S

EMPTY THE MIND

To become empty is to become one with the divine—

this is the Way.

—AWA KENZO

hawn Green began his third season with the Los Angeles Dodgers
in 2002 in the worst slump of his Major League Baseball career.
The media was out for blood, and so were the fans, who booed him at
the plate. Dodgers management began to doubt him too. The man
was making $14 million a year and he could not hit.
After weeks of intense hitting famine, would he be benched?
Traded? Sent down to the minors?
All this was racing through Green’s mind, as it would race
through the mind of anyone struggling at work. That little voice:
What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you get this right? Did you lose
your touch?
Hitting a baseball is already a nearly inconceivable feat. It
requires the batter to see, process, decide, swing at, and connect with
a tiny ball traveling at speeds north of 90 miles per hour from an
elevated position sixty feet away. Four hundred milliseconds. That’s
how long it takes for the ball to travel from the mound to the batter.
To be able to swing and hit it literally defies physics—it’s the single
hardest act in all of sports.
The anxiety and doubts in a slump make it even harder. Yogi
Berra’s warning: “It’s impossible to hit and think at the same time.”