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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Hearing Voices
by Dave
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Lollipop, lollipop, oh Lollylollypop!
A Philadelphia Phillies fan who had long ago relocated to the New York area for his employment was up very late watching the baseball World Series recently. He was rather depressed because his team was down three games to one. The next morning he made his way to the primary care physician for his annual physical. The doctor, not at all a sports fan but aware that his patient had a family history of certain mental disorders asked his patient the question he always did on these visits.
The doctor inquired, "How are you? Have you been feeling down at all lately?"
The patient replied, "Actually I'm very depressed today."
The doctor inquired further, "Are you experiencing any confusion?"
The groggy patient answered, "I'm a bit confused this morning but nothing out of the ordinary."
The now concerned doctor continued, "How would you characterize this confusion? How deeply are you depressed? Have you thought about killing yourself? Have you had any other violent thoughts?"
The patient, irritated, joked with a somewhat wicked smirk, "Suicide? No, but I can think of a few people I'd like to punch in the face like Ryan Howard or Brad Lidge, maybe ARod."
The doctor, now extremely concerned, dug in, "Who are these guys, co-workers? What did they do to get you so angry, particularly this Rodney fellow? You made such a face when you said his name. Would you ever actually engage in violence against one of your co-workers?"
The patient, now rather amused with the doctor, exclaimed, "Look doctor, it doesn't matter, OK? Let's get to something more serious. I don't have cancer or anything, do I? I'd like to get this visit over before much longer so I can go home and take a nap. I took the day off from work today. I called in sick this morning so I don't have to deal with the NY fellows."
The doctor, now extremely concerned and strongly considering institutionalization for his obviously deeply depressed patient, made a final inquiry before pulling the trigger, "Have you been hearing any voices?"
The patient, now fully awake and finally realizing what was going on, said, "Doctor, I'm depressed because the Phillies are going to lose the World Series. Lidge and Howard are on the team. ARod is a Yankee. Don't you watch baseball at all? I'd like to ring the necks of all three but I'm not violent and, you no-sport-idiot, I am not hearing any voices other than perhaps Tim McCarver's - that's the TV announcer calling the games. So can we please move on if I promise to tell you when I am actually suffering from depression?"
The doctor, now a little more in step with his patient, replied, "OK, you scared me for a moment. You need to lose weight, take your cholestrol drugs more regularly and stop staying up so late watching baseball."
Do you hear voices? I do. I think we all do. If I am not listening to someone; if I am not speaking; if there is no talking going on around me, I generally hear that little voice inside my head, my voice. It says, "don't forget to go to the bank," "put out the trash tonight," I have to catch one of the kids after dinner tonight, I hope I can make it," or some such. Most of us hear our own little voice in our own little head telling us whatever it is that our brain wants us to focus on. Or, am I alone in this? Maybe I should be institutionalized!
All kidding aside, there is a very important, difficult to discuss, point in all this.
When I am learning something, I generally "hear" the voice of the person who has been instructing me. When I played sports seriously, I "heard" the voice of my coaches inside my head. After a while, I suppose the voice of the teacher, instructor or coach is converted into my own voice but my experience is one of hearing the voice, not merely thinking about something they said or I am saying in their stead.
If you are of my generation, you can think of an example of this being portrayed in comedy. There is the Little Rascals episode in which one of the characters must memorize a poem and he is procrastinating about it. &n bsp; As he drifts off to a daydream, he hears, "learn that poem, learn that poem, learn that poem."
The problem that arises in this hearing of the coach, teacher, mentor, etc. is I can be interrupted by others speaking. If I am attempting to do a difficult activity, I am listening to something my mentor has told me and if there is too much talking around me, I lose focus and the voice goes silent. When folks interrupt me, I lose the voice, I lose focus, I cannot continue.
Obviously a ball player can never be very good unless he or she learns to tune out other voices or push them into the white noise background. With pitchers, this is particularly true. You throw a ball and the other teams starts in immediately with "too low to make it go" or "too high to make it fly." If you can't get past that, you do not have a future in pitching. If you are batting and hear anything that the catcher or other fielders has to say, well then, somebody is going to recognize your rabbit ears and really start giving you the business. Ball players must learn to tune out irrelevant voices.
Too bad umps aren't accomplished at this skill!
The typical softball player has a lot of voices going on in her head. There is the hitting or pitching instructor, perhaps somebody who has given her pointers on fielding. Her speed and agility guy or gal is also trying to speak inside her head. Then, of course, there are the team coaches. If a team has 4 coaches and each has something to say, well, in this case, there are 6 or more voices competing to be heard whilst she pushes the other team's and their parents' cheers out of her head.
You think this is easy? Try it at your workplace or at some social gathering. It is nearly impossible to push 30 people's voices out of your head while listening intently to a half dozen others and keep your sanity in the process. Yet ball players do it all the time. It is a matter of survival. But it takes a tremendous effort and a huge volume of psychic energy.
If on top of all the coaches and myriad instructors, your kid must also listen to you, she is being set up for failure. And if she has rightly concluded that she must block you out while continuing to focus upon the words and voices of the good instructors you paid money for, her job is much tougher than it ought to be. If "you" means both parents, that's worse. If "you" means both parents, estranged from each other, plus their new significant others, look out!
There is little which amuses me quite as much as parents attending to their kids at some clinic or private instruction. The instructor is telling them what they need to focus on. After a few months of instruction, maybe a year or more, the parent becomes steeped in what the private, paid coach generally emphasizes to her. Do this, do that. Your not ... You are ... The coach knows his or her trade because they have spent 40 years working this scene. The parent knows what they know from a handful of hours spent observing the coach work with their kid. Why on Earth would you take up a single millisecond with your own opinion during time which might cost you $50 to $100 per hour?
And yet, I have observed private pitching sessions in which a parent who is there merely to be the practice catcher because nobody else, nobody better could be found in which the parent instructs the kid to do this or that or not to do this or that. I understand the urge to speak when your kid is not doing things right. Heck, she did things right yesterday. The coach is going to think she is an idiot. The coach is going to think I'm an idiot. And he may think you're an idiot whether you open your mouth or not. But, remember it is better to keep one's mouth shut and have everyone think you a fool than it is to open it and remove all doubt.
Seriously folks, I am speaking from experience. A player benefits quite a bit when her parents remain along the sideline completely silent. I am teaching what I have learned through many of my own mistakes. I have learned this from many others. Go to all the games. Cheer for the good stuff and when everyone else is cheering. Don't correct. Don't stand in as a surrogate coach along the sidelines in an attempt to make your kid perform better. It does not work.
Some time ago, I noticed the father of a top level pitcher almost constantly had a tootsie pop in his mouth. I figured the guy had quit smoking. That is a demon with which I have struggled. And if you are addicted to tobacco, there is nothing worse than a ball game to bring on the urge to smoke. I imagine that even if the father of a pitcher were to quit tobacco for a good two years, he might be overcome with the desire to smoke while watching his kid pitch.
Yet, there was something else at work here. I do not believe the guy had the tootsie pops in the place of tobacco. If he had been using them as a pacifier in leu of tobacco, I believe I would have heard some crunches. Smokers don't do well with lollipops. They are more like the owl in the old commercial. How many licks does it take to get to the middle of a tootsie pop? One ... two ... three ... crunch, it takes three licks!
At a fairly recent game, I was patrolling the sideline, watching competition in which my daughter was not involved. I noticed that everybody on one side of the field had these little white sticks protruding from between their lips. I watched as one guy chucked a stick into the garbage, turned towards the other parents and asked where the pops were. One women turned towards him with a bag in her hand and said, "that's my job this tournament," reached into it and inquired as to which color the father wanted. She had a very large bag of the pops. It was a little peculiar.
More recently, my daughter guested with a team of very well experienced players. Their parents sat quietly on the sidelines with those same darn sticks poking out of their mouths. I was a newbie to the group so there were not a lot of conversation with which I was a part. But before the first game got going, I saw somebody handing out tootsie pops just like I had seen at that other game. The woman who had them joked that this was her week. And after she had handed out a bunch of them, she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry I don't know your name but would you like a pop?" I declined because those things pull out my fillings - I cannot lick or suck on them, I have to chomp.
The woman looked at me with some sympathy and concern, and inquired again, "are you sure?" I declined again and she said, "If you change your mind, please feel free. They are right here." It did not occur to me then how strange it was that she had such a large bag of tootsie pops just like the lady at that other game. But this time, something clicked. The coincidence was just a bit too strange.
Who, when given a choice of a snack to eat while watching a ball game, would choose tootsie pops? Personally, I would go with nuts of some variety, likely pistachioes. I wouldn't choose to eat candy when I know I'm not going to be able to brush my teeth for hours. And I wouldn't generally choose any sort of hard candy, let alone lollie pops.
I finally came to understand what was going on with my wife's help. She pointed out to me that all these softball people were sucking on tootsie pops for only one reason that had little to do with a sweet tooth, smoking, or any kind of hunger. She said they are sucking on these in order to remember to keep their mouths shut! And I knew instantly that she was right.
If one were to metaphysically walk through the entire world of softball, one would instantly recognize the value of the tootsie pop. As one strolled through 8U rec ball, one would take note of the loud voices imploring children to do this or that. As one progressed to 10U and 12U, the voices would become fewer but far more adamant and serious. Enter 14U and 16U and there are still those annoying parents providing essential advice to their sires as the sires made all manner of mocking faces (outside their parents view) towards their friends whose parents were also providing useful advice. But as one got closer and closer to the highest levels of the game, the sounds from the sidelines would diminish to nary a whimper and be replaced by the girls themselves talking more and more frequently to each other, offering encouragement rather than advice, cheering on their teammates, etc.
If you were to take a close look at the parents of the highest level players, they are merely whispering amongst themselves. They almost never talk to their kids, the coaches, and especially the umpires. Sure some do. But the most well seasoned among them do not. The most well seasoned are almost totally silent and devoid of emotion. The newbies continue to offer encouraging words of advice. The in-betweeners are sucking on tootsie pops.
As I said, I am not a huge fan of the tootsie pop. It wrecks my teeth. But when I think hard about it, having wrecked teeth is better than having wrecked children who no longer play softball. Players need to hear voices in their heads. Don't compete with them. You paid lots of money to install those voices. Save your money for the dentist. Let your kids hear those voices. Get your fillings replaced. Better yet, have your dentist fuse your mouth shut!Labels: parents
 
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