This article describes the delivery of personal and performance enhancement consulting services to the major league and minor league teams in the Oakland Athletics baseball organization over a 6-year period. The use of a combined clinical, educational approach is discussed as well as the range and type of services provided in the role as a full-time instructor/counselor. Factors affecting the effectiveness of delivering sport psychology services to professional baseball players are discussed, with special emphasis on developing trust and a good connection in the player/consultant relationship.
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Reflections on Providing Personal and Performance Enhancement Consulting Services in Professional Baseball
Harvey A. Dorfman
Case Study of a Professional Development Support Group of Sport Psychology Practitioners Working in Major League Baseball Organizations in the United States and Canada
Charlie Maher
The past decade has witnessed increased growth in the practice of sport psychology in professional and collegiate sports in North America and worldwide ( Kornspan & Quartiroli, 2019 ). With regard to Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, mental performance and mental health
Psychological Skills as Predictors of Performance and Survival in Professional Baseball
Ronald E. Smith and Donald S. Christensen
The role of physical and psychological skills as predictors of performance and survival in professional baseball was studied in a sample of 104 minor league baseball players. Psychological and physical skills were largely uncorrelated with one another and appear to be measuring separate and independent skill domains. Preseason scores on the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28) and coaches’/managers’ ratings of the same skills on an ACSI Rating Form each accounted for as much performance variance in batting average (approximately 20%) as did physical skills when differences in the latter were statistically controlled, and the psychological measures accounted for substantially more variance in pitchers’ earned run averages than did the expert ratings of physical skills. The psychological skills measures also predicted athletes’ survival in professional baseball 2 and 3 years after they were obtained. Bayesian hit rate anlayses indicated substantially increased survival predictability over simple base rate predictions.
Examining Neural Activity Related to Pitch Stimuli and Feedback at the Plate: Cognitive and Performance Implications
Jason R. Themanson, Alivia Hay, Lucas Sieving, and Brad E. Sheese
In an effort to gain a competitive edge in the game of baseball, some teams, analysts, and researchers have begun to examine hitters’ neural activity. These investigations have focused on assessing neural activity associated with classifying different pitch types ( Muraskin et al., 2013 , 2015
The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance
Tom Hanson
An Organizational Empowerment Approach to Consultation in Professional Baseball
Ronald E. Smith and Jim Johnson
This article describes a psychological skills training program developed for the Houston Astros’ minor league player development program. It represents a mode of consultation that includes the training and supervising of an appropriate professional within the organization who delivers the actual training to the athletes. The goal is to provide a quality and continuity of services that would be difficult to accomplish using the traditional outside consultant model. Issues and problems that arose in the implementation of the program are discussed, and data derived from an evaluation of the program are presented.
Talking Baseball When There Is No Baseball: Reporters and Fans During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Alexander L. Curry and Tiara Good
On March 12, 2020, one day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, Major League Baseball (MLB) canceled the remainder of its spring training games and postponed the start of its regular season. Two months later—at the time of this writing—MLB remains suspended
What Gramsci Can Tell Sport Communication Scholars About How Civic Leaders Sell Sports to Their Communities: A Look at the Braves’ Move to Atlanta
Bill Anderson
Antonio Gramsci argued that ruling classes stayed in power as much through cultural hegemony as through economic hegemony or brute force. Gramsci maintained that the dominant class established and maintained this cultural hegemony through negotiation and persuasion. Gramsci’s theory offers much to sport communication scholars who try to ascertain why certain communities (especially their civic leaders) build stadiums to attract major-league sports teams and events despite mounting economic evidence that these ventures often fail to yield the financial benefits touted by their advocates. This paper uses Gramsci’s theory to examine how the civic leaders of Atlanta enticed the populace and sporting press to use public funds to build a new sports stadium in the mid-1960s. Atlanta’s leaders used the sports stadium not only to lure a Major League Baseball team to the city but also to persuade the city’s populace that this move made the metropolis “big league.”
Public Perceptions of Steroid Use in Sport: Contextualizing Communication Efforts
Amy B. Becker and Dietram A. Scheufele
Recently, the controversy surrounding the use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs by Olympic and professional athletes has captured the media spotlight, in part as a response to the very public and pervasive steroids scandal plaguing Major League Baseball (MLB). This article examines trends in Americans’ attitudes toward the use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs in Olympic and professional sport as a way to better understand the messaging challenges that policy makers, players, managers, coaches, and publicists face when trying to influence the media agenda. As the poll data presented suggest, Americans feel that the incidence of performanceenhancing- drug use in professional sport is significant, especially in MLB. Furthermore, Americans suggest that the leadership of various professional sports is not doing enough to combat the use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs by top competitors.
Baseball and Culture: A Case-Study Examination of the Korean Baseball Organization Documentary Full Count
Kevin Hull and Minhee Choi
networks, had no live events to broadcast. What was once a full daily schedule of sporting events was suddenly bare. In order to fill the void, ESPN turned to a baseball league on the other side of the world. While North America’s Major League Baseball (MLB) was shut down, leaders of South Korea’s Korean
