Addiction in Sports: A Famous Baseball Sentiment

Yogi Berra – Hall of Fame catcher and longtime New York Yankee – known for his backwards, aloof, and endearing logic, famously once said, “Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.” Mathematical impossibilities aside, Mr. Berra was referring to the fallacy in looking at something like the sport of baseball – a physically taxing endeavor – solely through the prism of physical prowess.

Though it is simple to get lost with childlike exuberance amid the awe-inspiring 400 foot bombs, diving catches, 100 mile per hour pitches, and blazing-fast stolen bases, it is important to note that the intricacies of the game are won and lost along the tight rope that exists inside the minds of the players.

It is what separates average from great, ho-hum from epic, failure from success.

Drug and alcohol addiction treatment works in much the same way. Its ability to thrive through the actions of the recipient depends greatly on the mindset of the client, on the willingness of the addict or the alcoholic to push forward despite his body’s calls for another drink, for another toke, for another escape route from the realities and hardships of life.

Pushing Past Complacency in Addiction

Addiction treatment is ninety percent mental.

Because addiction in sports amounts to a certain level of complacency, to a belief that addiction is a status quo that cannot be upset, pushing past drug and alcohol dependency requires a concerted mental effort. It requires a restructuring of thought and a sort of actionable renaissance to push past inertia, to break down the walls of addiction erected ever so sturdily.

There can be no room for complacency, for satisfaction, for stagnant waters.

Recovery should be a free-flowing and cleansing river that washes away atrophy and inaction. It should be a wildly undulating wave of change that tosses an addict to and fro and that catches him in a rip tide of transformation, pulling him away from the shores of a fruitless and lifeless isle of complacency.

But it all starts upstairs.

Sobriety as a National Pastime

So much goes unseen as a baseball game unfolds. So much occurs in the blink of an eye.

A base runner compares the length of a pitcher’s setup with the time it may take him to steal a base. The pitcher gauges the likelihood of a base runner stealing with a sly peek from the corner of his eye. Both pitcher and runner decide in a split-second what action to take.

Steal or stay. Pitch or try to pick the runner off. It’s all mental. It all comes from preparation and perception.

Drug and alcohol addiction treatment is an exercise in the very mental processes that allow for an obstacle to be hurdled, that allow for mountains to be moved and for oceans to be crossed. And though complacency is almost a certainty in addiction, recovery is the will to see change unfold, to see life cleanly and experience it vividly, to use the power of one’s mindset to see the game through.