The Daily Stoic - James Outman On Why Baseball Is Stoicism

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

Ryan speaks with James Outman on why he believes that baseball and Stoicism both promote the same practices, why baseball players are uniquely prepared to deal with failure, how practicing the Stoic mindset helps him survive “the yips”, why Lou Gehrig’s story is the perfect example of Memento Mori, and more.James Outman is a professional baseball player who plays centerfield for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Since being called up to the Majors in July of 2022, James has amassed a batting average of .260 with 18 home runs and 81 RBI (as of September 2023). The highlights of his rookie season included hitting the Dodgers’ first home run of the 2023 season, and a go-ahead grand slam in the ninth inning against the Chicago Cubs, as well as winning the National League Rookie of the Month award for April 2023. James credits much of his MLB success to the mental fortitude that he has developed since reading The Obstacle Is The Way during the pandemic and studying Stoicism ever since. You can follow James on Instagram @jamesoutman and Twitter @james_outman.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bosh Legacy returns, now streaming. Matt has been taken. Oh God. His daughter is in the hands of a madman. What are the police have been looking for me? But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do. I doubt that very much.

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Sure, odd things happened in my childhood bedroom. But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent occupant of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too, including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great grandmother.

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Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on. So do sit back and enjoy Br Bride and And on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome 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. Hey, 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 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 I just started 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. Well, I got one, I got a note a couple 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 pain porch when someone who's older than me will be like, I'm here because my kid tracked me here. Like, that's something I never expected.

But anyways, he and his dad had been reading the books, and then he had an incredible debut for the Dodgers. He hit the home run and his first major league at that. And he's a big fan of the Stoic. 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 bass seven or more times in his first career games since 1912. Students 26, it 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. And 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 still a system. So thanks to James for coming on the podcast. I hope you like it. in LA right now, so right 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 eighth street, like by the whole foods. Yup, yup. I lived at sixth and spring. Okay. You don't spend a lot of time there.

You can all live? No, I live here and then I go to the field The 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 a athletic club that they it's like a gym but it but it opened in in the 1800s and And then they did they built this cool school building in the early 1900s. So on the sixth floor, there's this 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'm 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. Mm hmm. Well, you know, it's funny. Both my both my parents met and went to Sac State. Oh, really?

Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's funny. My grandparents lived right across the street, basically. So I've spent a lot of time there too. Yeah, I enjoyed my time over in Sacramento. It was fun.

The baseball team was great. And yeah. 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 like 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 River Cat's games because it was pretty much the only game in town if you wanted to see anything. Yeah. Yeah, the, 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, but yeah, yeah, it is what it is.

So talk to me, how did you end up finding the obstacles the way? I was very cool. It was very cool for me to hear that. Oh, yeah. So, man, I can't, I think it was 2020, maybe 2019. I was already in Pro Ball and my dad would just say, I think it was 2020, maybe 2019. I was already in Pro Ball and my dad would just say, hey, I read this book and I think you would like it a lot.

So it's 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, oh, this is baseball. 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 mainly baseball and then offseason time at the time. So. 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,

you gotta find a way to deal with it and everybody kind of deals with it in their own way. Some guys get angry, some guys kind of deals with it in their own way. Some guys get angry, some guys kind of laugh it off, shrug it off. Some guys just go on to the next pitch and 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. You go in there and you slam the bat or you slam the helmet and then I would do that and then I would just kind of realize,

man, I don't feel any better. Now I just look dumb in front of everybody. So, but yeah, once I read that book, I felt like I was able to take things and strive a little bit easier, I think, when it comes to the game. When a baseball player is like at, you know, at the plate, and then you see him getting 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 ump 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? It's kind of all of the above. I think it varies guy to guy in situation or situation, but I think for the most part, it's more just like pent up frustration from at bat's prior or just how the game has been going for you prior. There's a lot of luck involved in baseball too, because there's seven guys standing out there, and you've got to miss them with the baseball, but you can't really control exactly where it goes. So, you get unlucky a little bit, then you stack on some bad at-bats, and then that sort of

piles on to the next day, and a little bit of the more the same happens and 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. That's usually where it comes up. And then maybe the breaking point is when you're in a big situation, you've got a guy on third with less than one out and then you can't get the job done. And 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 what it's not, even though this is just something we made up in our heads, and in fact it's going, 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 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 and because it's not your piss. sense that this specific thing that you're dealing with should be going a specific way and because it's not your piss. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I think it's easy to feel that way in baseball just because there is so much failure and there's such a spotlight on you that you kind of lose sight of life outside of this baseball universe. Sure. So, yeah, definitely I agree 100%.

I remember I was having a rough couple months earlier this year and Trace Thompson, my locker mate at the time, was like, hey, all right, I acted the game. I come and sit down and I'm all, like, you know, just, you could tell that I'm frustrated, like, I'm sitting there just kind of thinking and he's like, hey, if I asked you in May, would you take being on the team

and like, I mean, list off the stats that I had? Yeah. He's like, would you take that? And I was like, yeah, especially because I didn't know if I was going to make the team earlier this year. I would have shaken anything. So it kind of put things in perspective and made me look outside of like what exactly is just happening that day. I think about this with flying all the time, right? So it's like, you show up to the gate, your flight's supposed to take off at two and they tell you it's gonna 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 gonna happen. And so yeah, you're like, I can't catch any breaks, right? But of course what you're not thinking about is that 85% and 95% of the flights that you take, they do take off on time.

And you're forgetting that last week, you're 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.

I just think it's interesting how we could get so wrapped up in what's going on exactly now. And not like until Tray said that to me, that's when I finally stepped back. And I was like, oh, I'm like, things a tool tray said that's me. That's when I finally stepped back and I was like, oh, like, I'm actually going pretty good right now. Yeah, but don't you think that's the double edged sword of what makes someone into an elite performer, right? Is 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, a little bit more to work out a bit more you know to 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. Then your next day is win today. Win today. So when you don't win that day you're're like, oh my god, I just put all my energy and focus

into this one day and it didn't happen. And then that's when you start stacking those kinds of days. Sure. I'm dumping a whole lot of energy and not seeing the success, but that's just the way baseball goes. It's a messed up sport.

Well, and the fact of baseball is that you're gonna miss way more than you connect, right? That's like the greatest people that have ever done it are missing, you know, a majority of the time, right? Like, you know, and so like, that is a fact and you know that and we know that in life, right? Like, you're not, not every sales call is gonna work, right? Not every book that I publish is gonna work.

Like not every, you know, attractive stranger you approach in a bar is gonna be interested in you. Like we know that the majority of the time we're gonna miss, and that's gonna 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, you know, six of the 10 that I'm going to miss.

All that matters is that I connect with four at some point. Yeah. Yeah. And in baseball, that's your hall of fame or if that's the case. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, you're the best of the best to ever do it. Well, I was thinking about this too.

Bill Balechek 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, he'll have lost the most games in the history of football, because he's like the longest 10-year coach in football. And he's gone the furthest in the playoffs, right? So he's been like, just think about how many Super Bowls he's lost. Like, that's because he's been in the Super Bowl a lot of times, right? And so, you know, we often, we want, like, we want the good part, like, we want the number of home runs or RBI's 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, all the misses. Yeah, no, I think the more you hit you have, the more at that 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, I got some pretty great players on my team playing with me. Like a couple 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 and and you know, they're still hitting 300 or whatever it is like they're still getting out more times than not. But twice as many times. They strike out twice as many times as they connect. Yeah. Well, yeah, well, the good ones don't strike out as much, but they still get out. Yes. They still get out. And that's just the nature of the game. It's it's nine verse one when you're hitting and it's it's hard it's hard to to succeed. You need 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 like people go like, I hate losing. Well, it's like, you probably picked the wrong game then because like, you're going to like, if you have a 10 year career in baseball, which would be extraordinarily lucky, you're going to have lost so many fucking games 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 seasons fluctuated in the game so long. But 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 like my first professional baseball kind of experience, I had to like make a

little mental note that wow, you're playing every single day, you got to get used to this because this is what's going to be like from now on. And like in college you play three or four times a week, probably more like four times a week, high school is like two games a week. So you're playing every single day and you're at the field for 10 hours every single day. And it's definitely a marathon. And so that's, I actually think that's why 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. We, no one's done that in the history of baseball. So. Right. I mean, I tell the story in discipline is Destiny. When Lou Garrett 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 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 like Hartford. And he really struggles. And he not just, 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. He basically gives him this advice that changes Lou Gehrig's life, the sort of talk to him, whatever it is, 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

of in a history of baseball, it was a Hall of Fameroo, it was the World Series six times, this incredible athlete who is very, very great. But it's also freeing, I think, to go, hey, you're not gonna be perfect every single day. In fact, some days you're going to suck. And 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. I actually remember having a conversation with Justin Turner, who's longtime Dodger, he's with the Red Sox now. It was like a Q&A during the COVID time.

And the office was trying to scramble just to get like anything beneficial for the minor league guys since they just missed out on the season. So we had a little Q&A and somebody had asked in the question of like slumping and like going through those kinds of times and 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 know you 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 lot more proud of yourself. So he kind of looks at those more as opportunities rather than times of despair. We have, 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 these statistically inevitable yes

or connection, right? You know, it's like, I got it. I got to get if I'm trying to bat 300, I got to get these seven bad at bats out of the way. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 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're due now. Yes, yes. Even though you're really not like, yeah. And that's kind of the joke, but statistically, it's bound to happen at some point. No, right, you can get yourself in trouble if you're like, I am now owed this. Like I had a hundred bad days in a row.

So if I do, it's my day today, and then when that doesn't happen, then it only makes it worse. But 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 gotta trust it. And if I try to over-correct, 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 like 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. Yeah, it's sure. And yeah, he's got a good way of putting it in perspective, just kind of simplifying it outside of my own, like, my own focus on the game. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a renewable natural gas bus

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And 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 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. In a sense, 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? It'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, you know, has a habit of humbling us about. That kind of, that kind of ego. Definitely. Yeah, I really felt that, you know, my, my first month, I came out and I was, I was really hot, like swinging it really well. And I was like, man, this is, my first month, I came out and I was really hot, like 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 like 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. So.

Well, I think you're being modest. Didn't you hit a home run at your first at bat in the major leagues? Yes. Flat. 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 it is 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 it was hard to get hot in six days. So on day six, they sent me right back down the triple in. 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 experiences.

And then, which is a dangerous thing because you have perhaps an unrepresented view of what it's supposed to be like all the time. Definitely. Definitely. I would jokingly think to myself, man, this is, I feel like it was harder in AAA. Then I realized that is not the case. And then I realized that is not the case. Once I got humbled a little bit. Yeah, it's, I feel like so with my first book came out when I was 25, I think 25, 26. And so which is way young, you know, younger than it's supposed to do,

you know, it debuts on the New York Times bestseller list or not on the bestseller list, there's a long story. But it hits the bestseller list and gets tons of media attention, you know, everyone wants a piece of it. It's option to be TV shows. And then there's this part of you that's like, yeah, man, this is how it goes. Like you deserve this, you earned it, you know, you did it. And it's like, it's not the beginner's luck, but it's just circumstances aligned in that moment

and it's not usually like that, right? And if you wanna stay at it, if you wanna keep doing it, if that's now the baseline of your expectations, you've put yourself in a bad spot, right? Versus the person that sort of is still, I don't wanna say wary, but like, you have to have a healthy respect for it. You can't be saying stuff like 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 gonna be. Yeah, definitely. And I feel like it's definitely easy to, um, I mean, you see in baseball the time like somebody reaches the pinnacle, they reach the peak and then they kind of stop doing what got them there. Yes.

And, and then that's kind of where those that, that downfall will begin is, is, um, 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 and then you make it and you're like, 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 hit a, you get on a streak and you're like, I got this now, I can take it for granted.

I'm gonna toss out all the things that were working for me. Yeah. It's, why do you suppose that's the case?. Yeah. It's a... Why 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 a chop wood carry water. It's the opposite of chop wood carry water,

right? It's, it's, oh, it's working. So I don't have to do that manual labor anymore. You know, 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 gonna, I'm about to step up and crush this ball. That is where the golf gods just sort of go, no, you're not. Let me show you how bad you are at golf. Yeah, we got the baseball gods too. We always say it rewards you for playing hard or rewards you for doing all the little things and

You know you start show boating then you start you start hitting line drives that get caught you start getting bad calls at the plate so Yeah, I feel that I understand where you're coming from with that I've always wondered too like you know in, and the post game interviews where they go and ask these athletes these questions, they're never the most articulate answers. It's always sort of clichés or kind of like, like a stream of consciousness thing.

I wonder if part of that is because 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 wanna be like, I just get up there and I do my thing. I wonder if it's like, you don't wanna think about the baseball gods too much or 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 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? And I don't want to say honestly nothing, like, yeah, I gotta give them something. So, you know, you kind of just say like, oh, I'm just trying to do my job and got a good pitch to hit. And you also want to try and like find, 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, you know or you win a game two to one, that means the pitching staff shove the whole game and shut the offense down. I think all of us try and point the spotlight to the team or away from us a little bit as much we can. Sometimes the questions are phrased where you have to answer it. Like, I did this, I was doing this, but I think a lot of guys like in high school and stuff, you start getting a pressure for that. Like, 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 saying the words out loud to yourself when you're reading 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. I was like, I don't want to mess up what's clearly working. And so I was like, the stakes are too high and the machine is too delicate to like root around

in there too much. And I think when you start to get self-conscious about what you're doing, when you think too much about it, 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 why you're doing it, 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, definitely. And in baseball, when that's not happening, we call that the Yips. Yes. The Yips. Some people think that's a super taboo word, but I feel like I can say it. I was a survivor of them. I had them a little bit. So tell me about that. So I was a catcher in college and throwing the ball back to the picture, which is the simplest thing you could possibly do. I shouldn't do it. I thought about every single movement my whole entire body was making to get the ball

there. And then the other one that got me really bad too was a drop third strike. So I would block the ball there. 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 run would be running down to first base. And I had all the time in the world just a nice ball to the first basement and I could not do it. There's so many thoughts I would just go up through my head. And yeah, and then I actually got moved to the outfield and what kind of helped me get rid of them a little bit was 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 I got to I got to actually throw it

so I didn't have time to think and You know the more I did that, from different angles all over the field, I just kind of realized that nobody cares about, nobody cares if I hit you a little bit over here versus directly in your chest as long as it's in a general vicinity, and slowly but surely after moving positions,

I feel like I overcame them. I'll come back from time to time, but I remember actually my first spring training, I felt them coming back because I was playing catch with like some various established big leaders. 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. Do 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 it kind of 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 I've always I've always thought the Yips were kind of just an extreme, you know, exaggerated version of that. Yeah. So my solution when I, like, 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.

So my body has to figure out how to do it rather than my brain and just let my body work. And then 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. Cause like my brain has never told me to stand on one foot and throw the ball before. So 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, I'm just gonna 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 a Nate Boyer, who was a green beret and then he was a long snapper for the Seahawks very briefly. But 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 fuel go kicker could, right? And catchers tend to get the Yips and pitchers get the Yips, but, uh, yes, center fielders don't seem to get it as much. And I wonder how much of that is the repetiveness of the motion and the lack of variety in it is where you get in your own head, whereas when things are in flux, when the quarterback is worried about taking a blind side hit, they don't really have the luxury or the ability to get in their own head, right?

Things 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, like 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. Because it's, I'm lobbing the ball back to the picture. I'm not, that's all I'm doing. But I do it 300 times a day. And then I do it,

like in the bullpins. And then all of a sudden, like, I have one bad throw. I'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 of the podcasts, 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. Yeah. 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. But 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, it kind of frees you up and like you said, it lowers the expectations. That's what I felt when I was out in the center field is like, I got this shortstop out here who's got the best hands 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 picks it and it's like I did hit him in the chest. And it's like wow, that was, thank you for that, that was cool. Ha ha. Have you read Rick and Keele's book, The Phenomenon?

No. Oh, it's so good. I mean, that's an incredible story. That's a picture 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, you know, you could even do it sometimes in the bullpen or in warm-ups, but it wasn't until he sort of got out there that the problem started. And so, you know, that 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. Like 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 isolated to you, 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 a natural 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 so much of it just comes down to being in your body in the moment and pushing those thoughts aside. Yeah. And it's, I feel like it's a pretty paralyzing thing when you're concerned about what this person is thinking of you or how they're evaluating you because there's a lot of that in baseball and you've got to get used to it.

In college, we call it draftitis. When guys are potentially going to be in the MLB draft 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 it starts compiling. So. Yeah, were you the kind of guy who, like if you have a normal sack state game

against a normal opponent, and then somebody goes, hey, 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. So my junior year, I was getting some interest

and I knew that there were scouts coming to the games and stuff, but it wasn't until I met them individually and I got new 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 when it started to get in my head a little bit.

And 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 know, this thing being described this way or

this way, this piece of information or this piece of information, it changes my relationship to it. And so that's on the one hand, that sort of makes you vulnerable, but on the other hand, it makes you realize, oh, you know, 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. Like it's like, 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. But if your boss came in and said, Hey, we don't need you anymore. You're like, Oh, 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 results 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, I think is you know one of the big breakthroughs that we make in life. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it, and it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. Enbridge, life takes energy. Emily, do you remember when One Direction called it a day?

I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well, luckily, we can. A lot, because our new season of terribly famous is all about the first One Directioner to go it alone. Zayn Malik. We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band. And explore why, when he reached the top, he decided to walk away. Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. It's terribly famous.

Yeah, and I think I just think with the obstacle, what helped me so much is the thought of viewing things objectively, not with it, not with my own emotion. Sure. Because like what you're saying, like you, 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. The result is the same. same exactly the day before about your job and you wanted to be done with it. Yeah. The results are the same. So why would I leave with my tail in between my legs when this is what I wanted?

Just because I didn't happen on my terms or it didn't, you know, I couldn't feel like I won in the situation. Yeah, the ability to, like, even just saying, like, this is a slump, right? You have now characterized an objective thing, which is, you know, hey, you didn't hit it the last, you know, 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 you know, it's like right now, like, and there's all these people there to, are we in a recession or not, right?

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, right? I'm not saying recessions don't exist, but there's also this idea that basically none of this stuff exists. These are just words that were made. Like, a slump, one person's slump is another person's mediocre month.

And so the words that we throw at these things, very rarely are they helpful. We're often picking the unhelpful words, then it makes the hard thing we're trying to do even harder. Definitely. And I think one of the challenges in baseball that I've noticed is, you'll have the media

come in and they need to write an article or something. So they'll start throwing those words at you and putting them in your head. As a player, you take every day day by day and 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. And then, like, you know, 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? And then, you get the fancy, you're like, no, I'm not slump. I just had a bad couple, and then they walk away, am I something?

And then that 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 Estesanian. This reporter comes up to him and he goes, you know you have this incredible streak going, like the longest in the history of baseball.

And Lou Gehrig's like, yeah, I know I know I have a Mr. Game in a while. And the guy goes, well, how many games do you think you have in a row? And he said like, like, 1,500. And he was like already at close to 2,000. 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, you know, worried that something could go wrong. Makes him, you know, maybe a bit egotistical. And it's better just to lose track of it. Like when I'm working out, like 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. And 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 you thought about it and make his body feel way worse too, because like man, like 1500 games in a row, my body should be feeling it by now. Then you 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. It doesn't matter. because he's like, no, I'm playing like it doesn't matter. Take a little bit of ad bill I'm playing and he he's kind of the modern day Cal Ripkin or something like that just playing every single day. Well, and then we you know we talked about expectation earlier. The other problem is like if you

like let's say you're exactly aware of 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. So you go, okay, if this keeps up for 15 more days, then I will make X, right? Or, 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 Buddhist would call willful will. Like 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. Definitely.

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're trying grasp on onto that and keep it there when the law of averages says that it's gonna level off at some point with whatever you're doing in life. And then the harder you're trying to hold onto that, the more it starts to slip through your fingers. And then the worst 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. So 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, you know, for this brief period of time, he had like complete and total happiness. He had everything that he wanted, right? And he was saying that obviously it was not what he would have chosen to lose it, but the fact that he had it and then lost it, he said, you know, the rest of my life didn't have to be so happy all the time, because I'd already

had it. And I thought that was a beautiful way of thinking it. So often, we have these goals. 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, hasten's us losing it. But 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 have, like, be less forceful in your expectations because it's like, you know, you're playing with house money at this point.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was actually going to say, say like when you go to the casino and you go up a couple hundred bucks or something, you're just, you're just there having a good time with your friends. You're not, you're not a stressing that I need to make this money back to break even. I feel like that's your position, man. I 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 sl, 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 would you accept that deal? You probably would you be like, that's the greatest life ever. That'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 we're, you know, 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 best seller.

And then, then before, you know, it's even been out for a week, you're like, well, what's my next one? And am I gonna get paid more money for it? And what's the next one after that? You know, 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 gonna take you back to your in high school, you're in college, and I'm gonna say, you're gonna 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, like, 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 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, I just feel like we become accustomed to our environment and, you know, that step back and realizing, I try and realize that sort of thing as much as I can, especially after Trace mentioned that to me, like, what was I doing three years ago? Like, three years ago, I was sweeping out of bad encades in the backyard during 2020, because the season got canceled and I needed a place to hit.

So there was 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 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 babies a big hell, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's interesting how quickly it recedes into our memory that all this stuff almost went away in March of 2020. Yeah, for some people, like baseball speaking, sports, so I Yeah, for some people, like baseball speaking sports, so I speaking, for some people that did, like they're like, oh, season's banged, like, um, um, this old, like, um, this, that's it for me. And then they, they kind of let it, let it be that way. Even more bluntly, I mean, a million and a half people died. Yeah. Some people had actually did end. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you think about Lou Garrett, right? Like, you know, just one day your body is like, nope, like, and you've got two years to live. Like,

that happens too, which I think is to me, the idea of a mental Mori is, hey, it could all go away. So I'm actually gonna be here for this. I'm not gonna be angry, I'm not gonna take things for granted, I'm not gonna hold on to stuff. I'm gonna appreciate it. Yeah, well, I think often about Lou Garrag's speech that he had

when he was like, today I consider myself the luckiest man alive. Yeah. And like, it just, it amazed me that he... Goosebumps. Right now just beauty that way. Yeah, because like, it would be so easy to be like, wow, I had everything and it would just all slip under the rug. Or it was all, the cloth was pulled off the table and for him to view it that way, it's

pretty beautiful. Well, what I also think about with Luke Garrett, like Luke Garrett died in his 30s, right? 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. He 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. You know, he cared more about like money and parties than fulfilling his potential. What I think is so interesting is, you know, Luke, there is no sense that Lou Gareg left anything on the table in the seasons that he played, right? 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, he 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. And so there's also kind of an arrogance and a selfishness and a new responsibility in like not taking care of yourself, taking it for granted. That's like a self-inflicted tragedy. Yeah. Yeah. And I believe that. You see it happen in Probe.

I haven't been in the big leagues long enough to see it at that level. But you see a little bit of the minor leagues and guys will kind of be thinking themselves like, oh, I did this and I was in college and I raked. So 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, you know, maybe you, whatever, that's probably just because you're younger and you recovered faster that you did feel hung over the next day. Sure. But then you carry that on and then all of a sudden you turn whatever age and you wake

up the next morning feeling crappy but you're like, well, I didn't college and I raked and I got me to pro-ball so I'm going to keep doing it. That's kind of like what I was saying, like what got you here, like that's probably not what got you there. Yes. But like some guys mental psyche, they think that like that's what helps me stay relaxed. That's what helps me do whatever and it doesn't. Yeah, and it it it um, I think that's true for all of us, you know, 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 overreliant

on your physical game. Then yes, you get older and it gets harder and there's more adversity. Now, the averages are working against you. Now's when you gotta be in good shape all around and you gotta be really tight or you're gonna get, you're gonna get your ass busted. Yeah, no, I mean, I think in all sports, like you look at a high school or you could easily see on a field, oh, that kid's the best guy on the field.

It's clear as day that this kid has the most town. And the higher up you get, the more starts to level out. And then it gets to a point where everybody's pretty much the same. Like, there's obviously slight differences, but everyone's the same. But some guys just, like, their brain 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 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. I mean, I think you're ahead of the curve, man. So I'm very excited to see where I'll go for you. Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and ad free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad freefree on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Okay, so if you had a time machine, how far in time would you need to go back to be a dominant basketball player of that year?

I need to go to when Bob Coosie was playing. Back in the plumber day. 27 year old Shay would give Bob Cooszy the business. He's not guarding me. Hi, I'm Jason G'Zepsione. And I'm Shay Serrano and we are back. We have a new podcast from Wondering. It's called Six Trophies. And it's the best. Each week Shay and I are combing through all of the NBA storylines finding the best, most interesting, most compelling ones, and then handing out six pop culture themed trophies for six basketball related activities. Trophies like the Dominic Toretto, I live in my life a quarter mile in a time trophy,

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