Photo Credit: GQ Magazine
If the 2020 World Series taught us anything, is that sometimes you can’t trust the math. Sometimes the reality of numbers doesn’t equate to what’s happening on the field. Brian Kenny and the other notable baseball Pythagoras archetypes can make you forget that players are humans and not complex Excel spreadsheets.
Which is why Mookie Betts cover piece in GQ by Sam Schube was so refreshing to see yesterday. No spin rates and launch angles. No trite quotes about execution. Just a poetic behind-the-scenes look at how he “keeps his head in the game” by taking his mind out of it.
The biggest thing that stood out from watching him last year was the constant conversations he was having on the field. Chatting with the first baseman and shortstop didn’t stop even if he was in the middle of diving back to the base. Over the years constantly communicating on the field hasn’t changed, but the method has.
Freestyles in high school at shortstop with the 3rd baseman and left fielder even continued after he was drafted. “In Double-A, man, we would be freestyling!”
Imagine how sick it would be to hear him mic’d up doing this with Gavin Lux and Max Muncy instead of awkward interviews with ESPN? Just a couple of dudes spitting off the dome using batted balls as drums and “atta boys!” from dugouts like a sample looped on Cam’Ron’s “Oh Boy”.
The reasons for freestyling and even chatting with his wife in the middle of playoff games is something that many baseball fans can relate to.
“It’s impossible to lock in for four hours, three and a half hours, however long our game is… If you tell me to lock in the whole time, then I’m going to be awful. I just can’t do it.”
Parents who are using their 401 K’s for Tom House pitching camps and travel ball tournaments to Scottsdale might fall into anaphylactic shock when they hear this. Constant sermons and instructions can easily thwart a young athlete’s potential and even cause them to fall out of love with the game. I can’t imagine how irate some of the coaches I’ve come across in the past would be if they heard players dropping bars in between pitches.
This inner joy that Mookie brings to the game is not something you can calculate. It can’t show up on Baseball Reference as an acronym that looks like a line of Javascript code. He simply has fun and when it’s time to make plays, he subconsciously lets his inhibitors inhibit.
In the world of baseball that at times can feel as boring and colorless as a doctor’s office, Mookie is the bowl of Dum Dum’s by the exit door.