The Furthest Thing from Sports Psychology – Interview with Dr. Richard Crowley
Part One - Introduction
By Brian Walton (thestlcardinals.com, creativesports.com)
As seemingly the entire Cardinal Nation is already aware, on August 2, prodigal son Rick Ankiel returned to a mound for his first competitive action since Tommy John (elbow ligament transplant) surgery last July.
I have tried, really tried, to help reel in the rampant enthusiasm over Ankiel’s return. However, the buzz is so strong, fueled even by us, with a special email alert by our own website, reminding you that Ankiel’s every pitch in Single-A ball can be monitored over the internet. So, here I am with my own take on the Ankiel situation.
First, the facts. Ankiel has begun a medical rehabilitation assignment, of which a maximum of 30 days duration is allowed by MLB. His return was timed such that when he must be added to the active major league roster, it will be on September 1. At that time, teams can add players over and above the regular 25-man limit, but of course are not obligated to play them.
For Ankiel to be reassigned to the minors would require him to pass through waivers. The Cardinals will not risk that, as Ankiel would likely be claimed by another team. At the end of Spring Training next season, if Ankiel is not ready to be on the 25-man, the team will be faced with such a dilemma with no easy way out. But, this article isn’t about the future. It is about now.
In an earlier failed attempt to keep the Ankiel situation in perspective, I recently asked Cardinals Assistant General Manager John Mozeliak about him. Mo made it clear that the Cardinals are working carefully toward getting Ankiel ready to compete in 2005.
Still, there are so many who are hoping beyond hope that Ankiel will slay his personal demons, conquer his injuries and again excel in the major league spotlight. These folks remember the young man who broke Dizzy Dean’s Cardinals rookie record, with 194 strikeouts in 2000. They focus on his last three outings of 2003, just before his injury, rather than the 17 ineffective ones before that.
Others doubt Ankiel will ever make it back, recalling that Ankiel’s only effective pitching stint in the majors was four years ago, also back in 2000, the same year he melted down in the playoffs. They cite parallels with former fielders such as Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch, catcher Mackey Sasser and pitcher Mark Wohlers. And, let’s not forget the man who carries the common name of the uncontrollable wildness malady that afflicted all the above, Steve Blass, he of the dreaded “Steve Blass Disease”.
Well, as it turns out, there is hope. Mr. Blass is
cured. He met a mental health professional named Richard Crowley, who
started working with athletes back in 1983 with the aforementioned Sax.
Sax was struggling as he had lost his ability to make routine throws to first
base and after consultation with Dr. Crowley, Sax’ throwing problems to first
base became a thing of the past for the rest of his career.
In recent years, more and more teams and athletes have turned to psychologists to solve problems that go beyond the physical. But some baseball old-timers cannot or will not understand. In 1999, here is what then-Cincinnati Reds Manager Jack McKeon had to say about Wohlers: "Every guy in the country is now coming out of the woodwork saying 'I can fix him’. My belief is the only guy who can fix him is the guy who's out there pitching."
In wanting to delve further into the Ankiel situation, rather than
find someone who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I went straight to
the expert, Dr. Crowley. However, since Ankiel works
with psychologist Harvey Dorfman, whom Ankiel’s agent Scott Boras employs to
help all his clients,
Dr. Crowley and I spent 45 minutes on the phone just after Rick
Ankiel completed his first rehab assignment early Monday evening.
For the record, Dr. Richard Crowley has worked in the field of
human behavior for over thirty years. He holds a B.A. in psychology from St.
Bonaventure University in
An assist in making the match with Dr. Crowley goes to baseball historian and Birdhouse friend John Shiffert. Shiffert has devoted an entire chapter of his book, “Baseball… Then and Now”, to the history of Steve Blass Disease. Having previewed it, it comes highly recommended by me. There is a healthy dose of Ankiel sprinkled in, too.
I know this has been one of the longest introductions in the
history of mankind. Come back tomorrow for Part Two and the start of the
actual interview. By the way, the title of this article comes straight
from
August 3, 2004
The Furthest Thing from Sports Psychology – Interview with Dr. Richard Crowley
Part Two
By Brian Walton
Let’s get into the discussion right away. Those who are wondering what this is all about, see yesterday’s introduction to this interview further down this page.
How can physical ailments affect an athlete’s mental outlook?
I work with a lot of them, like those coming back after an accident, injury or a surgery. Somehow they have something operating against them that they are not even conscious about. They’re not throwing it as hard. Maybe there’s fear at some level, be it conscious or unconscious, that if they throw too hard the elbow’s going to go out again or something.
I can see that. I would think that would be a common concern, isn’t it?
Yes, but if you ask them, they would say, “No, my arm is fine.” But you notice during the game, they’re not throwing it as hard; their velocity is down and something has changed. I had some young kid who got a hold of me a few weeks ago and his velocity after he had a car accident was down from the 90’s to the 80’s. He thought, “That’s weird. It never came back again.” Something strange happened after the car accident.
So, his arm wasn’t injured or at least it wasn’t obvious that he was injured. But, all of the sudden, he could no longer throw hard?
Right. Something just kind of got in him.
Earlier you mentioned the word “disconnected” and I also saw it referenced on your website. How do you determine disconnection?
A classic one would be a (Derek) Jeter, who was in a slump. He had all these plays at the beginning of this year; top plays and he was still hitting really badly. So, to me, someone who is in a prolonged slump, is beside himself. He’s not himself. He is “off”. He’s disconnected. And it just shows up watching him hit, or not hit. That something has somehow kind of splintered him and or separated him in some strange way from his mechanics.
How does this happen?
Think of electrical wiring. If the wire is off just a bit or disconnected a bit, that kind of feeling. So then the radio doesn’t work or the TV or whatever the problem is. Then you realize, “Oh, it’s a loose wire. I don’t know how it got loose.” There is nothing wrong with the radio or TV. There is nothing wrong with the player. It’s whatever jarred that loose. Someone would call it self-doubt that jars it loose. I don’t think so. Like Jeter said, “After you find yourself in that negative zone, going “What is this all about?” They don’t know they’re in it. They feel they are doing OK. They only know it because the numbers are showing it.
What do you do to help athletes reconnect?
I have a process I walk them through. With most of them I do it on the telephone. I’ve never even seen many of the player I have worked with. Most of the kids I work with are just over the phone.
What do you say to them in your first and subsequent calls?
They just give me their litany of problems, whether the problem is confidence, or release point problem or maybe a moment of embarrassment because of it. And all the physical and mechanical issues. I will have them describe just the mechanics. So, I would address their problems, just like a coach would. And then I take all their mechanical issues and also what I call their fallout; which would be the negative thinking, the worrying, the confidence. And I just take those words, those phrases, those sentences they use and we go after it. I go after it in their imagination. I work only in the imagination.
I’ve heard of different approaches taken. One extreme would be to focus on the negative images of what was done wrong and how things went badly, while the opposite would be to reinforce those situations when the athlete had been successful in the past. What do you favor?
Unless the guy has really forgotten who he is . . . In fact, it was (Jack) Llewellyn, the sports psychologist of the Braves who said, “It’s kind of like they’ve forgotten who they are.” And he had mentioned in an article that he bombards them with videos of them at their top excellence, playing really well, almost to remind them. Mine is when a player is that far removed, like Ankiel was against the wall, you could show him every picture of himself throwing well over and over and over. He isn’t going to be touched by it. They can’t get to where he is.
What about negative reinforcement?
Showing someone negative pictures of themselves is stupid. Why rub the kids’ noses and faces in their mistakes? If the kid had ten math problems, and they were a first grader, and they had four right, you’d go “Look Johnny. You got 2+1=3, that’s really good.” You’d focus on what they did, not what they didn’t do, because otherwise, you are going to anchor them back to some negativity. So, I think it is a nice technique for a sports psychologist to use with a player who is not in that hole or fault or that crack that we’ll say Ankiel and some of the other people have been in. Or, if they are in the crack of a slump, I don’t think that can pull them out.
So, this might work for a
Jeter, who had a bad month, versus an Ankiel, whose career was in jeopardy?
Yes, but you still couldn’t pull Jeter back. You can show him every picture of himself and tell how great he is and remind him. Somehow, all that information cannot get through to where he is, separated, and in the hole of a slump.
But, Jeter did come out of his funk . . .
He eventually pulled out of it on his own. But, how did he get there? With the work I do I could go after someone in a slump and work with them. It’s not just me doing it. Because they have the ability inside of them to hit the ball, something inside of them just disconnects them. Mine, I go in and work with them and it reconnects them back to their hitting or their throwing and they don’t have to stay in a prolonged slump or even a slump at all. That’s how I view it and my results pretty much attest to it.
You’ve worked with some pretty high profile players over the years – Sax, Wohlers and Blass, for example. Is there a common, fundamental thread across these situations or is each one completely unique?
They’re all kind of in that same hole. I call it kind of No-Man’s Land. They kind of fell through the crack in No-Man’s Land. (Editorial comment: Kind of like Nomar’s Land perhaps!) I don’t look at it, or analyze it: was it because of this or because they’re having marital problems or because of losses or Roberto Clemente passed or something like that? I don’t take any of the history of the player. I don’t even know anything about them. I don’t know if they’re married, single, if the kid is dating, if he has a big family or a little family.
So, you just don’t go there . . .
No, I don’t go there. I don’t know anything about Wohlers. I know zero about him. Only what I read in the paper.
You sort of anticipated my next question. Ankiel is a bit different from some of the others in that he had a short period of very high level of success very early on. He also came from a troubled home, as his father was jailed due to drug offenses. How might all this; youth, success and unsettled home life; play into being disconnected?
Come back tomorrow for the rest of my exclusive interview with Dr. Richard Crowley.
August 4, 2004
The Furthest Thing from Sports Psychology – Interview with Dr. Richard Crowley
Part Three
By Brian Walton
You sort of anticipated my next question. Ankiel is a bit different from some of the others in that he had a short period of very high level of success very early on. He also came from a troubled home, as his father was jailed due to drug offenses. How might all this; youth, success and unsettled home life; play into being disconnected?
They could very well be the problem. But, how are you going to separate his baseball from his personal life? Then, you get into analysis, and you’re shrinking this and shrinking that and you’re shrinking all over the place. My sense would be, my armchair psychology, would be that, here’s Ankiel doing very well. Then his Dad has all his problems and is in jail. Everyone is saying, “Wow! That kid is so strong. He is incredible. Look what he is going through personally and he is still doing so well.” That’s what people were saying all summer, right?
Yes, more or less, that was it.
My fantasy was, every Dad probably said to his son, “I can’t wait until you are in the World Series and I’m in the front row cheering you on.” That’s the picture I have in my head. So, my fantasy is that Ankiel is out there in the World Series and he finally mentally wakes up and gets that his Dad isn’t there. You look over at the space where your Dad was supposed to be for that big day in your life. I mean, who doesn’t want their Dad to be there? You just want your Dad there. My guess is that he looked over there that day and on some level he realized that Dad is not there. And that’s when it went haywire.
I understand that “Dad’s not there” is an example, but it is an idea of the kind of trigger that could cause this kind of episode, correct?
Right. And if it were a psychological issue, they would have pretty much figured it out and taken care of it right away, with all the people that they employ, I imagine, and gone after it, if it were purely psychological. They would have gone over it, talked about it and done some work with it and kind of cleaned it out. But, my guess is, like they say in the paper all the time, like Ankiel says, “It’s mechanical, not psychological.”
(Note: The Cardinals do not have a psychologist either on retainer or on their staff.)
And that is similar to the others you treated?
When I met Wohlers, when I first shook hands with him, I said, “Your problem is not psychological.” He replied, “I knew it wasn’t.” They know, because they’re playing it. If you tell them it is psychological, they will tell you that you are crazy. And, it ain’t psychological.
Doesn’t admitting that it is psychological acknowledge weakness? After all, these guys and all men, aren’t we bred to be strong in the most difficult situations?
A, because of macho, yeah it is psychological. And B, it isn’t, from their point of view, from where they are, “It’s isn’t psychological. it’s my damned hand! What are you guys talking about, psychological crap?” I’m in their skin and standing where they are standing, I get why they would say and believe that. It’s true. It’s not psychological. So, they go after the psychological thing and it ain’t that. And then they come down to mechanics. As Ankiel says, his hell is mechanics. It’s all mechanics. (As an aside: Let me look at some quotes from a book I am working on. It was ironic that I was just looking at Ankiel.) Then one of the coaches said, “It may be mental, but it all breaks down to mechanical. It is all mechanical. If it is mental, it’s mental first, then it has to come from thoughts. And the thoughts become negative.” That’s how it kind of enters, if you want to call it, something else over here, makes it eventually become a negative thought. You throw the ball and it doesn’t go there, and you throw the ball again and it doesn’t go there and you say, “What’s that about?” How many times do you have to have that before you start questioning it? I am wondering if this is going to be the next one? And now you have another voice in your head. So, it’s you on the mound with a voice in your head. And the voice gets very busy out there as it starts analyzing and has you overthinking, “Let me take a look at my mechanics”.
With a young athlete, how do you separate the differences between what the team is saying, the coaches, versus the agents versus what friends are saying?
Steve Blass said the same thing to me. He said the problem is the clutter, that he had too many people giving him too many suggestions. And all the clutter in his head confused him. It added too much to it. Quoting Blass from Dr. Crowley’s website, www.sportsmaker.com “I had been approached by many well-intentioned people trying to help me overcome my control problems without success. Richard's ideas and approach was the only thing that worked. I'm firmly convinced that one of the biggest problems in these cases is that too many suggestions, ideas, theories etc. can cause clutter. In my mind, clutter is the worst part of the problem. Richard was able to get through the clutter and return to the simplicity that to me is so critical to success.”
So, it is about clutter removal.
If you get the clutter, you get the shrink that talks to him, analyzes him, maybe it’s the fit, it’s the way you’re holding it. And then you get the poor players who start to change their mechanics. There is nothing wrong with a kid’s original mechanics. And now when you change it, a kid is going to get further and further away from his mechanics. It might disconnect. So, if they change his mechanics, I’ve got Beltre saying, “This year, when you start to struggle, the problem is that you start to change your mechanics just a little bit.” And that’s the problem. There’s nothing wrong with your mechanics. They’re fine. It’s that other thing that’s got you struggling. And if you give up the original mechanics that say, Ankiel had while winning and doing so well, and changing them even a bit, he’s screwed. He’s likely out of that novel way of throwing the ball. It’s natural to him, but everyone around him suggesting from what they see, maybe it is this or maybe it is that. You have all those thoughts in his head and then they change his mechanics.
What about Ankiel?
So, it’s all well-meaning, well intended, but no one else knows what to do when they have a kid like Rick, that far off. So, you have to come in with suggestions. You pay for your coaches; you pay for your sports psychologists, so everyone has to come in with their point of view.
What about expectations from the fans and media? For example, in Ankiel’s case, his first rehab start in A-ball is being beamed all over the world via the internet. ESPN is there. Everyone is there with all their cameras and the guy is just pitching in his first real game in a long time. Does this play into disconnects?
Pressure does, sure. The pressure affects them. That is a lot of pressure. He’s had to do some homework to get out there; to be nice and confident. He’s been doing his homework – hopefully. So, that’s major pressure, that and the nice price tag on you - salary. Expectations and if you’re not doing well, then that’s more pressure and the pressure adds more thoughts and when you’re on the mound, you don’t want to have thoughts out there. You don’t want to think when you’re a golfer, do you?
Like getting the yips?
Yes. Because there’s too much stuff going in there. I often say it’s like when we’re driving along in the car and maybe someone is sitting next to us and talking or we have the music on. We have the directions in our head or we wrote them down earlier. When we get closer to where we are going, we may have to tell our friend to quiet down, “Hold the conversation for a second, I’ve just got to think.” Or, “turn down the radio.” And then you kind of go into your mind and you imagine, ok, this street, take a right at the church, ok. And, you turn the music up and go back to the conversation. We do it all the time. But, you have to have it quiet in there to focus.
When you get reconnected, is it like a light switch that is turned on immediately?
It’s just like putting the plug in. It’s like when someone trips over the cord. Everyone is looking around trying to fix the TV and no one noticed that someone accidentally took the cord out. It happens that quickly. Then you work on specific details a little longer at times.
Well, in Ankiel’s case, then we should watch his upcoming outings carefully?
Yes, because whatever happened to his arm, that’s fine again and now that he is feeling better about himself, we’ll see how he does. As you say, he is playing in single-A with kids, so he should do well. It’s kind of like going back to the first few grades. Whatever the bugaboo is in him, if they haven’t pulled it out of him, then it’s still there. I call it the bugaboo. A sleeping giant. It is dormant, kind of like a virus. We all have viruses in our system. We’re all full of cancer cells. We have all this stuff in our system and certain stressors can trigger them off and a war breaks out inside.
So, either Ankiel has dealt with the problem or he hasn’t yet encountered the situation that would trigger it?
You’ve got it. And so, if they have, fine. After four years, he’s out of the woods and sobered up and you’re kind of out of where you were. You’ve kind of snapped out of it, whatever you’ve been through. But, as you say, the proof is in the pudding. When he is in a pressure situation or when he goes up to another class or another level, playing other people as he moves up the ladder. I will get a lot of players who contact me who do well in practice, but the minute they come into the game, they are another person. Their friends say, “You hold yourself differently. It’s not you pitching out there.” They say, “What do you mean?” Everyone else sees it but the person. We never see it in ourselves. It’s like Kryptonite to Superman. They’re fine over here in practice, but when they get in the game, it’s like a sleeping giant. As they get closer and closer to the game, this monster inside, we’ll call it the demons. They are awake again. They’re all over you. But, they’re not all over you in practice.
In Ankiel’s case, we’ll have to see if that is a factor or not. Whether a Single-A appearance in Jupiter is closer to practice or to the World Series.
Yes. Hopefully, whatever it is, he’s out of that hole and he’s back again and he can move up the ladder. But, he must have been scared when the leadoff batter got a triple off him.
Well, it wasn’t the start he was looking for, but he stuck in there and got past it.
Which is good that he had it and stayed with it. From the start, he came up against that wall and came out fine. That is great.
Do you know if Ankiel has used the same psychologist, Harvey Dorfman, all along?
As far as I know, yes. He is the one who Scott Boras uses. He has a name for doing sports psychology. On my business card, I have my name and underneath it, it says, “The furthest thing from sports psychology”.
But, you are a psychologist, yes?
I have a PhD in clinical psychology. But, I don’t see any of this as psychological. So, again, when I take their problem, I walk them through a process in their imagination. We go after things in their imagination and we become little kids again. And, we play in the world of pretend and make-believe. And I take all their problems and we walk them through, we launder them through fantasy land and their imagination and they come out the other end and the laundry is clean. And they’re throwing again.
Certainly, it sounds like it works. You have a proven track record with some very familiar names in sport. Do the traditionalists in some organizations resent what you do?
Oh, the entire club. Because, I come in and contact some player on my own and I get him up and running, then they’re thinking why didn’t you, pitching coach or you, hitting coach, do that? So, they are not particularly happy me, because it makes them look like they didn’t do their job. But what I do is a completely different job. I am the one they really need in theory, but in practice I am the last one they call in. That will change in time.
Sort of like why teams don’t list their psychologist in their media guides?
I am waiting for some visionary to get what I can do for their athletes. I was trying to find out who first brought in nutritionists, physical therapists, trainers and sports psychologist into baseball. Now it is time to add another dimension, because what I do is outside the realm of sports psychology. I am not trained in what they do. Nor are they trained in what I do. What I do is much more clinical work and as a result over the years, I found this little character that is inside the psyche that runs the show. And I know how players can overcome it.
Would it be ok if I check back with you in another month as Ankiel continues his preparation for his return to the majors?
Sure. Any time. You make me think out loud as I am working on my book.