PRESSURE FROM MEANING

The more meaning a situation has, the more pressure an athlete feels. If too much meaning is assigned, the athlete overloads and doesn't perform well. Money is an issue that makes performing difficult because of the extra meaning that it brings. When an athlete is paid an exorbitant amount of money, fans expect more, teammates expect more, coaches expect more, and the athlete expects more of themselves. The only problem is that the athlete can only do what they are capable of doing, and the amount of money that you are paid doesn't increase what you are able to do. In fact, it can bring so much extra pressure that the athlete actually does less rather than more.
To illustrate the point, consider the cases of two of the highest paid players on their respective teams in Philadelphia, Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies and Danny Briere of the Flyers. Howard is paid $39 million in 2010 and is due to make at least $125 million more through 2016. He is the clean-up hitter, the man who is supposed to hit home runs and drive runs in. On Saturday night, here he was on the biggest stage in the NLCS, two men on base, one run down, full count, in the ninth inning. It doesn't get any better than this. You have your big man in a big situation. Every coach in baseball from T-ball on up has told their players the same thing in that situation; "Swing at anything close". So what does Ryan Howard do? He takes the last pitch and hopes it is a ball. Game over, lost game and lost season.

His explanation was "I though it was low". Too bad that it was not his call to make. Why didn't he swing like he had been trained to do? The only possible explanation was that he had doubts about his ability to hit and was hoping that the umpire would bail him out. Why else would you put your faith in somebody else rather than yourself? I can only believe that the pressure of his contract and the expectations of everybody else overwhelmed him at that moment. The pressure was more easily handled by others than himself. Proof was that he blamed the umpire for the call, as he claimed the umpire hesitated before calling the pitch a ball. Blaming others for your choices is one clear example of how pressure can change a player's ability to act in any situation.

Then you have the opposite example of Danny Briere of the Flyers. Briere is one of the highest paid free agents on the team, coming over from the Buffalo Sabres for a multi-million dollar contract. In the past two seasons, he has underperformed expectations and has had a host of personal problems to distract him. While he did have an outstanding playoff season in the spring, leading all NHL scorers with a franchise record 30 playoff points, it was not clear which direction his career was going to head for the 2010-2011 season.

A day in June, 2010 changed his life forever and the meaning that he gives to playing hockey. Briere was involved in a near fatal crash on I-81 in upstate New York on the way to visit his parents in Ottowa with his son. He and his son survived without a scratch despite the total destruction of his car when he changed lanes and bumped into a tractor trailer that flipped over and sent him into the guardrail. He felt that the accident changed his life. As he said, "It makes you realize you have to appreciate everything that's going on in the moment and not waste so much time thinking about the past. Try to live in the moment as much as possible."

The prelimary results from the start of the 2010 season seems to indicate that a new Danny Briere has emerged as a hockey player. The line of Briere-Leino-Hartnell has taken up where they left off last year and is the top scoring line for the Flyers after the first 7 games of the season. Briere attributes it to a change in meaning: "I can focus on hockey and basically my job, which is a good feeling." Too bad it takes a near death accident to get rid of the pressure of making too much money.

Too bad Ryan Howard didn't have some life changing event in the past week. Maybe then he would have swung at the pitch and who knows what would have happened.....