eventually becoming the minor leagues’ top pitching prospect. Then
suddenly, just as his career was starting to go well, in the first game
of the playoffs in 2000, in front of millions of people, he lost the
ability to control his pitches.
What happened? Just days before, his father and brother had
gone to jail on drug charges and Rick had been in the courthouse to
see them. He’d been running from that pain and that anger for years,
until it finally exploded and shattered the delicate balance that
pitching required. It took years of work with Harvey Dorfman, a
brilliant, patient sports psychologist, to coax his gifts back. And even
then only so far. Ankiel would pitch only five more times in his
career, none as a starter. The rest of his career he spent in the
outfield—mostly in center field, the position farthest away from the
mound.
Sigmund Freud himself wrote about how common it is for
deficiencies, big and small, at a young age to birth toxic, turbulent
attitudes in adulthood. Because we weren’t born rich enough, pretty
enough, naturally gifted enough, because we weren’t appreciated like
other children in the classroom, or because we had to wear glasses or
got sick a lot or couldn’t afford nice clothes, we carry a chip on our
shoulder. Some of us are like Richard III, believing that a deformity
entitles us to be selfish or mean or insatiably ambitious. As Freud
explained, “We all demand reparation for our early wounds to our
narcissism,” thinking we are owed because we were wronged or
deprived. (This was Tiger Woods to the detail.)
It’s dangerous business, though, creating a monster to protect
your wounded inner child.
The insecure lens. The anxious lens. The persecuted lens. The
prove-them-all-wrong lens. The will-you-be-my-father? lens that
Leonardo had. These adaptations, developed early on to make sense
of the world, don’t make our lives easier. On the contrary. Who can
be happy that way? Would you put a nine-year-old in charge of
anything stressful or dangerous or important?
The movie producer Judd Apatow has talked about something he
realized after a big fight during the filming of one of his movies. For
years, he had seen every note the studio or the executives had for
him, every attempt at restrictions or influence, as if it were the
barry
(Barry)
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