TAMING THE MIND

Mentalball Offers Solutions to Age Old Problems in Sport of Baseball

Article by Dr. Crowley appeared in Collegiate Baseball February 23, 2007

Burbank, Calif. – All baseball players at every level occasionally struggle with inexplicable control, velocity, mechanics, consistency and confidence issues. Nonetheless, it’s perplexing to players and coaches.

Who hasn’t observed players’ postures, stances, or overall mechanics change dramatically, especially when they enter a game situation. All of a sudden their swing is off, their bodies move differently, their throwing becomes erratic, and the way they hold themselves on the mound is more tentative and tense. They definitely are not the same players they were the day before. Somehow they became disconnected from their abilities.

How can they be “hot” one day and “cold” the next day?

How can they perform so well in practice and so poorly in games?

How do they go from mound presence to mound pressure in the blink of an eye?

How do they suddenly “forget” their mechanics?

Mentalball, the next generation of sports psychology, offers the missing piece to these puzzling questions. Mentalball is an effective solution to problems that baseball has come to believe as virtually unsolvable at times. Dr. Richard Crowley developed Mentalball, which is the only method with a greater than 90% proven and documented success record. Mentalball has been called the “cure for the yips” for any athlete wrestling with his or her performance demons.

Steve Blass’ Triumph

No one knows the mystery of struggling with the yips better than Steve Blass who lost his career as a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1975. However, 24 years later, Blass used Mentalball and found his strike zone, which allowed him to pitch nine consecutive innings at Pirates Fantasy Camp last year at the age of 64.

Blass defined what hindered his many attempts to overcome his internal battle: “I’m firmly convinced that one of the biggest difficulties in cases of control problems is that too many suggestions, ideas, theories, etc. can cause clutter. In my mind, clutter is the worst part of the problem.”

While there are many excellent mental exercises that address removing the clutter of negative thoughts and overanalyzing mechanics so a player can focus, they are not readily embraced as much as one would assume. There are large numbers of players and coaches who struggle in silence, especially with throwing issues. Such silence only feeds their “monster.”

Many times this conspiracy of silence persists because it is difficult for anyone to find words to express such a frustrating experience that often appears suddenly. Players frequently believe that they will lose their positions if they talk about “it.” Many others erroneously believe they are the only one having such difficulties. Long silences have sometimes lead to injuries, surgeries, dramatic loss of confidence and even the ending of their playing careers.

Previous Generations Had No Hope

Hall of Fame baseball coach Bob Bennett has observed this phenomenon during his career. He believes that such problems are “endemic to all sports, not just baseball.” Yet, until now they were beyond the limit of coaches’ knowledge and training. Bennett said: “I have been searching for methods to solve throwing problems for my entire career. Mentalball unequivocally proves a viable solution and will revolutionize the mental game of sports.”

Players often characterize their bewildering throwing problems with metaphorical descriptions such as ”the Monster”, “the Creature” and “the Thing.” When John Boles was managing the Marlins in 2001 he described it as an imaginary Little Man sitting on the player’s shoulder. Back then, he believed there was not much at all that coaches or players --or even sports psychologists for that matter -- could do to get rid of the “Little Man”.

Boles continued to say, "No one knows why it shows up, and it leaves when it wants. It’s a demon. It’s strictly in the mind, and I have seen some doozies. I have seen a lot of catchers who can’t throw the ball back to the pitcher. I have seen staff members who couldn’t throw batting practice. The little man has a mind of his own. He sits right here on your shoulder and talks to you. He’s whispering in your ear. Gets in your head when you’re throwing. And you can’t believe -- baseballs go up, down, inside, outside, all over the place.”

“It” Undermines Your Intention

Dr. Crowley offers a refreshing and readily achievable cure. He believes, “The monster and the little man can make a player falsely believe that he is his worst enemy and that he is the one sabotaging himself.”

Dr. Crowley’s groundbreaking approach, dating back to his work with former Los Angeles Dodgers Steve Sax’s errant throwing problem, concludes that “something else,” and not the player, is the responsible party that causes such exasperating performances. “It” orchestrates players’ inconsistent mechanics from behind the scenes. “It” frustrates their intentions and abilities to do their best. “It” splinters them from their confidence and competence.

Your Invisible Opponent

Dr. Crowley defines this “something else” entity, this adversarial monster and little man, as your “Invisible Opponent.” Your invisible opponent can unravel self-affirmations and self-talk like a cat with a ball of yarn. It can convert your positive thinking into runaway negative thoughts.

The invisible opponent is like a “psychic virus” that infects a player’s mind much like a medical virus infects the body. The psychic virus operates on a player’s psyche in the same way that a computer virus can attach itself to software. The invisible opponent can have a player blaming himself as the one “responsible” for his eroding confidence and mystifying throwing problems until he is made aware that an invisible opponent has infected him.

Mentalball Approach

The good news is that your imagination contains the back up of all the players’ original athletic-performance programs, which can never be destroyed. Mentalball’s approach is the remedy that dismantles any player’s invisible opponent and then helps him to easily retrieve his athletic abilities.

The solution to such frustrating scenerios lies in making the invisible visible, that is, in generating an invisible image that represents and symbolizes each player’s invisible opponent. We are all aware of symbolic images as they appear in our dreams every night. Each character or scene in our dreams is a symbol that represents “something else” in our lives.

Mentalball is the intentional use of eliciting symbolic images from a player’s imagination to end his problematic mechanics and inconsistency. The process is usually accomplished within a couple of hours over the telephone. Dr. Crowley takes a player through the Mentalball process that allows him to replace his personal problem-causing images with positive ones. The new images represent the player’s previous excellent performance well before his struggles ever manifested.

Right Brain, Right Sports Psychology

Traditional sports psychology employs many helpful strategies such as motivational techniques, positive self-talk, reviewing videos and the valuable use of visualization. While visualization is an excellent tool, Mentalball differs dramatically from it.

Mentalball is not visualizing yourself performing, but rather having your imagination present images that generate the unbalanced mechanics. The imagination is the last place anyone would have ever thought to look for solutions to resolve slumps and erratic performance.

Hundreds of athletes can attest to how quickly this process has shifted their thoughts, physiology, muscle memory, and emotions that allowed them to play in games in the same relaxed way they did in practices. Playing ball became fun again.

Since the performance problem itself doesn’t make sense, the solution needs to come from that part of the brain that addresses such illogical and irrational issues. These reside in the right brain, which is the realm of the imagination.

Once the positive image is rooted in your imagination, you find your mechanics and confidence returning.

Just Imagine

A helpful example of using your imagination is to just imagine that if the number 5 could be any color in the world, what would it be? Make up a color right now. Whatever color came to mind came from your imagination as it was an illogical question.

The logical left brain would have argued that the number five is a number and not a color. The part of your mind that just “made up” the color was your imagination which is not caught up in right and wrong, good and bad. It doesn’t judge.

Or imagine in great detail how the meanest monster would look. Describe it. If you say you don’t imagine, consider this: How many times during the day are you aware of fantasizing about things you wished would happen, or maybe feared would happen. Maybe it was about winning that all-important game-- or losing it.

Just Relax, Don’t Think

How many times has a struggling player heard advice such as, “Just relax. Don’t think.”? If his problem were logical, then such advice might help him become aware of what is causing the struggle. If not, however, such advice may only aggravate the player further as he would give anything to be relaxed and end his ongoing inner conversations.

The beauty of Mentalball is that the player can call upon his imagination to conjure up an image, shape, cartoon character, real or unreal person, object, thing, or whatever that made him overthink and become uptight in the first place.

Further Applications of Mentalball

Mentalball’s use of symbolic images being the “fall guy” for players’ mechanical woes allows players to shift them into positive ones that can quickly achieve unlimited outcomes including the following:

• deleting overthinking and negative thoughts,

• removing self-doubt and second-guessing,

• eliminating fear, anxiety and dread,

• getting rid of physical muscle tension that impedes throwing, locks wrists and interferes with the release point,

• putting an end to what impedes being locked in at the plate,

• stopping unwanted mechanics,

• undoing unwanted shoulder and knee movements that affect stances at the plate,

• reversing pitchers’ loss of control, velocity and consistency,

• eliminating throwing problems.

Mentalball allows the player’s imagination to move symbolic images around like pieces of a puzzle. In doing so the player is able to reconnect with his mechanics without the clutter of more suggestions or theories.

Like the adage, “ A picture is worth a thousand words,” Mentalball gives you the wisdom of the thousand words, yet contained within one symbolic image.

Dr. Crowley’s book containing 45 high school, college and pro ball players’ “Seabiscuit-stories” of their personal triumph entitled MENTALBALL, Beat Your Invisible Opponent at Its Own Game with forewords by clients Steve Blass and Shawn Green is available at his site sportsmaker.com or amazon.com. He welcomes coaches’ and players’ contacts at sportsmaker@hotmail.com or 818-939-3025 to discuss how he can be of service.