The Biggest Disease in Baseball

[TStuck]

Hi all...first time poster here.

2 other interesting cases of players whose careers succumbed to mental barriers they could never overcome were Mackey Sasser and Kevin Saucier.

Sasser was probably the more notorious of the 2 because, as a catcher for the Mets, he developed an inability to throw the ball back to the pitcher. he'd end up sailing the ball into the outfield and would even throw little dribblers back to the pitcher to try to get it back to him. He eventually tried converting to the outfield, but his career was basically done at that point.

Saucier was an interesting case because he was an "on the rise" reliever with Detroit in the early 80's who suddenly lost control of his fastball. He developed such an overwhelming fear that he would hurt someone that he just walked away from the game.

The power of the mind

[browntown653]

Welcome TStuck...never heard of those two guys. Interest stories there.

[McKain]

Hi all...first time poster here.

2 other interesting cases of players whose careers succumbed to mental barriers they could never overcome were Mackey Sasser and Kevin Saucier.

Sasser was probably the more notorious of the 2 because, as a catcher for the Mets, he developed an inability to throw the ball back to the pitcher. he'd end up sailing the ball into the outfield and would even throw little dribblers back to the pitcher to try to get it back to him. He eventually tried converting to the outfield, but his career was basically done at that point.

Saucier was an interesting case because he was an "on the rise" reliever with Detroit in the early 80's who suddenly lost control of his fastball. He developed such an overwhelming fear that he would hurt someone that he just walked away from the game.

The power of the mind

Welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy your stay here.

I remembered Sasser when writing my article, but had no real way to actually mention him because of the difficulty in finding catcher stats from that long ago, and ended up omitting him entirely. He is the most interesting case out of all of these guys, though, it's just hard to analyze the situation today because of the lack of numbers or video. If there's any in-depth studies, I've missed em

Saucier seems really weird, since he never even seems to have had a drop-off or a downfall, just had it all in his mind and dropped out of the league because of it.

Thanks for the contributions

[realmofotalk]

I would have to add that piece of shit Carlos Perez to the list.

No? Okay, I understand he wasn't a good pitcher before, anyway. I just wanted to reiterate that he's a piece of shit.

[McKain]

If you like, I could do my next article on players who are just pieces of shit.

[Halladay_is_God]

can you add Jason Frasor to the piece of shit list?

[realmofotalk]

Why not include Ozzie Guillen's sound byte, too?

[McKain]

Because he says "chit."

[love_that_reefer]

Looks like Lidge has recovered and will not be on this list.

[General]

However it looks like Willis and Zito might belong on there.