GAME DAY
I’m a totally different person on the mound than I am on the street.
—NOLAN RYAN
I won’t even call a friend the day of a match. I’m scared of disrupting my concentration.
—CHRIS EVERT
Five hours before game time on a bright, late-spring afternoon, a solitary figure sat alone in the stands behind first base in Anaheim Stadium. Walking toward him, crossing the manicured grass in right field, I thought how strangely quiet and wonderfully peaceful it seemed, so different from the last time I was in the stadium, when the Arizona Cardinals played the then Los Angeles Rams. That memorable Sunday afternoon the raw roar of the crowd filled the arena. Standing on the sideline, I could hear the grunts, the violent slap of pads, and the voice of Cardinals special teamer Ron Wolfley, black paint smeared under each eye, as he came off the field, half-crazed: “Forget the refs!” Wolfley screamed. “It’s jungle rules out there!”
Now, several months later, I crossed the ball field and climbed the stadium steps. The man wearing his uniform pants and a T-shirt motioned for me to sit down and join him.
Jim Lefebvre, manager of the Seattle Mariners, sat in silence, taking it all in—the warming sunshine, the perfect geometry of the diamond, the peacefulness. “Mack, listen how quiet it is,” Lefebvre said. “It’s like a church. A temple.”
Sitting there I thought of Annie Savoy’s soliloquy from the movie Bull Durham. “I believe in the Church of Baseball,” Annie said. “I’ve tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones—I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things … For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary. And there are 108 stitches in a baseball … I’ve tried them all and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in and day out, is the Church of Baseball.”
Lefebvre gazed at the field. The sweep of empty stands. “This place has got a rhythm to it. It’s like a heart beating. Buh-bump.” As the manager imitated the sound of a single heartbeat, he closed and opened his right hand. “In forty-five minutes our guys will come out for batting practice. Then the vendors will start showing up. Buh-bump. Buh-bump. And the fans will start to arrive, and the other team will come in, and you can see them over there in the dugout. Buh-bump-buh-bump-buh-BUMP”. Jimmy’s hand opened and closed, opened and closed, faster now. “Then the lights go on and the umpires step onto the field and they play the national anthem.” And in his mind’s eye, Lefebvre could see it, and feel it, as surely as he could feel his own pulse, the baseball game, a living, breathing thing.
Sports is not life and death, but it has been called war without fatalities. On game day the heart quickens, and competitive athletes put on their “game faces.” I have seen it in all sports. With some athletes it’s almost a Jekyll—Hyde transformation. Mild-mannered soccer star Mia Hamm described her game-day mind-set as a “warrior mentality.”
Hank Aaron said the most important thing is how a person prepares to do battle. Everyone gets ready differently. Bo Jackson, the greatest specimen of an athlete I’ve ever seen, is a soft-spoken fellow. I worked out with him in Phoenix when he was rehabilitating his hip, which he injured playing in the NFL. Jackson described his alter ego as Jason, the indestructible evil force in the Friday the 13th movies. “I refuse to let him out of his box,” Jackson said. “Except on Sundays in the fall. I let him out on Sundays when I strap my helmet on and go out and play football.”
Alex Karras, the former Detroit Lions star, assumed a bigger-than-life identity on game day. He became Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack. “I wake up in the hotel room in the morning,” Karras said, “and I say to myself, ‘Paul, we’re going to have ourselves a game this afternoon. We are going to remove the stuffings from people.’ I can feel myself inflate.”
Larry Wilson, former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals, is a quiet, soft-spoken man. Looking at him, one never would guess that he was one of the hardest hitters in the history of professional football. A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Larry invented the safety blitz. I asked him one day about the fierceness with which he played on Sundays. “On game day I thought about being on a ranch again, punching cattle,” Wilson told me. “If anybody came into the pasture where my cattle were, they were rustling. They were going to get punished. And they wouldn’t want to come back again.”
In the NFL, players review films on Monday, Tuesday is a day off, on Wednesday the coaches put in the game plan, and by Friday players mentally begin funneling down. They start eliminating the world around them and focusing on Sunday’s approaching kickoff. Some check into a hotel two days before the game. They get so keyed up they don’t want to be around their wife and kids.
On game day many professional athletes put on dark glasses and headphones and listen to music to help insulate them from the outside world. Music helps energize or calm them down. The music is as varied as the personalities on a team: jazz, gospel, rock, or rap. Long before viewers turn on their TVs to watch an NFL game, the warriors are mentally and emotionally girding themselves for battle. Many go into the stadium early and stroll up and down the field, a practice known as “grazing.”
Some find strength and comfort in worship. When the Phoenix Suns played the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals, Charles Barkley walked into the Suns clubhouse and found it empty. He knew his teammates were holding a pregame prayer service in another room. Barkley picked up a felt-tipped marker and wrote his game-day theology on the message board: “God helps those who help themselves.”
Great athletes strive for balance in their lives. On game day they find the warrior within. They know when and how to turn it on, and when the game is over they know how to turn it off.
When the lights go on, it’s showtime. Be prepared mind, body, and spirit to do battle with everything you have, so when the contest is over you can leave the game behind with no regrets.