The Psychology of Baseball: Inside the Mental Game of the Major League Player - Softcover

Stadler, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592403433 ISBN 13: 9781592403431

Publisher: Gotham, 2008

Synopsis

Get inside the minds of the stars of the diamond in this phenomenal tour of brain power, psyche, and sheer will, now in paperback.

Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.” The Yankee great may have underestimated the feats of gray matter necessary for playing the game at its highest level. In The Psychology of Baseball, cognitive psychologist and researcher Mike Stadler takes you beneath the surface of the game and inside the heads of baseballÂ's greats—from Aaron to A- Rod—to reveal the intense mental game at the heart of baseball.

Stadler begins with the mindÂ's role in the gameÂ's basic skills, explaining the rare and phenomenal brain power that lets a hitter turn on a 98-mph pitch (as well as the anticipatory thinking that can make a hitter see a “rising fastball”), the complex muscular coordination required to paint the corners with a major-league heater, and the intense spatial calculations the brain must perform in a split second in order for a fielder to catch a struck ball. Packed with cutting-edge information about the mental game, The Psychology of Baseball is a revolutionary new look at AmericaÂ's pastime.

About this title

About the Author

Mike Stadler is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, where his career in cognitive psychology has given him unique insight into his passion for baseball.

From Publishers Weekly

Psychology promises access to the deepest recesses of the human mind, but once we get there, they strongly resemble neural synapses. Baseball at least lends itself to discussions of psychology, as it is the national sport that depends least on sheer strength or speed and most on hand-eye coordination, and its leisurely pace elevates nerve over adrenaline. The yawning chasm separating Tony Gwynn and Mario Mendoza (the latter famous for not hitting well) seems to reside more than usually inside the cranium. University of Missouri psychology professor Stadler splits his book evenly between the neurology of performance and the more workaday issues of pressure that fans ponder. The sections on hitting a pitch and tracking a fly ball, with their emphasis on optics and motor reflexes, are more successful than the chapter on pitching, as it may be more difficult to reduce the act of "painting the black" (i.e., putting a hard pitch exactly in the right place) to a mechanistic feedback loop. The book picks up interest when Stadler turns to the true mysteries of baseball: the storied streaks and slumps, its dismaying chokes, that ineffable X factor that makes this draft pick an All-Star and that one a dud. Showing a pleasing tendency to avoid cant and received conclusions, Stadler deftly marshals a wide variety of evidence to arrive at some canny conclusions. (Apr.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Gotham
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1592403433
• ISBN 13: 9781592403431
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288