozen of TV cameras recording his every twitch and the man on the mound throwing a 94-mph fastball all are nothing more to our player than his normal workaday environment. He is as at home and at ease as we are when we sit at our desks and turn our computers on.
I suspect the notion of “clutch” with all its attendant nerves and terrors comes from us — the guys who haven’t held a bat in their hands since the Reagan administration. We imagine ourselves in JD Drew’s place in the bottom of the ninth of a playoff game and we think, Man, I’d be scared shitless.
We would. JD Drew isn’t
