All prospects have talent. Not all can maximize it.
As our readers have discovered over the past year, sometimes I get in a story telling mood. Not often, but it happens. Out goes my attempt at cold, objective analysis (often the result of research I’ve done to satisfy my own curiosity) and in comes the turning of a true story for entertainment purposes.
Our own Dr. Howl does his music thing as the capstone to his baseball articles. I do not know about music, other than I like it and I am amazed at how artists can create beautiful melodies or instrumentals and tell a story with it. That’s all I know, so I can’t write about it. But I can tell a story in other ways.
This one has its genesis in the quintessential argument about the value of veteran leadership in a club. The trigger of this story was a quote from Nolan Arenado, who described the newly acquired Garrett Hampson thusly “He doesn’t scare”. That is more of a compliment than it appears superficially. I took it as a comparative reflection of recently released Jose Barrero, who possessed enormous physical talent, but had trouble translating that into success on the field. Got me to thinking about why and this story popped out. The timing seems right, given the infusion of recently drafted prospects about to descend on Jupiter or other various minor league venues.
Not too very long ago, we were at the end of a 12-week training course for FF recruits – called “Fire Academy”. Catchy, huh? Well, let me tell you, you can only pull and re-roll so much hose in 12 weeks before you are ready to do something more challenging. Kind of like there is only so much PIP, BP and infield practice to be done before kids want to actually play a game.
Our young Firefighters were more than ready. They each passed our Training Officers basic competency test and were cleared to participate in a “live burn” exercise. You’ve probably seen them in your area – where the local Fire Department burns down a dilapidated house for a homeowner wanting to rebuild. The homeowner saves the cost of demolition, the department gets the value of live fire training for young Fire Fighters in a controlled environment. We call these young people recruits. Baseball calls them prospects or rookies.
These burns are meticulously planned. We need to expose young recruits to live fire to complete their training, but we also need to control the environment so that it doesn’t become recklessly dangerous. Firefighters have died during these trainings, and that is the last thing we want to have happen. So, we plan and control in an almost OCD kind of way.
Into such a live burn, I accompanied a very young (18) firefighter into her first fire. A planned, controlled training exercise for me. But for her, much more, because it was a personal milestone and she really wanted to do well. Much like in religion, this exercise would be tantamount to baptism, or in baseball, the professional debut. The old adage “baptism by fire” to be succinct. It would be her last training exercise before she received her yellow helmet and graduated from recruit to probationary FF. Akin to being promoted to the MLB for the first time. Development isn’t done, but you do get thrown into the fire. Quite literally, in our world.
Having been there myself, and having watched others go there, I know how entering that house on fire would feel to a first-timer. I imagine it would be similar to a rookie walking out on an MLB field for the first time. The desire to perform is mighty, but the stress that comes with that desire, coupled with the unfamiliarity of the environment is enormous. We’ve all been there. Fire fighters, like baseball players, are “tactical athletes”, prone to expending large amounts of energy in short bursts of time and experiencing intense stressors. This would be their first time experiencing these shocks.
Without getting too deep into the science of it, there is an innate physiological reaction that occurs in these situations that is very difficult to control, especially the first time one encounters it. In times of stress, the body secretes a hormone called Adrenaline in large quantities. The result? Breathing rate increases (a lot), heart rate increases (a lot) and vision paradoxically narrows (a lot). Thinking is reduced to its most base level – animal instinct – “fight or flight”. Enough Adrenaline will introduce “the shakes”, or the proverbial knocking of the knees. Its impact on the hands renders the most skilled of hands almost useless. One becomes a fumbling fool, quick twitch or not. Surprise! It just hits you. There is no thought involved in this and no training can prepare you for your first experience with it. The para-sympathetic nervous system does all this on your behalf without any conscious intervention on your part. It is this reaction that kept our forebears from being eaten by woolly mammoths or sabre-toothed tigers or whatever apex predators roamed back then. Survival was key, and this “fight or flight” feature is the humanoid evolutionary trait that has led all the way to the NL adopting the DH at long last.
When a young pitcher comes out of their mechanics or forgets to cover first or can’t seem to throw strikes, it is often this physiological reaction overwhelming their mind and training. Fans will complain they should have learned this in 12U ball. But, gaining control over this loss of mental acuity, vision and physical response is often the last step of development and requires exposure to the stressors that cause it. Thus, the baptism by fire.
As she crawled into this burning house underneath the smoke layer this Adrenaline rush was hitting her hard, and we hadn’t even encountered anything but a wisp of smoke. Then, we came around a corner and she encountered it. The beast. I could tell by the look on her face, it was something she’d never quite seen before, never heard before, not even in her wildest imagination. At first, it just a few tendrils of flame flashing ever so briefly in the smoke layer above.
But, as we moved forward, and as the fire developed, it evolved in a full-throated fire, coming at her down a hallway. It can be amazing how loud a roaring fire can be and how intimidating it is when it seems uncontrolled. And it can be a bit on the warm side. A bit. The fire was intense enough that she would’ve had zero idea where the main seat of the fire was, and it would have seemed like fire was all around her, even though it was all really in front and above her in a narrow 3’ wide hallway about 12” in length. Puny to me. But, yet, monstrous to her at the same time.
When she looked at me, she had that “fight or flight” look in her eyes. We went back to their basic training. I told her to “pencil”, which is an action where the FF points their nozzle straight up to the ceiling, opens it for a second or two, and closes it. Did you know that little blast of water will boil almost instantly, and the transition of the material state from liquid water to steam (vapor) results in a volume expansion of 1700 times? In other words, a gallon of water becomes 1700 gallons of steam. 5 gallons might be enough to fill a hallway. An amazing fire suppressant.
She did it perfectly.
She had obviously retained her training on what “pencil the ceiling” meant, and she was still able to operate and do what she’d trained to do. In times of intense stress, we do what we’ve repeatedly trained our brain to do, because pretty much all thinking has stopped. In sports, as in fire fighting, this is actually a good thing. Thinking is too slow sometimes. We want reaction. Trained reaction. Thinking will come later, with experience.
She penciled and I cheered. She looked at me like I was crazy. Clearly, stopping and cheering was not what she had in mind. She also had little interest in stopping to discuss the phenomenon that explained why it was she wasn’t wet even though she’d just sprayed water straight up into the air. How come that blast of water didn’t come back down on her was more fascinating to me than it was to her, I guess.
Her face asked, “Now what?”. I told her to pencil the ceiling again, as the fire had rebuilt while I was trying to coach her to make some observations. And when she did it again, the fire in the hallway retreated a bit. “Now what?”. “Advance”, I yelled (because it was hard to hear in there). Fascinatingly, the roar of the fire is remarkably similar to the roar of the crowd. She moved up about 3-4 feet and that fire came roaring back down the hallway like a dragon. Deafening and exhilarating all at once. Not hard to imagine what pitching with the lead on the line at home is like.
The dragon retreated yet again, redoubling for another advance. “Follow it”, I said, “It will lead you to the seat of the fire”. She did this 3 or 4 times. Pencil, move. Pencil, move. We ended up in a back bathroom and she could now begin to discern that the main fire was coming out of a laundry room on the other side of the bathroom. Of course, I knew this because the fire control officer and I had lit it before bringing her in.
As she crawled in the bathroom, she crawled right past a cabinet that was burning (remember than part about vision narrowing?). I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to it. She tried mightily, but unsuccessfully, to redirect her heavy hose toward that fire (remember that part about trained hands becoming fumble fingers?). Adrenaline can be unhelpful at times. I just told her to ignore it and press forward, and “open up” into the ceiling of the laundry room. Again, with that “Are you crazy!?” look. Ignore a fire burning 2 feet away from me? Certifiably nuts.
But she opened up and the dragon retreated within seconds, never to return. The roar of the fire was subdued, replaced by the sizzling of steam and the popping of wood. I stopped her and pointed back to that little bitty fire to her left. Almost completely out, without her spraying a drop of water on it. It blew out like a candle when she opened up into the laundry. We proceeded into the laundry room and sprayed a bit more water to ensure the fire was dead out, and we left.
She did great. But that whole thing was intimidating and overwhelming to her. “How could you be so calm”, she asked. To me, it was a minor fire in a vacant building with very low fuel load. The difference? One was a young, talented rookie getting her first fire experience seeing the biggest fire she’d ever seen in her life way more up close than she thought comfortable. The other was a veteran, whose best days are behind him, but who has been there, done that on much larger and more dangerous fires. With that “been there, done that” experience, I don’t become overwhelmed by that kind of fire or get much of an Adrenaline rush, so my vision remains wide, breathing calm and pulse low. Without the fight or flight impulse, it’s easier to maintain awareness, to think under control. Without the shakes, it’s easier to act. Imagine throwing a baseball with the shakes! Mike Shannon used o say “That is why they call ‘em rookies!”.
Sometimes young people deny this is happening to them. They want to appear courageous and strong (a good trait, if ill-advised). For some, it is more bravado than calm strength. You can tell in their performance. In baseball, it is when you see skill on the practice field, and ineptitude on the game field. There is an adage in baseball that the third deck of MLB stadiums changes the game. It doesn’t (except maybe flyball tracking), but it does affect the physiological reaction a young player is silently experiencing. They silently experience it because they don’t want to admit and be the opposite of “he doesn’t scare”. Remember how Adam Wainwright would tell young pitchers to “just breathe”? A deep breathe is one of the learned techniques to control the physiological reaction. When you hear a pitcher say something like “I learned to breathe”, I know he has come face to face with the dragon and felt the “fight or flight” reaction that occurs innately.
Imagine not being able to remember what to throw this hitter on a 3-2 pitch while the pitch clock is rolling down and you’ve already used two disengagements (if you even remember you’ve used them). We’ve seen the result. They call it “The game was speeding up on him”. When you read a comment about how a player “doesn’t scare…”, controlling this reaction is what they are referring to. They’ve learned to control the physiological reaction in the face of the stressors of an MLB experience, maintaining an awareness and calmness that allows them to think, act and react in a controlled fashion. This is a learned behavior.
This is fundamentally the difference between rookies and veterans. Ball players experience that same progression from over-whelming Adrenaline rush to “been there, done that”. The best are able to control that rush and channel it to success. There is but one and only one teacher that allows for that learning… it is experience. And when you have it, and you control it, you are a veteran leader. There is a time and place where experience trumps raw talent, even superior talent. That time manifests itself when the rookie gets overwhelmed by the moment, and the physiological reaction that comes with it. It usually occurs when the stress side is high and the talent involved is only marginally different.
She did fine. And we never saw her again.