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McGWIRE

                                              November 28, 2001
                                        Rev:  April    24, 2011

   On alt.gothic I once said:

   "The jock culture has come up with the
   concept of 'psyching yourself up'."          PSYCHED


A response from a
Matthew King was to
bring up the case of
Mark McGWire.
                      [ref]

   "[...] at the height of his success, they'd always
   show him on TV visualizing home runs and thinking
   powerful thoughts."

   "Then he ran into a streak of injuries [...]
   He struck out in something like ten of eleven
   post-season at-bats, which may be partly
   attributable to physical problems, but which is
   mostly due to his getting down on himself, going
   up to the plate without much idea what he was
   doing [...] "

   "The moral of the story: psyching yourself up
   works best when you don't really need it; and
   when you need it most, it doesn't work at all."


       Another way of taking this case
       is that McGwire did well when he
       was good at psyching himself up,
       and failed when he failed at it.

       Which is to say that this is not
       a claim thats easy to falsify.



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