James Outman On Why Baseball Is Stoicism

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2:28Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

3:22Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Every once in a while, I get a cool email from someone. They'll be like, hey, I'm a big fan of this team or that team and this athlete and that athlete. And they just read your books and just start talking about it in an interview or whatever. It was pretty cool. The coach of the New York Giants ended a press conference the other day and a journalist I know who was there covering it was like, dude, he just ended the press conference by saying everyone should read Ryan Holiday's books. And this is all very unreal to me and always super cool when it happens.

4:03Well, I got one. I got a note a couple of weeks ago that this guy, James Outman, who's an outfielder for the Dodgers. He also went to the same college as my parents, Sac State, had not only read the book, but was talking about how his dad had recommended it to him, which is always cool. That's like my favorite thing at the painted porch when someone who's older than me will be like, I'm here because my kid dragged me here. Like, that's something I never expected. it. But anyways, he and his dad had been reading the books and then he had an incredible debut for the Dodgers. He hits a home run at his first major league at bat.

4:42And he's a big fan of the Stoics. So I reached out on Instagram and he was excited to come on the podcast. James was called up to the major leagues in July of 22. So this is all pretty fresh and new for him, but he is off to an incredible start. Actually, in his second game, the following night, he became the first Dodger player to reach base seven or more times in his first career games since 1912. This dude is 26. He was a Dodger rookie sensation. And as someone who got off to a hot start in my career, I know that that's obviously wonderful. It's everything you dream of, but it comes with its own troubles and its own adjustments.

5:24And that's what he's been doing ever since. And that's what we talk about in today's episode. You can follow James on Instagram at James Outman. Watch him play for the Dodgers. He's doing great. And I think you're really going to like this interview talking sports, talking baseball specifically, one of the hardest, I think most mentally taxing of the games, and stoicism. So thanks to James for coming on the podcast. I hope you like it.

6:03Where are you? A hotel room on the road? No, we're actually in LA right now. So we're at my apartment. Nice. In downtown. Yeah. Oh, downtown. Where downtown? I mean, you don't have to tell me exactly, but I used to live there. You know, I don't, I'm not super familiar. We're like by 8th street, like by the whole foods. Yep. Yep. I lived at sixth and spring. Yeah. okay you don't spend a lot of time there an olive no i i live here and then i go to the field the uh the los angeles athletic club which is like right next to you it's like one of the coolest places in the world oh yeah yeah it's it's this athletic club that they it's like a gym but it but it opened in in the 1800s and uh and then they they did they built this cool building like in the early 1900s.

6:55So like on the sixth floor, there's this like Olympic diving pool and everything's really fancy and cool. It's like an old school private club, but it's all about working. It's a workout club. Interesting. Yeah, I haven't done as much exploring downtown as I want to. You got a little bit going on. I get it. Yeah, yeah. And then usually in the off days, we're laying pretty low, trying to recover. Well, you know, it's funny. Both my parents met and went to Sac State. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's funny. My grandparents lived like right across the street, basically. So I spent a lot of time there too.

7:44Yeah, I enjoyed my time over in Sacramento. It was fun. The baseball team was great, and yeah, I'm thankful for that experience. Well, I mean, you're more of a San Francisco kid, so I'm sure Sacramento wasn't the big exciting city for you to go to. Yeah, originally, yeah. But once I got a tour of the campus when I was a senior in high school, I think, and met the coaches and saw the trees and met some of the players, it felt like a good fit for me. And yeah, I'm trying to think, what are my baseball Sacramento memories? I mean, I guess I went to lots and lots of Rivercats games because it was pretty much the only game in town if you wanted to see anything.

8:34Yeah. Yeah. We would play there a couple times. I actually never got a chance to play the Rivercats because I missed them. I got called up AAA last year after they had already gone to Sacramento to play them. So I missed them. I was actually kind of looking forward to it so my friends and family could go to the games. Yeah, yeah. It is what it is. So talk to me. How did you end up finding the Obstacle is the Way? It was very cool for me to hear that. Oh, yeah. So, man, I think it was 2020, maybe 2019. I was already in pro ball. And my dad was just like, hey, I read this book. And I think you would like it a lot.

9:21So I was like, okay, I'll try it out. And then I remember we were in Hawaii when I read it. And I was like, man, every single chapter was like, oh, this is baseball. Like, oh, this is baseball. This is baseball. This one's baseball. This one's life. This one's baseball. So, yeah, I just felt like I could apply every single lesson to my own existence, which was, you know, mainly baseball and then off-season time at the time. Is that because baseball is such a mental game? Yeah, I think so. I think it's just so hard and you fail so much that you've got to find a way to deal with it. And everybody kind of deals with it in their own way.

10:12Some guys get angry. Some guys kind of laugh it off, shrug it off. some guys just go on to the next pitch and um you know i felt like i was trying to figure out which one worked for me and i realized pretty quickly that getting angry doesn't work for me uh you know you go in there and you you like slam the bat or like you slam the helmet and then like i would do that and then i would just kind of realize like man i don't feel any better now now i just look dumb in front of everybody so um but yeah the the uh once i read that book i i felt like i was able to take things in stride a little bit easier i think when it comes to the game when when a baseball player is like at at you know at the plate and then you see them get angry they break the bat you know or they slam it down or they're yelling they're you know hitting the helmet or whatever what are they typically like what is what's getting to them is it is it the person that they're opposed to that's frustrating them is it the is it the umph that's frustrating them or is it is it that they know they can do this and they're mad at themselves for not being able to do it as kind of all of the above um i think it varies guy to guy and situation a situation but um i think for the most part it's more just like pent-up frustration from from at-bats prior or just how the game has been going for you prior um you know there's a lot of luck involved in baseball too because there's there's seven guys standing out there and you gotta miss them with the baseball that you can't really control exactly where it goes so um you know you get unlucky a little bit uh then you you know stack on some bad at bats and then that sort of piles on to the next day and a little bit of more of the same happens and and you start getting uh you start getting that pent-up frustration then you get a bad call from the umpire you're like man i can't catch a break and that's that's usually where it comes from and then and then maybe um you know the breaking point is when you're in a big situation on you know you got a guy on third with less than one out and then you can't get the job done.

12:32And that's kind of where the, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. That, that, um, that thing you just said, I can't catch a break. I feel like that gets a lot of us in trouble, right? It's like this sense that it should be going a certain way that we deserve it to be going a certain way. And then when it's not, even though this is just something we made up in our heads and in fact, it's going, you know, it may be on the whole going quite well. I mean, you're playing professional baseball, you're alive. You know, there's all these, all these things that could, you clearly have caught like a thousand breaks, but you have some sense that this specific thing that you're dealing with should be going a specific way.

13:12And because it's not, you're pissed. Yeah, definitely. And, uh, you know, it's, I think it's, it's easy to, to feel that way in baseball um just because there is so much failure and and there's such a spotlight on you that you kind of lose sight of life outside of this baseball universe sure um so uh yeah definitely i agree 100 i remember um uh i was i was having a rough couple months earlier this year and uh trace thompson my locker mate at the time was like hey all right i i after the game i come and sit down and I'm, I'm all like, you know, just, he could tell that I'm frustrated. Like I'm sitting there just kind of thinking and, and, uh, he's like, Hey, if, if I asked you in May, uh, would you take being on the team?

14:06And, uh, like, and then he listed off the stats that I had. He's like, would you take that? And I was like, yeah, especially cause I didn't know if I was going to make the team earlier this year, I would have taken anything. So it kind of put things in perspective and made me look outside of what exactly is just happening that day. I think about this with flying all the time, right? So it's like, you know, you show up to the gate, your flight's supposed to take off at two and they tell you it's going to be 30 minutes delayed and then it's another 30 minutes. And you're like, this flight, I was trying to get to a specific place at a specific time and that's not going to happen.

14:40And so, yeah, you're like, I can't catch any breaks, right? But of course, what you're not thinking about is that, you know, 85%, 95 % of the flights that you take, they do take off on time. And you're forgetting that last week, you were flying into LAX and you landed 20 minutes early. You're only thinking about how you wanted it to go in this one specific instance. It's not going that way. And then you're like, the world is out to get me. Everything's broken. Everything sucks. And I'm pissed. yeah definitely definitely um it's i just think it's interesting how like we could get so wrapped up in um what's going on exactly now and not like like like until trey said that to me i that's when i finally stepped back and i was like oh like i'm like things are actually going pretty good right now yeah but don't but don't you think I think that's the double-edged sword of what makes someone into an elite performer, right?

15:45Is that they're not easily satisfied and they don't tend to feel good about how things are, right? That's what drives you to always get a little bit better, to lift a little bit more, to work out a bit more, you know, to not be satisfied with only winning a certain number of games. So the paradox is this thing that puts you in the position to get to the very top, then makes you incapable of grasping that you made it to the very top and that this is fucking awesome and you should appreciate it. Yeah, definitely. And also just like kind of with the way baseball goes, we play so much that you kind of have to take each day as like win today.

16:27Then your next day is win today, win today. So then when you don't win that day, you're like, oh my God, I just put all my energy and focus into this one day and it didn't happen. And then, uh, and then that's when it like, you start stacking those kinds of days. Sure. Like I'm, I'm dumping a whole lot of energy and not seeing the success, but that's, that's just the way baseball goes. It's a, it's a messed up sport. Well, and, and I mean, the fact of baseball is that you're going to miss way more than you connect, right? That's like the greatest people that have ever done it are, are missing, you know, a majority of the time, right?

17:03Yeah. And so that is a fact, and you know that. And we know that in life, right? Not every sales call is going to work, right? Not every book that I publish is going to work. Not every attractive stranger you approach in a bar is going to be interested in you. We know that the majority of the time we're going to miss, and that's going to be compensated for for the few times that we connect. And yet we take those misses very, very hard. And it's like our mind is constitutionally unable to go, yeah, this is six of the 10 that I'm going to miss. All that matters is that I connect with four at some point.

17:47Yeah. Yeah. And in baseball, you're a Hall of Famer. That's the case. Right, right. Yeah. You're the best of the best to ever do it. Well, I was thinking about this too. Bill Belichick is, I think this season will almost certainly become the most losing coach in the history of sports or in the history of football. Like he'll have lost the most games in the history of football because he's like the longest tenured coach in football. And he's gone the furthest in the playoffs, right? Just think about how many Super Bowls he's lost. That's because he's been in the Super Bowl a lot of times. We often want the good part.

18:35We want the number of home runs or RBIs or connections or whatever. And then we're like, but I shouldn't have to also get this negative stat line, which is all the rejections, all the failures, all the misses. Yeah, no, I think the more hits you have, the more at-bats you have, the more strikeouts you're going to have, the more outs you're going to have. And I actually never really thought of it in that perspective, you know, because I got some pretty great players on my team playing with me. Like a couple of guys are going to probably be in the Hall of Fame. And I just marvel at how good they are and their success all the time.

19:22And, you know, they're still hitting 300 or whatever it is. Like, they're still getting out more times than not. Twice as many times. Yeah. They strike out twice as many times as they connect. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, the good ones don't strike out as much. Sure. But they still get out. They still get out. Yes. And that's just the nature of the game. It's nine versus one when you're hitting. And it's hard to succeed. You need a little luck. You need a little skill. You need a little both. Well, and baseball is such an interesting game because it has the most games per season. So people go, I hate losing.

20:11Well, it's like you probably picked the wrong game then because like you're gonna like if you have a 10-year career in baseball which would be extraordinarily lucky you're gonna have lost so many fucking games like like an unimaginable amount of games compared to say tom brady i mean tom brady only plays or only played you know and obviously the season's fluctuated in the game so long but it's you know you're talking an average of 15 games a season versus hundreds of games a season. And it's going to be very, very different. Yeah. I remember my first professional baseball kind of experience, I had to make a little mental note that, wow, you're playing every single day.

20:59You got to get used to this because this is what it's going to be like from now on. and like in college you play three or four times a week probably more like four four times a week high school is like two games a week um so you're you're playing every single day and you're at the field for 10 hours every single day and and uh it's it's definitely a marathon and so that's actually i think that's why uh like when we do have games or we lose like no one's really upset because everybody, we got a lot of veterans on the team and stuff. And when we lose a game, it's like, well, we weren't expecting to win every single game.

21:39No one's done that in the history of baseball. I mean, I tell this story in Discipline is Destiny. When Lou Gehrig gets drafted by the Yankees, he plays at Columbia. He's a really great college baseball player. He goes to the Yankees. He's playing in the farm system. I think he's in Hartford. and he really struggles. And he not only struggles, but he struggles with the fact that he is struggling and his heart goes in it, out of it. And he's kind of in this downward spiral. And the owner of the Yankees sends out this scout to talk to him. And he basically gives him this advice that changes Lou Gehrig's life.

22:17He sort of talks to him, whatever. As the guy's getting on the train, he says something to him like, it's important that you realize you can't be great every day. right? That baseball is a game of averages and that the averages are against you. And now this might be seemingly in conflict or contradiction to a guy who has the longest streak in the history of baseball, who's a Hall of Famer, who goes to the World Series six times, who's this incredible athlete who is very, very great. But it's also freeing, I think, to go, hey, you're not going to be perfect every single day. In fact, some days you're going to suck.

22:53And it's not that you embrace sucking, but if you kick the shit out of yourself, if you get so down because you don't have a great day every single day, that's actually going to prevent you from being consistently good or good on average because you're going to despair, you're going to lose confidence, and you're going to be expecting the impossible and as a result, just sort of ignoring what actually is possible and realistic. definitely um i actually remember having a conversation with um justin turner who's long time long time dodger he's with the red sox now it was like a q a during the covet time and the the office was trying to scramble just to get like anything beneficial for the minor league guys since yeah they just missed out on a season so we had a little q a and and um somebody had asked him the question of like slumping and like going through those kinds of times.

23:53And he was saying like, well, like you kind of want to embrace it because when you come out on the other end, you're going to feel so much better about what you just overcame. And you're going to feel so much better. Like you're going to feel a lot smarter knowing that like, oh, I know what I need to do to get out of this. And, and you're going to be a lot more proud of yourself. So he, he kind of looks at those more as opportunities rather than times of despair. Well, yeah. I mean, the other way to look at it is like every strikeout or every, you know, bad day, every, you know, no on the phone is getting you closer to the statistically inevitable yes or connection, right?

24:32You know, it's like, hey, I got it. I got to get if I'm trying to bat 300 i gotta get these seven bad at bats out of the way yeah yeah definitely uh we always joke around yeah we always joke around like anytime someone's had a bad stretch we go oh that just means you're due now yes yes even though even though you're really not like yeah and and that's kind of the joke but uh you know statistically like it's bound to happen at some point no it Right. You can get yourself in trouble if you're like, I am now owed this. I had 100 bad days in a row. It's my day today. And then when that doesn't happen, then it only makes it worse.

25:16But I do think it's like, if you have confidence, if you know you can do it because you have done it before and you know you're following the process, you're doing what the coaches say, you're doing what your training says, then I think you can go like, hey, I just got to ride this thing out. I got to trust it. And if I try to overcorrect or if I try to reinvent everything or if I quit, those are really the only ways that I can prevent this from eventually coming back in my direction. Yeah, definitely. My dad always says, I'll be having a bad month or something and I'll be coming off a good month and he'll text me and he's like, well, I guess that's how you get an average.

26:03Sure. And yeah, he's got a good way of putting it in perspective, just kind of simplifying it outside of my own focus on the game.

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28:44Well, I think that's great, right? To me, the definition of stoicism or the place you're trying to get as a stoic is not too high and not too low. You're just kind of trying to ride this kind of even line. And so, obviously, we focus a lot on when it's not going well and how do we get back. But in another way, it's almost not talked enough about how do you be suspicious when it's going super well? How do you not take it for granted? How do you not tell yourself, this is normal. It's always going to be this way. You know, in a sense, like those, the streaks can be more dangerous than the slumps because the slumps, typically you don't go, this says something about me as a person, right?

29:33It's the streak where you're really crushing it. You've had a bunch of success in a row. Everyone wants you. Everyone's interested in you. And you go, I deserve this. This is who I am. This is the way it should always be. And that's what life has a habit of humbling us about, that kind of ego. Definitely. Yeah, I really felt that. My first month, I came out and I was really hot, swinging it really well. And I was like, man, this is great. Just riding the high. And then I felt like I hit a brick wall one day. And I just felt like I lost my rhythm. I lost everything. And I really felt humbled. And I felt humbled for a couple months.

30:21Well, I think you're being modest. Didn't you hit a home run at your first at bat in the major leagues? Yes. Yeah, that was last year. That was last year. But I'm saying that that is the definition of coming out hot. And that's like a wonderful gift and I'm sure a super exciting thing, but also could be like the worst thing that happened to somebody, I can imagine. Yeah. Well, so with that little stretch of my season last year, I was only there. I only played four games. I was there for six days. so uh it was it was hard to like to to get hot you know in in six days so on on day six they sent me right back down to triple a and i was like man that was so much fun i need to get back yeah yeah you're like the person that tries a drug and has one of those wonderful first time experience is and then which which is uh you know a dangerous thing because you have perhaps an unrepresentative view of what it's supposed to be like all the time definitely definitely like uh you know i would i would jokingly like think to myself like man like this is i felt like it was harder in triple a and and then i realized i realized that is not the case uh right once i I got humbled a little bit.

31:47Yeah. I feel like my first book came out when I was 25, I think, 25, 26. And so, which is way younger than it's supposed to do. It debuts on the New York Times bestseller list. On the bestseller list. There's a long story. But it hits the bestseller list and gets tons of media attention. Everyone wants a piece of it. It's optioned to be TV shows. And then there's this part of you that's like, yeah, man, this is how it goes. You deserve this, you earned it, you did it. And it's not beginner's luck, but it's just circumstances aligned in that moment. And it's not usually like that. Right. And, and if you want to stay at it, if you want to keep doing it, if that's now the baseline of your expectations, you've put yourself in a, in a, in a bad spot.

32:43Right. Versus the person that, that sort of is still, I don't want to say wary, but like you have to have a healthy respect for it. You can't, you can't be saying stuff like you, you found yourself saying, which I think is very human, which is like, oh, I got this. Like if this is easier than I thought it was going to be. yeah definitely and i i feel like it's definitely easy to um i mean you see in baseball all the time like somebody reaches the pinnacle they reach the peak and then they kind of stop doing what got them there yes um and and then that's kind of where those that that downfall will begin is is a lot of guys don't realize like i put in all this work for five years doing this this and this every single day to get me to this point.

33:31And then you make it and you're like, all right, I'm gonna change everything. And then that's super dangerous too. Yeah, and I think people tend to do this with slumps or streaks in their respective professions, right? It's like you hit a bad patch and you're like, I'm gonna abandon all the things that I've always done. And then you get on a streak and you're like, I got this now. I can take it for granted. I'm going to toss out all the things that were working for me. Yeah.

34:05Why do you suppose that's the case? I mean, is that just human nature? I think so. I mean, I think a lot of it's ego, right? It's getting tied up in the external result and not the process, right? Like, you know, they say chop wood, carry water. It's the opposite of chop wood, carry water, right? It's, oh, it's working, so I don't have to do that manual labor anymore. I don't have to respect the process. I think golf is a great example of this sort of writ large, where it's like, as soon as you think you've got it, you've hit a couple good ones in a row, and you're like, I'm about to step up and crush this ball.

34:45That is where the golf gods just sort of go, no, you're not. Let me show you how bad you are at golf. yeah yeah we got we got the baseball gods too and and uh you know we we always say like it rewards you for playing hard it rewards you for doing all the little things and and uh you know you start showboating then you start you start hitting line drives that get caught you start getting bad calls at the plate uh so yeah i i feel that i understand where you're coming from with that. I've always wondered too, like, you know, in the, like the post-game interviews where, where they go and ask these athletes, these questions, they're never like the most articulate answers.

35:28It's always sort of like cliches or kind of like, um, you know, like a sort of like a stream of consciousness thing. I wonder if part of that is because like, it's dangerous for the athlete to try to think too much about it, like to try to understand it too much. Like you kind of just want to be like, I just get up there and I do my thing. You know, like, I wonder if, if like, it's like, you don't want to think about the baseball gods too much or, uh, they'll turn against you. Yeah, definitely. And when I get those questions, sometimes I feel like I give a really dumb answer to them. But, uh, like a lot of the times I'm not thinking when I'm up there or like, they'll be like, Hey, what went through your mind?

36:13And I don't want to say honestly, nothing like yeah uh i i gotta give him something so um you know you you kind of just say like oh i'm just trying to do my job and got a good pitch to hit um and and uh you also want to try and like find i i i try and find credit like trying to give my teammates a little bit of credit because like you can't you can't like get an rbi single without anybody on base or or sure you know you you win a game two to one like that means the pitching staff shoved the whole game and and shut the offense down so um i think all of us try and um point the spotlight to like the team or or away from us a little bit as much as we can it's some sometimes the questions are phrased where you have to answer it like i did this i was doing this but um i think a lot of guys like in high school and stuff, you start getting prepped for that.

37:13Like try and try and do your best to avert the other people's eyes. I mean, my wife was talking to me about this a while ago. She was like asking me something about like, she's like, when you're reading, are you like saying the words out loud to yourself when you're reading, like in your mind? And I was just like, I was like, stop talking to me about this. I was like, I don't want to think about it at all. Like I was like, I don't want to mess up what's clearly working. And so I was like, it's like the stakes are too high and the machine is too delicate to like root around in there too much, you know?

37:48And like, I think when you start to get self-conscious about what you're doing, when you think too much about it, you know, like you said, if your mind is not empty at the plate or when I sit down to the computer, if you're thinking about what you're doing and how great you are at doing it or, you know, why you're, if you're, if you're thinking the whole point is to empty the mind and to get to a place where there isn't that much going on. So then the training, the thing you have practiced over and over and over and over and over again, can take over and do what it's supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

38:20And, and, and baseball, when that's not happening, we call that the yips. Yes. The yips. Some people think that's a super taboo word, but but I feel like I can say it. I was a survivor of them. I had them a little bit. Tell me about that. I was a catcher in college, and throwing the ball back to the pitcher, which is the simplest thing you could possibly do, I couldn't do it. I thought about every single movement my whole entire body was making to get the ball there. um and then and then the other one that got me really bad too was like a drop third strike so like i would block the ball and then the base runner would be running down to first base and i had all the time in the world just to throw a nice ball to the first baseman and i could not do it there are so many thoughts that would just go through my head and uh yeah and then i actually got moved to the outfield and what kind of helped me get rid of them a little bit was um i'm in the outfield the throws a little bit farther and a lot of my throws are there's like a little bit of pressure on the throw so like I gotta I gotta actually throw it so I didn't have time to think and um you know the more I did that from like different angles all over the field I just kind of realized that like nobody cares about nobody cares if I hit you like a little bit over here versus like directly in your chest as long as it's like in a general vicinity and um slowly but surely after moving positions i i feel like i overcame them i they'll they'll come back from time to time but uh i remember actually my first spring training i felt them coming back because i was playing catch with like some very established big leaguers and it was my first big league spring training i'm this new guy i was like i need to hit them in the chest i need to hit them in the chest And then I felt them start to creep back a little bit.

40:28Do you have a practice for when they start to creep back, how you sort of clear your mind, how you push away that kind of self-destructive mental loop? Because I imagine it's similar to people, if you get an OCD thing going or if you have anxiety. like we all get sort of stuck with destructive thought patterns or things that kind of take us out of the moment that we're in, which I've always thought the yips were kind of just an extreme, you know, exaggerated version of that. Yeah. So my solution that I kind of felt worked was like when I start playing catch when I'm warming up to change my arm angle from like, like really high to really low, like kind of just change the way I throw.

41:20So my body has to figure out how to do it rather than my brain and, and just let my body work. And then like, just, just like stepping with the wrong foot and throwing or like standing on one leg and throwing the ball to take out all the guesswork because like my brain has never told me to stand on one foot and throw the ball before. So when I'm doing it, it's just like, all right, I'm just going to be athletic and let this work. And then it kind of starts to sort itself out. That's actually a really interesting adaptation because you do tend to see the yips. Like I was talking to Nate Boyer, who was a Green Beret, and then he was a long snapper for the Seahawks very briefly.

42:04But we were talking about how only certain positions in certain sports seem to get the yips, right? Like the quarterback doesn't get the yips, but a field goal kicker could, right? And catchers tend to get the yips and pitchers get the yips, but yes, center fielders don't seem to get it as much. And I wonder how much of that is the repetitiveness of the motion and the lack of variety in it is where you get in your own head. Whereas, you know, when things are in flux, when the quarterback is worried about, you know, taking a blindside hit, they don't really have the luxury or the ability to get in their own head, right?

42:47Things are moving too fast. And so you're kind of throwing yourself off balance a little bit, kind of forcing yourself into an uncomfortable situation. and that's preventing you from being self-indulgent or having the luxury of overthinking it. Definitely. Yeah, I just think the more time you have to think about that easy task that should be pretty mindless when you're doing it, the more time you can allow yourself to self-destruct. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm lobbing the ball back to the pitcher. That's all I'm doing. But I do it 300 times a day. And then I do it in the bullpens. And then all of a sudden, I have one bad throw.

43:39I'm like, oh, how did I make that bad throw? Let me try and fix that. And then that's where the self-destruction sets. I've talked about this a bunch on the podcast, but the writing rule, they try to say like, just do a few crappy pages a day. And so I like the idea, if you lower the expectations and you reduce the pressure, it allows you to just do what you're actually really good at. Like you'll never actually do crappy pages, but instead of if you go into it and you say, I have to do one perfect chapter today. Well, that's really hard. And then you can get in your own head about it. But if you say, I just have to show up and do my job and make a positive contribution, and I don't need to expect perfection from myself, that allows you to sort of just do what you need to do.

44:30But if you're like, hey, it has to be a certain way in a certain amount because everyone's watching, well, that's when you lock up and you get in your own head as opposed to just throw the ball. Just throw the ball. Don't think about it. yeah like it kind of frees you up and and uh like like you said it lowers the expectations that's that's what i felt when i was out in center field is like i got i got this shortstop out here who's got the best hands uh on anybody i've ever seen to catch the ball i don't need to hit him in the chest and then all of a sudden i start hitting him in the chest and then when i don't he he picks it and it's like it's like i did hit him in the chest and it's like wow that was thank you for that.

45:14That was cool. Have you read Rick Ankeel's book, The Phenomenon? No. Oh, it's so good. I mean, that's an incredible story. That's a pitcher who gets the yips. He reinvents himself as an outfielder and I think a designated hitter. But he was talking about he could throw it perfectly at his house, but it wasn't until he got to the, he could even do it sometimes in the bullpen or in warmups, but it wasn't until he sort of got out there that the problem started. And so, you know, he eventually sort of figures out, like this is a big chunk of this is me just thinking too much about what other people are thinking.

45:57Like the act is fundamentally the same, but the place that it's happening has changed. But at the same time, nothing has really changed. So that's kind of isolates it. You go, oh, this is me thinking too much about what other people are going to think. And that, you know, not just in sports, but in, it's like, if you're thinking too much about what this person you're trying to make a sales pitch to is thinking, you're going to come off as unnatural and weird and not present and all that stuff. even if it's not verbal they're still going to feel it and so it's just so much of it just comes down to being in your body in the moment and pushing those thoughts aside yeah and it's it's uh i feel like it's a pretty paralyzing thing when when you're concerned about what this person is thinking of you or or or like how they're evaluating you because there's a lot of that in baseball and and you gotta get used to it like we we in college we call it draftitis um like when guys are uh potentially going to be in the mlb draft and and they start to tank a little bit because every single day they show up and they see a scout there and they know it's for them and they know they think i need to perform today i need to make a good impression and then you don't and then it starts compiling so um yeah were you the kind of guy who like if if you know you're you have a normal sack state game against you know a normal opponent and um then somebody goes hey you know a scout from the a's is in the crowd today does is that i could see where for a certain type of athlete they're better off not knowing than knowing yeah um there so my junior year I was getting some interest and I knew I knew that there were scouts coming to the games and stuff but it wasn't until I met them individually and like I knew their face and I knew their name when I was like oh like Gary's here today to watch me yeah Gary is here to evaluate how I run throw hit look like think so that's that's when it started to get in my head a little bit.

48:17And I just had to get used to it. I had to be exposed to it, I think, a little bit. And the more I got exposed to it, the more I stopped kind of caring about that. But yeah, for like young players who aren't used to it, it's tough. It's a dagger for sure. Yeah, it's like doing an interview like this or doing an interview on live television. The act is fundamentally the same, but they tell you this little bit of information and suddenly your relationship to it changes because it feels scarier or like you're on a different kind of tightrope. And I think so much of stoicism is really about understanding that, hey, this thing being described this way or this way, this piece of information or this piece of information, it changes my relationship to it.

49:09And so on the one hand, that sort of makes you vulnerable. But on the other hand, it makes you realize like, oh, how I describe it, how I think about it, the story I tell myself about it is very, very powerful. And so I've got to start using that to my advantage also. I've got to start being able to go, hey, if I see it this way, I'm less stressed. If I see it this way, I'm more stressed. It's like, if you quit your job, you leave that job feeling very empowered. You're like, screw this. What you're doing is wrong. I'm out of here, right? You would walk out of the building feeling very empowered and strong.

49:47But if your boss came in and said, hey, we don't need you anymore. You're let go. You would leave the building feeling rejected and downcast and all this. Even if the day before, in both cases, you felt the same way that you didn't like working there and you didn't like what they were doing. And the result is the same. You don't work there anymore. but the way it happened and what you tell yourself about it determines what it's going to mean to you. And realizing that you, you have this power, um, I think is, you know, one of the big breakthroughs that we make in life.

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52:25eye yeah and i think i just think with uh the obstacle what helped me so much is the thought of viewing things objectively not with it like not with my own emotion uh sure because like what you're saying like you the the result is still the same and you felt the same exact way the day before about your job and you wanted to be done with it like the result's the same so why would I leave with my tail in between my legs when, when this is what I wanted just because I, I didn't, it didn't happen on my terms or it didn't, uh, you know, I, I couldn't feel like I won in the situation. Yeah. The, the, the ability to like, even, even just saying like, this is a slump, right.

53:09You have now characterized, uh, an objective thing, which is, you know, Hey, you, didn't hit it the last six at-bats or whatever, you've now put a label on it that makes it harder for you to be in the moment and to see it for what it is. And it's like right now, there's all these people that are talking, are we in a recession or not? And yes, obviously recessions mean something. There's a certain criteria that economists try to look at. Also though, A recession is a made-up, very general way of describing a pretty wide set of variables. I'm not saying recessions don't exist, but there's also this idea that basically none of this stuff exists.

53:58These are just words that were made. A slump, one person's slump is another person's mediocre month. Right. And, and so the words that we throw at these things, you know, very rarely are they, they helpful. We're often picking the unhelpful words and then it makes the hard thing we're trying to do even harder. Definitely. Um, and I think, I think one of the, one of the challenges in baseball that I've noticed is, um, like you'll have the media come in and they will like, they need to write, they need to write a article or something. So they'll start kind of throwing those words at you yeah and and putting them in your head and as a player like you're kind of just you take every day day by day and and you you do your best to trick yourself into thinking that your swing is in a good spot and your at-bats are in a good spot um and then like a like you know like i didn't have a i didn't have a good couple days and then all of a sudden the guy with the microphone in front of your face like so like are you slumping yeah and then you get defensive.

55:04You're like, no, I'm not slumping. I just had a bad couple. And then they walk away and you're like, am I slumping? And then it starts downward spiraling. No, I think great athletes are... It's not that they're not aware, but they are less aware than you think they are of things that the rest of the world cares a lot about. I was writing about Lou Gehrig a lot in Discipline is Destiny. And this reporter comes up to him and he goes, you know, you have this like incredible streak going, like the longest in the history of baseball. And Lou Gehrig's like, yeah, you know, I know, I know I haven't missed a game in a while.

55:46And the guy goes, well, how many games do you think you have in a row? And he said like, you know, like 1500. And he was like already at close to 2000. Like he, and I can imagine that him knowing every single day how many games he'd played in a row probably puts a lot of pressure on him. It's probably not helpful. It probably makes him anxious, probably makes him worried that something could go wrong, makes him maybe a bit egotistical. And it's better just to lose track of it. When I'm working out, if I'm swimming, it's better that I don't know what lap number I'm on, it's better that I just am lost in the thing that I'm doing.

56:30And so knowing exactly where you are, how much progress you're making, whether it's going well or not well, to have these sort of descriptions or this constant comparison, I don't think it really helps you with what you're trying to do in most activities. Yeah. And for Lou Gehrig too, I'm sure if he thought about it, it'd make his body feel way worse too. He's like, man, I played 1 ,500 games in a row. My body should be feeling it by now. Then you start believing that you're hurt or something. Freddie Freeman honestly blows my mind all the time because of that. Because he's like, no, I'm playing.

57:07It doesn't matter. Take a little bit of Advil, I'm playing. And he's kind of the modern day Cal Ripken or something like that, just playing every single day. Well, and then we talked about expectation earlier. The other problem is, let's say you're exactly aware of where you are, how many points you have, what your stats are, how many games in a row you've played, or how much money you've made, how much up you are in the market or down you are in the market. The other problem there is not just that it makes you self-conscious. It also encourages you to start setting expectations, right? So you go, okay, if this keeps up for 15 more days, then I will make X, right?

57:51Or, you know, my goal is to break 2000 or, you know, here's the time that I'm trying to set. And that is what sets you up then to be frustrated, you know, to force things in a way that if you were just, again, in the moment, sort of going with it as it's happening, you're still obviously trying as hard as you want to, but you're not sweating each individual instance more than you should. and you have less of what the Buddhists would call willful will. You don't need it to be a certain way. And so you can be a little bit more relaxed, which is, I think, ultimately the place that better performance comes from.

58:32Definitely. And I think you kind of get to that point where you kind of have what you want or you're at that high that you want to be at and you try and grasp onto that and keep it there when the law of averages says that it's going to level off at some point with whatever you're doing in life. And then the harder you're trying to hold on to that, the more it starts to slip through your fingers. And then the worse it starts to feel when it actually does average out and just goes back to normal. But it feels like it's the worst thing ever because you're grasping onto it so tightly. There's this thing that the physicist Richard Feynman said that really struck me.

59:18So as a very young man, he's like 19 or 20 years old, he falls in love and marries this woman, Arlene. They're both young, it's their first love. And they have this beautiful sort of newlywed life and she has tuberculosis and she ends up dying like within a year or 16 months of them being together. So it's this tragic, terrible thing that you might expect him to be sort of wrecked by for the rest of his life. But he would say that for this brief period of time, he had complete and total happiness. He had everything that he wanted. And he was saying that obviously it was not what he would have chosen to lose it.

59:59But the fact that he had it and then lost it, he said, the rest of my life didn't have to be so happy all the time because I'd already had it. right? And I thought that was a beautiful way of thinking it. So often, we have these goals, like I want to be in the major leagues. I want to write books. I want to meet someone. And we get it. And then what that does is instead of us being grateful and feeling like, hey, I did the thing. Everything else is gravy from here. We actually get to this place where we're in our own heads. We're paranoid. We're terrified of losing it. And then ultimately, that I think hastens us losing it.

1:00:40But you should get to a place where when you've done the thing, when you've hit the lottery, when you've succeeded, that should actually help you lower the stakes and thus be more present, more connected, and then be less forceful in your expectations because it's like you're playing with house money at this point. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was actually going to say, like when you go to the casino and you go up a couple hundred bucks or something, you're just there having a good time with your friends. You're not stressing that I need to make this money back to break even. I feel like that's your position, man.

1:01:21I mean, like you walked up to the plate in a major league baseball game, in a major league stadium, and you hit a home run, right? Like to go to that thing that your teammate talked to you about, you know, this season where you're in that slot. Like if I could have said to you when you were in high school or when you were in college, like, hey, you're going to make it to the major leagues and hit one home run and then that's it. Like you blow out your knee on the next play and you never play baseball again. Would you accept that deal? You probably would. You'd be like, that's the greatest life ever.

1:01:58That's all I want. Yeah, I made it. Totally. There's so many people that talk about like, oh man, I would kill for just one day in the big leagues. And a lot of us are complaining that our seasons are too long, so. Sure. No, I mean, I try to remind myself, like my goal was to write a book. Like the dream of a writer is to someday to get to write a book, right? And then, you know, you're in the middle of writing it and you're thinking about it coming out. And now you're like, well, it needs to be a bestseller. And then before it's even been out for a week, you're like, well, what's my next one?

1:02:38And am I going to get paid more money for it? And what's the next one after that? We're really not good at allowing ourselves to appreciate that you got to do the thing or that you got close to doing the thing. And yeah, you're immediately going to what's wrong with it, how it's not enough, how other people have more. And that's such a, imagine also, yeah, I'm going to take you back. You're in high school, you're in college. And I'm going to say, you're going to be playing Major League Baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers and you're not happy. Like you're kicking yourself because it's not perfect or the coach is a jerk or, you know, down the list.

1:03:21Like you'd be like, what is wrong with me? How could I not think that this is the greatest gift anyone could have possibly given me? Yeah. Why would I be so ungrateful? Yes. That's what my 12-year-old self would say. Why would you be so ungrateful for that? Yeah, yeah. You'd have eaten any amount of shit to get just one second of that. And then, yeah, you're like, why is this private jet late? yeah yeah the uh we i just feel like we become accustomed to uh our environment and um you know that that step back and realizing i i try and realize that sort of thing as much as i can especially after trace uh mentioned that to me like what was i doing three years ago like three years ago I was sweeping out a batting cage in the backyard during 2020 because I the season got canceled and I needed a place to hit so there was this this rundown cage at a family friend's house I was sweeping it out like trying to get it pristine so I could take a couple swings because like I wasn't good enough to get selected for the the group that was like still training so you know like if you asked me at that point if i would take a single day not even playing in the big leagues a big hell yeah yeah i mean yeah it's it's it's interesting how quickly it recedes into our memory that all that all this stuff almost went away in march of 2020 yeah for so I mean, for some people, like baseball speaking, sports-wise speaking, for some people it did.

1:05:13Like they're like, oh, season's banged. Like I'm this old. Like that's it for me. And then they kind of let it be that way. Even more bluntly, I mean, a million and a half people died. Yeah. Some people it actually did end. Yeah. It's, yeah. I mean, you think about Lou Gehrig, right? Like, you know, just one day your body's like, nope. Like, and you've got two years to live. Like that happens too, which I think is to me that the idea of Memento Mori is, hey, it could all go away. So I'm actually going to be here for this. I'm not going to be angry. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to take things for granted.

1:05:57I'm not going to hold on to stuff. I'm going to appreciate it. Yeah. Well, I think often about Lou Gehrig's speech that he had when he was like, today I consider myself the luckiest man alive. Yeah. And it just amazes me that he viewed it that way. yeah because like it would be so easy to be like wow like i had everything and it was just all swept under the rug or it was all uh the cloth was pulled off the table and and uh you know for him to for him to view it that way it's it's pretty pretty beautiful well what i also think about with luke eric like luke eric died in his 30s right um but but babe ruth died at 53 right And you look at pictures of Babe Ruth, he's like the oldest 53-year-old in the world.

1:06:57He looks terrible. And that's because he took it for granted in a different way, which is that he didn't take care of himself. He assumed he had forever. He assumed his gifts would never fail him. He cared more about money and parties than fulfilling his potential. What I think is so interesting is there is no sense that Lou Gehrig left anything on the table in the seasons that he played. Whereas Babe Ruth, obviously one of the greatest ever, so not enough people think this. But I think when you actually look at Babe Ruth, you read about his life, you're like, he could have been even better. He could have done even more.

1:07:41He could have done it longer. And it was his fault. in a way that it wasn't the fault of, you know, people who died in the pandemic or, you know, somebody who gets ALS. Um, and so there's also kind of an arrogance and a selfishness and an irresponsibility in like not taking care of yourself, taking it for granted. Um, that's like a self-inflicted tragedy. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I, I, I believe that, Like you see it, you see it happen, um, in pro ball. Like I haven't been in the big leagues long enough to see it, uh, at that level. But, um, you know, you, you see a little bit in the minor leagues and guys, guys will kind of be thinking to themselves like, Oh, I, I, I did this when I was in college and I raked.

1:08:32So like, I'm going to continue to do it. And it's like, well, you, you probably were younger and you recovered faster and you, uh you know maybe you whatever it's probably just because you're younger and you recovered faster that you didn't feel hung over the next day sure but then then you carry that on and then all of a sudden like you you turn whatever age and you wake up the next morning feeling crappy but you're like well i did in college and i raked and i got me to pro ball so i'm gonna keep doing it that's kind of like when i was saying uh like what got you here like that's probably not what got you there Yes.

1:09:09But some guys' mental psyche, they think that that's what helps me stay relaxed. That's what helps me do whatever. And it doesn't. Yeah. And I think that's true for all of us. When you were younger, you could get by on raw talent. You could get by on sheer willpower. You could maybe not have the greatest of the mental games because you were over-reliant on your physical game. and then yeah as you get older and it gets harder and there's more adversity and you know now the averages are working against you now's when you got to be in you know good shape all around and you got to be really tight or uh you're gonna you're gonna get you know you're gonna get your ass busted yeah no i mean i think in all sports like you look at a high schooler you could you could easily see on the field oh that kid's the best guy on the field like yeah it's it's clear is day that this kid has the most talent and the higher up you get the more it starts to level out and then it gets to a point where everybody's pretty much the same like there's obviously like slight differences but everyone's the same but some guys just like their brain is is working in a way that other people's aren't yeah well the fact that you're reading this stuff and working on this stuff this early and it's not coming out of like an injury or a you know some some scandal or controversy or you got to it when you got busted back down to the minors and you fell from the number one pick to the 400th pick.

1:10:46I mean, I think you're ahead of the curve, man. So I'm very excited to see where it all goes for you. Thank you.

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