In competitions, losing and winning can depend on the psychology of the team playing just as much as their ability—just ask teams like the Patriots, or if you want the opposite viewpoint, Democrats. But the fact the Kansas City Royals are so open about bringing in a team shrink to cure the clubhouse culture of losing doesn’t sit right with us. These things have to be kept on the DL or else you could seem like even more of a dysfunctional team that no one wants to sign with. Besides, what could a shrink bring to a clubhouse like that other than the legal ability to tranquilize Jose Guillen?

“My job here,” Andrew Jacobs said over the sound of fans, “is to be of assistance to the players and coaches to help them mentally deal with whatever it is they have to deal with, whether it’s a personal issue or a professional issue.”

“This is a game of failure and how you deal with it,” Jacobs said. “It’s a game of negativity. George Brett is in the Hall of Fame, his career batting average is just over .300, he failed nearly twice as many times as he succeeded. So failure is inevitable. How they deal with that, how they cope with that dictates the success you’ll have in your career.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa doc, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and try to make the players strive for greatness like Brett. This is a team that’s had four 100+ loss seasons since 2002. Let’s see if they can achieve Dan Quisenberry-like greatness then go from there, okay?

Psychologist aims to release potential within the Royals [KC Star]
Image [The Onion]