The Baseball Observer - Mental Skills Issue
Former Major League pitcher and mental skills coach for two of baseball’s legendary franchises (the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants) Bob Tewksbury takes fans inside the psychology of baseball with his new book.
After retiring as a player at the end of the 1998 season, how did you wind up as a mental skills coach with the Boston Red Sox, working with their minor league affiliates?
In the spring of 1999 the Red Sox hired me as a pitching consultant to work with some of the top pitching prospects in the organization. In 2001 I was presented with a situation that required some clinical support. Through the process of this intervention, I realized there was a lot more
for me to learn about the psychological side of players. That led me to enroll at Boston University to pursue a master’s degree in sport psychology & counseling degree. I graduated in 2004 and was hired as the mental skills coordinator for the Red Sox.Your coaching career – with the Boston Red Sox, Major League Baseball PLAYERS ASSOCIATION, and now the San Francisco Giants – now has spanned more than 10 years. Why did you want to write a book about the mental aspect of performance?
I have been working on and off on writing a book on mental performance for many years but didn’t have a clear direction of what kind of book it would be. With the help of my book agent and editor, along with the great writing from Scott Miller, (Bleacher Report) I was able to write a book which illustrated how important the mental game is from a player perspective. I wanted to share my experiences on the mound and the experiences of present day players, who I worked with in Boston, who gratefully and willingly agreed to share their stories. I am very thankful such as; Lester, Miller, Rizzo and Hill agreed to share their stories about the mental game. Ninety Percent Mental would not have happened without their help.
In 2007 you developed a mental skills audio program and one of the first players to receive it was Anthony Rizzo, then a sixth round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox. And you mention that he still uses it today. Talk about the importance of breathing and relaxation and how that’s impacted him or other players you’ve worked with.
A major part of having sustained success playing in the major leagues is about managing those times during a game where you feel uncomfortable or unconfident. And yes, even big leaguers feel that way. When you feel uncomfortable or unconfident your body tenses up, pitchers grip the ball tighter, batters swings get longer…and the best way to manage this feeling in the body is to breathe…….breathing calms the body, it turns off all those inner alarms which go off when our emotional system kicks in. It