STAY POSITIVE & CARRY A BIG BAT

“Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.”   

--Yogi Berra

Let’s face the facts; the Yankees need a dose of positive reinforcement.  Perhaps even an antidote for their “hitless disease” plaguing their post season. And with the Captain down and out with a season ending ankle injury (Read HERE) and away from the team as he heads to North Carolina to see a specialist, his absence from Yankees even for a few hours may be the most lethal blow yet.  When you need to perform, you need positive energy to fuel this performance.  No one has been more positive and passionate about the game throughout his career as a Yankee than Derek Jeter.  And this positive attitude is critical to keeping the toxins away from our boys.

In the ESPN.com article published in late August Much ado? Not to Derek Jeter, Jeter discusses the importance of staying as “positive as possible, no matter what. That's why I don't read the papers. I don't like to fill my head with negativity.”  The writer ends the article with a quote from the Captain that sums everything up regarding keeping upbeat despite the bad breaks, "I've been doing this a lo-o-o-ng time. I always believe."

But does building a positive disposition come with experience? Lou Gorman, an old and wise former general manager for the Red Sox once said in an interview with me about 19-years ago, that players need to have a positive temperament.  He used the words “good make up."  Many say that when a kid is good and has talent, he will get noticed, but what teams are really after is that player’s capacity to handle stress, ability to learn and be coached. 

So experience can build character, which can ultimately build longevity in the game. But will it give you a bigger bat?  There were many teams this season that showed improvement early on this year because of their “attack-first” attitude.  One of those teams is the Mariners (HERE), and another is Pittsburgh. The San Francisco Giants came back from a 2-0 deficit in the NLDS (HERE) to win and advance.  The Yankees, over the years, have had that kind of spirited, spunky attitude but lately that positive aggressiveness has disappeared replaced by dribbles to the pitcher, strikeouts, and an overall inability to score runs.  The bat gets bigger as the positive energy swells- it’s contagious and it needs to happen now. 

Raul Ibanez gets up there and just does his thing-he’s got nothing to lose in just getting up there and just staying focused- the rest happens naturally.  And ARod, Grandy, and Swish don’t seem to be able to “hit a lick”, as John Sterling so eloquently stated in his broadcast on Friday night.  When bad things happen to good people and in this case, good players, how do you rebound?

How can Robinson Cano, who has gone 2-32 in the post season, snap out of it?  According to NBC Sports Hardball Talk (HERE), Cano will just have to “hit his way out of the slump.”  He may just have to believe despite the toughness in pitching about to face him and his team in Detroit this week. 

The dugout has to be loud, the voices need to be empowering, the self-talk needs to be inspiring and the negativity needs to exit from the players, from management, from the media and yes, the fans.  We have to stay positive too and believe that our team can fight back and give life to the Twitter trending hashtag #27andcounting.  We need to be like Jeter is to them and keep the faith no matter what. 

--Suzie Pinstripe, BYB Opinion Columnist
Twitter: @suzieprof




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