Aside from the obvious correlations that one might draw between the King of Pop and Alfred James Pacino (both in showbiz, both have millions of fans, both have millions of dollars); their ability to inspire a baseball team to go on a 10 game win streak and turn around a struggling season is often over looked.
It all began June 25, 2009, the day Michael Jackson died. (May he eternally rest in piece) The Saltdogs were assembling in the clubhouse around 3pm getting ready for a typical day and another game. The team had been struggling to win games in the first half and needed something to jump start the team. After batting practice, the team returned to clubhouse and saw that MJ had indeed suffered a cardiac arrest and died. Many of the guys felt that it would be appropriate to honor Michael by substituting their intro-songs (music played as a batter walks to the plate) with one of his many hits. The entire starting lineup agreed and as the starting pitcher took the mound to start his first warm up pitches, "Billy Jean" began playing over the loud speakers. To be in the clubhouse and in the dugout, one could feel a little extra spark in all the players' eyes and an extra hop in their step.
Al Pacino's role in this story technically began few days before Michael's death. The movie "Any Given Sunday" stars Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, TO has a small part, and of course Al Pacino as the fiery head coach Tony D'Amato. In the movie, D'Amato gives one of the most passionate, inspirational, and all together awesome pre-game speeches in cinema history (apologies to Russel in "Miracle" and Hackman in"Hoosiers"). To truly understand the power behind this speech, take 5 minutes and check out the youtube link to this piece of motion picture perfection. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO4tIrjBDkk . As fate would have it, one our starting pitchers happened to have the audio version of this speech on his ipod, and began playing it before each of games, starting a few days before the day Michael died.
For some reason; a reason that this Saltdog can't quite explain, the combination of the energy provided by hits of Michael Jackson and the power of Pacino's speech, the Saltdogs starting winning ball games. Close games, blow outs, it didn't matter. Even more amazing, the day that Michael died, our starting pitcher threw a no-hitter! We proceeded to win 10 games in a row and have been playing inspired baseball every since. Over the next 3 weeks, we listened to the speech every game around 6:30pm just before guys would begin the warm up to start the game. At the conclusion of every speech, the Saltdogs grew more and more animated and more and more "fired up." We also continued to listen to "Dirty Diana," "Man in the Mirror," and other MJ Specials.
Truth be told, the Pacino speech has tapered off a bit as the season keeps trudging along. Interestingly though, MJ songs thrive on as we close in on the last month of the season. The Saltdogs keep playing good baseball, although we haven' won every game.
If there were a way to write down a formula that had the same effect as the Pacino-Jackson Phenomena, it would sell for millions. Every coach from little league to the big leagues, and peewee football to the NFL (and any other sport) would use that formula. Coaches constantly look for ways to keep their players fired up and inspire them to play at a level that might be beyond the sum of their individual parts. I feel this Emergence Theory is many times the differences between a team the wallows in mediocrity or finds a way to make a change for the better and increase its ability to perform. In actuality, the fact their is no one way to achieve this goal is one of the many things that makes team sports so amazing. The millions of intricacies that make up "team chemistry" will always be the second piece to the puzzle that combines with raw talent to make a winning team.
The Saltdogs can thank Michael Jackson and Al Pacino for that piece.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
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