The “Mental” Game

Baseball, more than most other sport, is impacted by the player’s internal mental landscape. Players make it to the majors because their confidence in their own abilities is unshakable and flourishes even in the most high pressure environments. But there are some teams where bad karma chews nails for breakfast, where the most confident players go in as winners and come out looking like a beaten Marlon Brando, sitting in the back seat of the car in “On the Waterfront, saying  “I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

Photoshop Mike Rizzo, Jayson Werth or Jim Riggleman into the Brando body and have them mutter the same lines about the Washington Nationals.  “We coulda been contenders instead of bums, which is what we are.”

Give all three men credit, each in his own way got out of the car and went looking for someone to punch, hoping to prove there was still competitive fire in the belly. It was uncharacteristic in a town where losing is such a way of life. Werth’s relatively mild comments about his team’s latest distress caused a furor that rippled outward from one corner of the local press.  “ Werth Rips Nats on the Sly ” was the headline across page one of the sports page given to a W ashington Post columnist.  Anxious to find distant signs of life still emanating from the slouching rank and file Nationals, I went to Werth’s comments .

Whoa baby, what an earful.  He actually said that? There it was in language anyone could understand.”Things need to change.” It practically jumped off the page. He–Werth–was letting it all go. Not content with mere ill-tempered remarks, Werth added, “It’s pretty obvious what is going on around here.” Sly devil indeed. Then he clobbered his team mates with “We are better than this.” The fires of Watergate still burn bright at the Washington Post .

Mike Rizzo took a more cerebral approach. Rizzo came up with a new analysis that showed restraint–though it drew a handsome fine. He merely called the overall umpiring scheme of baseball into question. Angry over an egregiously errant call at first base, Rizzo postulated that the umpires play a larger role in creating the winners and losers than anyone will admit, that they play a role like Brando’s brother Charlie who throws his own brother’s fight unaware of the complicated family psychology thus revealed.

Rizzo claims that the mental game encompasses the umpires and the favored treatment they give favored teams like the Phillies, the Yankees, and the Red Sox. They get all the breaks denied to bums like Brando: the close calls on the bases, the wider strike zone that extends for the favorite while the chumps get squeezed so their pitchers have to lay in a fat one that gets knocked into Palookaville, which is where teams like the Nationals have become comfortable residing.

Before Werth swung for the fences with his outrageous comments, Jason Marquis set the tone for the team. Marquis–normally a quiet sort of guy–beat up a water cooler with a bat. It does not make anger management counseling mandatory, but when the team goes on to win the game by a 17-5 margin the veteran pitcher’s ongoing rants and brooding demeanor were blamed for dispelling any good karma that might have come from the convincing win over the cross-town rivals in Baltimore.

What to do with all the head games being played in Washington? How do we cool down the angry veterans who once saw themselves as “contenders,” and even played for them. Creating silly drama out of nothing seems to be the answer for now.

But the Padres are in town for three games and they are throwing a starting rotation at the Nationals that is a combined 3-15. And that is not the only game in town.

There is good baseball in Hagerstown and Frederick, both easy driving time from the DC suburbs in Maryland. The low-A Hagerstown Suns have Bryce Harper, A.J. Cole and Robbie Ray and are leading the Sally League. Frederick and Potomac are the local high-A affiliates for Baltimore and Washington and their hard fought slugging contests have been a delight. In a great metropolitan area like this one, there is enough baseball for just about anyone, plenty for the depressed fan to wrap their “head” around.