The Way of Baseball

by Shawn Green

  Alone now, with idling traffic all around me to enforce a sense of stillness, I thought back on the season.

  After finding stillness, space and separation, and awareness in Toronto, I had fallen victim to the temptation of building a new identity in Los Angeles. Every day of the just-completed season, I’d remained aware of my numbers lingering below my new—if imaginary—statistical bar. By signing that big contract and entering the huge Los Angeles market, I’d felt as if I was promising the organization, the fans, and the media that I would always match or exceed my best numbers from Toronto. Weren’t numbers what they were paying me for?

  I had approached hitting this past year with one eye on where I’d been and the other on where I wanted to be, leaving no attention for the present moment. I’d rush through each at-bat, trying to get a hit or, better yet, a home run, as quickly as possible in order to compensate for what was a perpetual sense of insufficiency. Even my sessions at the tee were no longer focused in the present moment but on trying to find my swing so that I could improve my statistics in upcoming games. Bad things happen when one’s attention slips away. In the car racing up Interstate 5 I’d been daydreaming about the recently completed, miserable season, feeling full of regrets and irritation, and I’d almost driven myself into the back end of a truck. How had I come to this?

  As if in answer, Mel Queen’s words popped into my head: Be yourself … Don’t feel like you need to live up to anything you’ve done in the past, and don’t feel like you need to live up to the expectations everyone has for you in the future. Just play the game.

  Intellectually, I’d understood what he was telling me, but it seemed now I’d been unable to heed the wise advice without first experiencing its opposite. I had read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse many times and thought now of Siddhartha’s words: “Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” I needed to live it.

  It would have been easy to say to myself, “I must have been a fool not to have seen this coming.” However, the first signs of my encroaching ego were subtle and seemingly harmless. In my final season in Toronto, I’d enjoyed the moment and relished my growth both as a player and a person; nonetheless, my growing self-identity must have been noticeable enough for Mel to have felt the need to warn me about it. I had underestimated his warning because I made the mistake of equating ego only with the grossly self-important attitude of many top athletes. I thought I was safe from the ego because I was a “humble guy.” Even at the top of my game, I often stood in right field in front of 50,000 fans thinking, “I can’t believe these people actually buy the fact that I am a major leaguer!” I always felt as if I had tricked everybody into believing I was someone special, someone to be admired. And I wasn’t the only player who felt like that. A common response among ballplayers when asked how they’re doing is, “I’m just trying to trick ’em for as long as I can!”

  And then I arrived in Los Angeles.

  In my mind, I ran through the just completed season, looking for clues:

  At the November ’99 press conference to announce the signing of my new deal with the Dodgers, I became a different player in the eyes of fans, press, management, and (foolishly) myself. I felt embarrassed that day by all the attention and, even more, by the huge new contract. Unlike many athletes, I was not driven to be among the highest-paid players in the game. I’d grown comfortable in Toronto as a rising star, but now I knew I was expected to be the major-market franchise player and returning hometown hero. Of course, I could see now that I ought not to have allowed the money and attendant expectations to distract me. The only part of my new contract that should have mattered to me was that I was going to be wearing a different uniform and playing in a different city. My approach to the game should have remained the same as in Toronto, where I’d grown adept at playing in the moment, while avoiding the pressures of the past and future. However, even as early as the press conference, the embarrassment I felt indicated I was giving it all too much importance, setting myself up for failure.

  The first reporter raised his hand. “Shawn, with this contract, the Dodgers are investing a lot for you to lead them back to the World Series. Are you ready to relieve this city’s disappointment of the last few years?”

  Relieve the disappointment of an entire city?

  My answer did not indicate my misgivings at such lofty expectations. Instead, I played along with the game, as I believed I was obliged to do. “Definitely,” I said. “I’m coming to LA because I know this organization is dedicated to winning.” The team had great players: Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Eric Karros, and Chan Ho Park, among others. What I really wanted was just to come in and do my part, to be one of the guys, but I knew my contract was going to make that difficult.

  “Do you feel any extra pressure playing within an hour of Tustin, the city where you went to high school?”

  “No, I’ll just have to leave a lot more tickets for my friends and family this year!”

  Another reporter turned the talk to numbers. “You were great with the Blue Jays last season, especially the forty-two home runs. But Toronto is a hitter-friendly park, whereas Dodger Stadium is more of a pitcher’s park. What kind of numbers do you expect to put up next season?”

  Any time home runs were mentioned, the little man on my shoulder tempted me to trouble. I loved hitting the ball farther as a skinny guy than most of the body-builder types in the game. “Oh, I’m not worried about the ballpark,” I said, aware that I was expected to project confidence, even if it risked seeming like arrogance. “I plan to put up power numbers similar to my last two years in Toronto.”

  The next reporter’s question upped the stakes even more. “So, Shawn, you’re the most important Jewish player in the big leagues since Sandy Koufax. How will it feel to wear the same uniform he wore?”

  Being mentioned in the same breath as a baseball legend, the most famous Jewish athlete ever! What an honor, what a weight. “I just hope I can play the game with as much class and integrity as he did. Of course, he’s one of our game’s best pitchers and the greatest Jewish athlete of all time, so I shouldn’t be placed on the same level as him.”

  The reporter nodded, but the pressure was on, not only from the press and fans, but, more dangerously, from within me.

  That was only the beginning. A few weeks later, Sports Illustrated contacted me to do a big article on my move to Los Angeles. The story was to center on my being a Jewish athlete. They set the photo shoot at a well-known Jewish landmark in Los Angeles—Canter’s Deli on Fairfax. This wasn’t my first association with a Jewish deli. Back in ’96 while playing a series against the Yankees, someone at 2nd Avenue Deli took a picture of me holding a big salami as if it were a bat, and they hung the photo on the wall.

  At Canter’s Deli I got a clear picture of what a big deal it was for a Jewish athlete to come to Los Angeles as a major sports star. People in the restaurant wished me luck and told me how proud they were to have a Jewish player leading the Dodgers. Even the hobbling, seventy-year-old waitresses conveyed their excitement. And every conversation asserted that I was the “next Sandy Koufax,” an intimidating comparison not only on a baseball level but also because I hadn’t actually been raised in a religious household. I’d never gone to Hebrew school and thus never had a bar mitzvah. (I had learned most of what I knew about my religion and Jewish heritage as a player in Toronto, where the Jewish community welcomed me.) Arriving in Los Angeles, I could only hope I was ready to embrace the label of Jewish role model.

  What had become of stillness, separation, awareness?

  The degree to which I allowed my new role as Dodger messiah to take hold of me became more evident a few weeks prior to spring training during a home run exhibition in Las Vegas. ESPN had decided to bring back a version of the old TV show Home Run Derby, which
aired in 1959 with legendary sluggers like Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Duke Snider. This new version, known as Big League Challenge, featured twelve of the top home run hitters from the ’99 season. I’d be competing head-to-head, tournament style, with Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriguez, to name a few. And, for the first time, I’d be hitting as a Dodger. Since the competition was in Las Vegas (just a four-hour drive from Los Angeles), there were plenty of Dodger fans in the stands. My first round match-up was against the ultimate anti-Dodger and future owner of both the single season and all-time home run records—Barry Bonds.

  Unlike the popular Home Run Derby held each summer prior to the All-Star game, this competition worked inning by inning. Each batter took turns, as in a regular baseball game. Any swing that didn’t result in a home run was an out. The Big League Challenge producers hoped to create lighthearted, head-to-head competition and bantering. Most players act as if they don’t care how well they perform during these exhibitions, but trust me, players care; I know my ego wanted to show off. Besides, with thousands of fans in the stands and other top home-run hitters watching, no one wanted to embarrass himself.

  In Toronto, during my daily BP home run derby with Carlos, we took our biggest swings with a disciplined, up-the-middle approach that improved our power to all parts of the field. Sure, we enjoyed our little competition and trash talking, but our egos always took a back seat to our work, which consisted of developing our swings.

  On the other hand, the Big League Challenge was all about ego. I stood at the plate as an ego, trying to impress while worrying about embarrassing myself. I cared nothing about honing my swing, only immediate results, and so I tried to hook everything to right field, the very approach that I’d rejected so dramatically years before when Cito Gaston and Willie Upshaw insisted I adopt it. Centerfield at this Triple-A ballpark, Cashman Field, was over 430 feet away, so there was little chance I could win the competition by aiming out there. I stepped up to the plate against Bonds and thought to myself, “How much damage can I do by spending one weekend trying to pull home runs?”

  Standing at the plate at a minor league stadium in Las Vegas in a meaningless competition I completely succumbed to my ego. Unfortunately, this set the tone for my entire 2000 season, not so much because two days of pulling the ball actually destroyed my swing, but because I allowed my ego to take over my hitting. Suddenly, I was no different than most of the Vegas tourists who filled the casinos a few miles away on the Strip, which, after all, was built on egos driven to chase money in an attempt to find fulfillment. I was in Vegas not to chase money but home runs and, during the upcoming season, I’d continue to chase them in an attempt to live up to expectations. It was no consolation that I ended up beating Barry Bonds that day. Not when I weighed the victory against what I was about to lose.

  Isn’t that always the way it is when we win a game but lose ourselves?

  After Vegas, spring training rolled around and I felt like a lonely kid who’d just changed schools and longed for his old friends. With the Jays, the focus of training camp had been always on baseball, with a smattering of public-relations chores. With the Dodgers, I bounced from interviews to photo shoots to promo videos to commercials, until the PR commitments became almost as demanding as the actual workouts. I was supposed to be the new star of Hollywood’s team, and all the attention served to remind me daily of my new role as the forty-plus homers-per-year Jewish player who would turn around one of the most storied franchises in all of baseball.

  Tommy Lasorda, Mr. Dodger, started in on me from day one. “Hey, Shawn, let me tell you something. If I asked God to send down the perfect player to wear this Dodger uniform, you’d be the guy he’d send.”

  I knew Tommy was given to hyperbole. Nonetheless, I also knew that the organization really had been searching for a new face since Mike Piazza left in ’98. Gary Sheffield was an established superstar, but he was too outspoken for management’s liking. They wanted someone to project a squeaky-clean image, and I was their guy. One morning at camp, Tommy upped the ante by showing up with one of the most legendary hitters of all time, a personal hero to me—Ted Williams. The Splendid Splinter was in a wheelchair and, as Tommy wheeled him toward my locker, he said to Ted, loud enough for everyone to hear: “Here’s the young guy we were talking about. He’s the modern-day version of you.”

  I held my hand out and said, “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Williams.” As a kid, there’d been two Hall of Famers I’d dreamed of meeting: Ted Williams and Sandy Koufax. In my first few days of camp, I’d met both (Sandy occasionally stopped by to help with the pitchers).

  Ted shook my hand and said, “I like the way you swing the bat. You generate good bat speed with your hips, similar to the way my swing used to work.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was awestruck by his presence and a little intimidated by his comparison (old scouts used to say my swing reminded them of Ted Williams’s—the ultimate compliment—but it’s one thing to hear it from them and another to hear it from the man himself!).

  I was the man God would send to save the Dodgers? I had a swing like Ted Williams’s?

  Of course, I knew these were not just compliments but also exaggerations. Nonetheless, during spring training I couldn’t help but embrace the idea that it was my responsibility to deliver on just such impossibilities. I came to believe that it wasn’t going to be enough to be just myself. Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, God’s ideal Dodger …

  Despite the pressure, the 2000 season got off to a good start from a statistical perspective. By the end of May, I was hitting .337 with 10 home runs and 39 RBIs. Still, I knew my swing was rushed and that it lacked separation and space. Further, I knew that the weight of my new identity as a superstar in Los Angeles was distracting me from the full awareness with which I’d played in ’99. My reliance on fundamental mechanics at the plate would see me through only for so long .… Nonetheless, I convinced myself to put more weight on the good numbers than they deserved. “This is great!” I thought. “I’m hitting over .330 with plenty of RBIs and I haven’t even found my groove yet. I’ll really take off once I do!”

  I made the mistake of allowing the numbers to distract me from the deeper truth I should have recognized about my rushed swing. Those first two months, I’d been getting hits for two reasons: First, the basic mechanics of my swing remained almost as efficient as they’d been the previous two seasons in Toronto; second, I’d been getting a little lucky and balls were finding holes through the infield (such good fortune can only last for a short time). The truth remained that my timing was off. That crucial space created by the slight pause between the landing of my stride and the forward movement of the bat was a nanosecond too short. My anxious desire to live up to my new role had sped up my swing just enough for my top hand on the bat to roll over the other hand at the point of contact rather than just after contact. This created topspin on the batted ball as opposed to the desired backspin, transforming homers into either doubles or outs. By June, my awareness either was going to settle calmly into the moment, allowing me to regain the space and timing in my swing, or my home run driven overanxiousness would affect the rest of the season.

  The pull of my ego proved too strong.

  My awareness became lost in my new identity. Fans and media sang my praises and I purchased a house in Pacific Palisades to immerse myself in LA culture. I thought I could achieve separation in my swing without having to first find separation from this overpowering identity. Wrong. What I didn’t realize was that it was my ego that was pulling me out of the present moment at the plate. Instead of becoming the act of hitting, as I had in the past, I was working toward the purpose of fulfilling statistical goals.

  I calculated that I needed to hit about 7 homers and notch about 20 RBIs each month to stay on track with the player I was supposed to be: the star who’d hit 42 home runs and had 123 RBIs the season before. Every time I stepped up to the plate I brought m
y statistical goals with me, and numbers have no place in the present moment. My statistical aims were mere fantasies of how the future should be, based on what I did the previous year. Living for the future while thinking about the past.

  Where’s the presence in that?

  Likewise, my relationship with Lindsay began to suffer. My hitting wasn’t the only thing the move to LA threw slightly off. At first, Lindsay and I maintained the momentum from our previous year in Toronto (it had been fresh and exciting to be together in a beautiful, foreign city, thousands of miles from California). There, it had been all about baseball, a few friends, and the two of us. It was perfect. In my naiveté, I had thought that coming home to play for the Dodgers would only make our relationship simpler; after all, Lindsay could retain her independence throughout the summer and I could live in one home rather than two. But this wasn’t to be.

  Now, Lindsay spent hours commuting between her Newport Beach apartment and my Pacific Palisades home, which was a long, stressful drive even without traffic. (She wasn’t willing to move in with me before our getting engaged.) Another complication was that suddenly we had our families and friends continually tugging at us. And, because of my big contract and my technically single status, Lindsay had to deal with articles in LA publications depicting me as one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. In short, she was being overlooked and I was too focused on hitting my statistical goals to notice. Desperate for answers, we both took to comparing where our relationship was now to what it had been the happy year before. In this way, we began chasing the past in the same manner I was chasing home runs. And all we managed to discover in the gap between how things were and how things should be was frustration, which led us to a painful split at just about the same time my impatient and distracted swing led me to the inevitable slump.