Sport Slices

                                                                         Daniel Bard

Daniel Bard is 35 years old. He has been a baseball player most of his life. He was a premier pitcher for the Boston Red Sox from 2009-2013. He established records as a reliever with the Sox.

But in 2013, he hit the wall. In many areas, it is called “the yips”. It is that mysterious moment in one's life when one simply cannot perform a relatively simple task: throwing a baseball accurately, putting a golf ball in the cup, typing a letter.

It has plagued athletes from the beginning of time, particularly ball players and golfers. Often, it ends careers. Most devastating. Occasionally, players overcome the situation, and move on. Such is the case with Daniel Bard.

Some notable golfers have been plagued by this concept: Sam Snead, Johnny Miller, Bernhard Langer, Tom Watson, and David Duval. Baseball players tagged in this regard include: Rick Ankiel, Steve Sax, Mark Prior and Chuck Knoblauch. Ankiel has detailed his struggles in a biography. When he no longer could find home plate as a pitcher, he re-invented himself as an outfilder, quite successfully.

Move along from his last season to the present, for Mr. Bard, some seven years later. “I could not throw a baseball for seven years”, he stated recently. What changed for him? First of all, he developed a perspective away from the game as a father. Secondly, he gained a deep increasingly scientific understanding of his own mental process.

He backed away from the game because of injuries, bad mechanical adjustments, and performance anxiety. In 2017, he signed a minor league contract with the Mets. It was the fifth team trying to help him return to the form that made him a star reliever from 2009 to 2012. He tried virtually everything, trying to learn how to throw “submarine style”, not exactly sidearm, scraping his knuckles on the mound in his pitching motion. To no avail.

He stayed in the game, working as a player mentor. But Daniel Bard is a truly extraordinary baseball player, in a very strange season. “I didn't think I was going to get an invite to a big league camp. Everything has kind of surpassed my expectations.”

The Major League season is to open this coming Thursday. Bard has earned a spot on the 30 man roster of the Colorado Rockies. Still chasing the dream.

The Blue Jays will not be playing in Toronto this year. At this point in time, where they will host their home games in anybody's guess. There are several options swirling around in cyber space.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a whole new ball game.

James Hurst

July 20, 2020.