SERVANT OR MASTER
Learn to control your emotions or they will control you.
—EDGAR MARTINEZ
A ballplayer who loses his head and can’t keep his cool is worse than no player at all.
—LOU GEHRIG
The Philadelphia Phillies had just blown a game I against the Houston Astros, surrendering the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. When the manager stormed into the losing team’s clubhouse and found his players enjoying a postgame buffet his eyes widened. He felt his blood pressure rise. Suddenly, with a wide sweep of his arm, the skipper cleared the table, sending drumsticks, potato salad, and a tray of assorted fruit flying.
“Boy,” a rookie whispered, as the room, splattered with barbecue sauce, fell deathly silent. “The food sure goes fast around here.”
Sports arouses emotions and passions like no other endeavor. We see that fervor in highly competitive athletes like Jimmy Connors, who said, “I thrive on emotions. The emotional energy allows me to raise my level of play.” We also see it in those who follow sports as spectators. The achievements of one athlete can energize and inspire an entire nation.
Se Ri Pak left her homeland as a virtual unknown. When the young golfer returned to Seoul after winning four LPGA tournaments during her rookie year, thousands greeted her at the airport. The Korean people took her into their hearts. Pak had become a national symbol of triumph over adversity.
Our attitudes, belief systems, and thoughts create our reality. They also create our emotions. Joy is one; pride another. Two other basic emotions are anger and fear. Anyone who has participated in athletics probably has experienced all four.
In “Getting Over Yourself” we mentioned an evolutionary primitive mechanism called the fight-or-flight response. When we feel threatened or stressed, our heart beats faster, our breathing quickens, and our hands may sweat. It’s like gulping an adrenaline cocktail. We respond with the urge to flee or fight back. The latter often leads to anger.
Cus D’Amato, who trained Mike Tyson, said emotions, particularly anger, are like fire. They can cook your food and keep you warm, or they can burn your house down. Many great athletes use anger in a positive way. Anger motivates them. Anger steels their resolve. It is much better to become angry than to become afraid.
Last season Randy Johnson was at the plate facing Sterling Hitchcock, who had just given up back-to-back home runs. The San Diego pitcher struck Johnson on the left elbow with a pitch. Johnson flashed with anger. He could have initiated a fight, and risked ejection, but he didn’t. Channeling his anger, the Arizona pitcher known as the Big Unit went back to the mound, struck out eleven batters, pitched a complete game, and extended his season record to 7—0.
Albert Belle uses his anger to crush baseballs over the fence. Pete Rose warned, “When you mess with my pride you’re going to get into trouble.” Michael Jordan is another prideful man. When challenged on the basketball court he exhibited what golfer Sam Snead called a “cool mad.” In the playoffs, Jordan was always the smiling assassin.
Sports can be frustrating. It is easy to respond out of anger without thought or control. When he was twelve years old, Bjorn Borg couldn’t control his temper. “I was throwing my racquet all over the place … hitting balls over the fence—everything,” the former tennis great recalled. “My parents were ashamed and finally refused to come to a single match.”
Arthur Ashe threw his racquet for the first time when he was ten. Ronald Charity, the man who introduced the boy to tennis, took him to Dr. Robert W. Johnson, a black physician and tennis enthusiast, in Lynchburg, Virginia. The training sessions were long and demanding. In the segregated south during the 1950s, Dr. Johnson knew that tournament directors would kick black kids out of their tournaments if they could find any reason. The Arthur Ashe I played against as a teenager was under control, seemingly imperturbable.
As a youngster, Bobby Jones was beating everyone at the local golf club, but he had a hot temper. He earned the nickname “Club Thrower.” Jones became friends with an elderly man everyone knew as Grandpa Bart, who worked part-time in the pro shop. At age fourteen, Jones played in the National Amateur but came home a loser. “Bobby, you’re good enough to win that tournament,” Grandpa Bart told him. “But you’ll never win until you can control that temper of yours.”
Jones knew the old man was right, but it was seven years later before he won a tournament. “Bobby was fourteen years old when he mastered the game of golf,” Grandpa Bart said. “But he was twenty-one before he mastered himself.”
When you let anger get the best of you, it usually brings out the worst in you. Basketball player Latrell Sprewell choked his coach. Roberto Alomar spit at an umpire and became one of the most reviled players in baseball. After Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear, he was ordered to undergo a psychological examination. Uncontrolled anger has led to riots and even death in the sports arena.
A few years ago I was asked to write a sports psychology manual for the Seattle Mariners. I interviewed some of the team’s top players. One of them was Edgar Martinez. His manager, Lou Piniella, loves the guy. “Edgar is so professional,” Piniella said. “Nothing fazes him. He’s as cool as a cucumber at the plate.”
During my interview, I asked Martinez what was the biggest jump for him, personally, going from the minor leagues to the majors. His answer surprised me.
“I worked a lot on my emotions,” Martinez said. “I don’t have a real bad temper, but I can remember some things I’ve done in the past, like hit the wall or hit the helmet box. But I learned from experienced players that that’s not the way you do it. Don’t let your teammates or the other team know that you’re down or struggling. It’s going to hurt your teammates because they’re not going to trust you. If you’re going to get upset, don’t do it on the field. Go into the bathroom, or someplace where you are alone and just let it go. I think that’s the best advice I’ve been given.”
Borg soon learned: “A player who cannot control his temper on the court will never become a great player.” Jack Nicklaus asks a good question: “How many shots would you have saved if you never lost your temper, never got down on yourself, always developed a strategy before you hit, and always played within your capabilities?”
The best athletes are masters of their emotions and not servants to them. A batter who is controlled by anger and frustration isn’t likely to be successful in his next time at the plate. He presses. He feels like he’s trying to hit a three-run home run with no one on base.
Pitcher Jim Palmer said whenever he became angry he sat down and tried to analyze what he did wrong and correct it the next time. The legendary Satchel Paige, who pitched in a major league game at the age of fifty-nine, said, “If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cooling thoughts.”
Simple words. Wise advice.
Buy the solution, not the emotion. When you let anger get the best of you, it brings out the worst in you. The key question is who is in control—you or your emotions? Remember, before you can control your performance you need to be in control of yourself.