Top 5 clutch performances of 2010?

Alright, time for my bicentennial blog entry.  I'll write this one to address the five most "clutch" performers/performances of 2010, as I see them.

Many different perspectives seem to be popping up these days regarding who or what is "clutch" in sports, from Paul Sullivan, author of a book published this year called "Clutch", to an unknown blogger here, who seemed ready to crown South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-Na the greatest clutch athlete of all time after her gold medal-winning performance in figure skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  Were I a fan of figure skating, Yu-Na might crack my list, too; in the end, everyone is biased in their own way.  As you will see, however, the list that follows is absolutely unbiased and objective in every way.

5. Tyreke Evans.

As I am writing this, the Sacramento Kings are 6-23, the worst record in all of the NBA.  That, however, makes what happened Wednesday night all the more unlikely.  Down by one point with 1.5 seconds left, DeMarcus Cousins inbounded to Evans, who launched a double-clutch, game-winning shot from behind halfcourt, by my account (and others) the longest buzzer-beater in the history of professional basketball in the United States.  Watch the madness and read some of the reaction here.

Was the shot clutch?  Well, it was certainly lucky, and supremely unusual, especially considering both Evans and the Kings have been horrendous in the clutch as of late.  Was Evans more likely to make the shot given that it was a game-winning attempt, rather than say, at practice?  I'll say yes.  It went in, didn't it?

4. Stanford women's basketball.

Last night, Stanford's women's basketball team defeated U. Conn., 71-59, ending the Huskies' record 90-game winning streak.  Did the Huskies choke, or was Stanford clutch?  Consider Stanford's Jeanette Pohlen, a senior from Brea, California.  Pohlen has been a good player, averaging 15.6 points per game this year prior to last night.  Against U. Conn., however, the #1 team in the land, Pohlen had a career-high 31.  She had a focused look in her eye throughout the night, a look that I recognized from other athletes who have been successful in the clutch lately (e.g., the Giants' Tim Lincecum)...

3. Landon Donovan.

Donovan's final-minute goal at the 2010 World Cup to beat Algeria and send the United States on to the elimination round was the highlight of the summer, in the U.S. anyway, and thus perhaps the most famous clutch performance of the year.  Donovan is good anyway; was this goal better than we should expect from him under ordinary circumstances?  Not necessarily.  But we can certainly agree that these were not ordinary circumstances.  The World Cup is widely regarded as the most-watched sporting event worldwide, and the goal advanced the U.S. further in the tournament than they had been since 1930.  Never mind that they promptly lost in the next round to Ghana.

2. Graeme McDowell.

Somewhat under the radar to the casual sports fan, McDowell, a 31-year-old golfer from Northern Ireland, may well have been the clutch performer of the year for 2010.  In June, McDowell won the U.S. Open, to capture the first major title of his career; in October, he beat Hunter Mahan to clinch the Ryder Cup trophy for Europe, later describing the pressure there as "bananas"; then earlier this month, he capped his year with a dramatic come-from-behind victory over a rejuvenated Tiger Woods at Tiger's tournament in Thousand Oaks, California.  McDowell's performance down the stretch to beat Tiger was some of the best clutch stuff I've seen in golf: watch here.

1. The San Francisco Giants.

As I told you, this list is completely unbiased.  Let me give you some numbers to back this one up, however.

In the regular season through August, the Giants were 74-62 (.544).  In September and the postseason, they were 29-12 (.707).  Through August, the Giants' pitching staff posted a 3.36 ERA.  In September and the postseason, it was 2.03.

Cody Ross has a career slugging percentage of .466.  For the Giants in the 2010 regular season, it was exactly that: .466.  In the 2010 postseason, it was: .686.

In 703 regular season at-bats with the Giants across 2009-10, Edgar Renteria had hit 8 home runs, or one every 88 at-bats.  Renteria hit two home runs in 35 plate appearances in the 2010 postseason for the Giants: that's one every 17.5 at-bats.  Renteria's three-run Game 5 series-clincher came off of the Rangers' Cliff Lee, who had previously pitched 27.1 innings in the World Series... without giving up a home run.

Did A-Rod really choke?

Dan Gilbert's New York Times piece last week and Sian Beilock's accompanying blog entry have inspired me, too, to address Alex Rodriguez's recent 46 at-bat drought prior to bashing his 600th career home run last Wednesday. Did he really ‘choke’ under the pressure?  Was this even real pressure that he faced? I’d like to present a slightly different angle here.

First, I want to clarify whether this was indeed an unusual home run drought for Rodriguez. In addition to the 46 at-bat delay, Gilbert mentioned that the 12-day stretch also included an 0-for-17 streak. Can this be a coincidence? Unlikely. Through Saturday, A-Rod has averaged one home run every 14.5 AB's throughout his career, though that stat has dropped to one every 23 AB's in 2010.

On the other side of that argument, a check of Rodriguez's 2010 game log reveals two homer-less streaks in 2010 that were even longer than his latest one; one of 49 at-bats from June 3-22, and one of 61 at-bats from April 20 to May 9. That is, of A-Rod's 16 between-homer periods in 2010, the latest was his third-longest. By his career standards, then, the stretch between 599 and 600 was likely significantly lengthy. By his 2010 standards, however, it appears it was not.

Then again, Rodriguez' 0-for-17 streak during his quest for 600 was his second-longest hitless streak of 2010, giving way only to a 19 at-bat drought between April 24 and April 30. So let's look into this a little further.

While I am as quick as the next guy to attribute sport performance (lack of) success to mental rather than physical skills, one possible alternative explanation to A-Rod's recent struggles jumps off the page at me. Partway through his 46 at-bat lull, I managed to catch MLB TV analyst Harold Reynolds breaking down how a recent injury was slowing down Rodriguez's swing, in particular his ability to turn on inside fastballs. Sure enough, on July 25, a mere 13 at-bats into his 46, A-Rod was hit on the forearm and left hand by a fastball from Kansas City reliever Blake Wood. Rodriguez had collected six hits in those 13 tries, in fact; after the injury, he proceeded to go 3 for his next 33.

Is the injury just an excuse?  Perhaps.  Or was it more mental, and he 'choked'?  Still quite possible. We can only speculate.

The theory that A-Rod 'choked' also assumes that he felt extra pressure during each one of those 46 at-bats. This, I would argue, is also a matter of speculation. Surely Rodriguez felt more pressure to hit 600 than he did to hit 599, but was he really 'frozen with fear' as Gilbert describes? If you ask the majority of major league players, or even one of those six guys before him to hit 600, I bet they would tell you that competing in the playoffs, or even trying to hit with the game on the line in the ninth inning of a regular season game, is greater pressure. Baseball is a team game, after all, whereas hitting your 600th home run is purely an individual achievement.

Then again, A-Rod has admitted to acting a bit selfish in the past, so maybe he was more nervous than I give him credit for. To speculate even further, Rodriguez is an admitted past steroid user; it is even possible that he felt a twinge of guilt breaking one of baseball's hallowed milestones, knowing that his name may go into the record books with a dreaded asterisk next to it!

Finally, and perhaps most important, Gilbert and Beilock have set A-Rod as an example of how a superstar might be expected to perform under pressure. The problem is, Rodriguez has been observed to perform poorly in these situations before, as Gilbert noted in the similar 28 at-bat drought he endured before his 500th career longball. Why is this a problem? Because, I would argue, not all superstars perform like A-Rod in the clutch. Think Michael Jordan, or Reggie Jackson, or Tiger Woods prior to this year.

Never mind, don't think about Tiger Woods right now.  Yikes.

I'll conclude with a check of baseball-reference.com, which reveals how many at-bats it took those other six guys in the 600 home run club to get from 599 to their milestones:

Babe Ruth: 1 (Aug 20-21, 1931)

Hank Aaron: 2 (April 25-27, 1971)

Barry Bonds: 8 (Aug. 6-9, 2002)

Sammy Sosa: 13 (June 15-20, 2007)

Ken Griffey Jr.: 17 (May 31-June 9, 2008)

Willie Mays: 21 (Sep. 15-22, 1969)

As Beilock says, it 'all comes down to the dangers of thinking too much'. It's possible A-Rod was thinking a lot more than those other guys were...

Thanks to @sianbeilock for becoming @ucdpaco's latest Twitter buddy. Or follower, or whatever you call it...

And thanks to Negin Ghavami for the inspiration.

Meeting Coach Wooden

As I walked off the court having just won a hard-fought tennis match over David Khan, Dr. Phil’s entertainment manager, at the Calabasas Open and NTRP championships two weeks ago, I heard the news.  John Wooden had passed away at the age of 99.  I wasn’t sure exactly how to feel, but the next day, having already read They Call Me Coach and studied so much Coach Wooden material, I purchased another gem, A Game Plan For Life, at Borders and spent the last couple of weeks leafing through it.  I highly recommend doing the same.

If you don’t know John Wooden, please get on Wikipedia immediately.  Widely regarded as the greatest coach in basketball history, everyone in sports and at UCLA has their favorite Wooden fact or statistic.  At the moment, mine is that he met his future wife, Nell, at age 16 in 1926.  They were married for 53 years, from 1932 until her death in 1985.  Coach still wrote her love letters regularly after her death, and would talk about how he was still in love with her.  Still in love with her in 2010, 84 years after they first met!

I met Coach in June of 2004, when I was 24 and he was 93.  I was a TA for Dr. Tara Scanlan’s sport psychology class at UCLA, and at the time Wooden made an annual guest-speaker visit to the class in the spring.  I was lucky enough to ride in the car with Dr. Michelle Magyar, who was a post-doc in Dr. Scanlan’s lab at the time, and a chosen student (Shantal Lamelas) to pick up Coach from his modest condo in Encino, and drive him back over the hill to Westwood.  I was instructed to call him ‘Coach’; it was what he preferred.

A few memories stand out from that day.  The first was when we were sitting at the stop light waiting to turn left onto Sunset Blvd. from Church Lane, to head into Westwood.  I was in the backseat with Shantal, Michelle was driving, and Coach was in the front passenger spot.  Coach was quietly reciting a poem, as he frequently did in conversation.  Shantal and I could barely hear him, and just as we were straining our ears to do so, a car went by on our right, laying on its horn for what must have been at least five seconds.  Surely Coach would be distracted; what bad timing and how rude of that driver, I thought!  But when the car was gone, Coach was not only free of distraction, but we realized he had continued reciting the poem the entire time.  By that point, I doubt even Michelle had any idea what he had said.

It didn’t fully sink in until later, but as it turned out, I had experienced one of Coach’s famous lessons firsthand: don’t let that rude driver bother you, just stay calm and keep doing your thing.  I remember that sometimes when I inevitably encounter a crazy driver on the LA streets.

A couple of minutes later, Michelle made a rough lane change on Sunset, cutting someone off as I recall.  Memory fails me on what exactly I said, but it was something along the lines of ‘good job driving, Michelle,’ to make fun of her.  I wasn’t sure if Coach had heard what I’d said or even understood what had happened, but I thought it was funny either way.  Little did I know, Coach Wooden’s own smart-aleck habits were well-documented by then.

After his guest appearance in Dr. Scanlan’s class, complete with the Bruin spirit squad and mascot Joe Bruin to introduce, it was my job to give Coach a ride two blocks from Franz Hall to the UCLA faculty center.  As he sat down next to me in my ’98 Ford Escort ZX2, he looked over at me and paused.  Again, memory fails me on exactly what was said, but it went something like this:

Wooden: Oh... (pause)... YOU are driving?
Me: (afraid for my life)... uh... yes?
Wooden: Are you sure you are going to do a good job?
Me: (gulp) uh... I think so...
Wooden: I’m just kidding.

He smiled, and patted me on the hand.  It was clearly a reference to what I had said to Michelle earlier, something which, at 93 years old, he had not only remembered, but also fully understood the irony of.  I had been made fun of by the greatest coach in basketball history.  It was awesome!

At the end of that day, my most immediate reaction was that Coach was just a normal, cool guy who would be fun to hang out with.  At 93 years old.  Wow.

Having pored over his books and his Pyramid of Success in the six years since our meeting, I would probably be even more intimidated to meet him now than I was then.  Alas, now I will never have that chance.  But it’s alright.  Coach Wooden talked in A Game Plan For Life about how he was mentored by Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa, despite never having spent time with them in person.  I was lucky enough to spend parts of one day with Coach, but his influence on me has reached far beyond that.

In a nutshell, if I have a moment of weakness in life, sometimes I will ask myself, what would Coach Wooden do?  Read one of his books, and then try it yourself.  Trust me, it works pretty well.

Songs of the decade

This time of year, people like to make lists.  News stories of the year.  Sports plays of the year.  Etc.  Data collector and analyst that I am, I have fallen victim to this temptation myself from time to time.  This year, lists have been especially popular in the media, with the turn of the decade.  Thus, I will indulge you with my own ‘songs of the decade’ top five.

I am no music critic, nor do I claim to know all that much about what makes a song ‘good’ musically.  I have, however, listened to an awful lot of radio between 2000 and 2009.  In my estimation, songs of the decade influence pop culture, other music that follows, and most of all, get played so much that they get stuck in our head and become ANNOYING.

I have a few friends who do not follow popular music at all.  I will concede to them missing a couple of these songs, but certainly not all.  To miss all five would be to live under a rock these last 10 years.

Finally, these should not be confused with MY favorite songs.  My top five would look much different.  To those students who have accused me of being a ‘fan’ of Lady GaGa or Flo Rida due to my occasional use of pop culture examples in my teaching, I say, ask me for MY list.  Those artists would not appear on there.  Very often.

• Low - Flo Rida (feat. T-Pain) (2007)

Apple bottom jeans.  Boots with the fur.  Lyrical genius indeed.

• Poker Face - Lady GaGa (2008)

I liked this song the first two or three times I heard it.  Then it was repeated so many times on the radio, it was kind of frightening.

• SexyBack - Justin Timberlake (feat. Timbaland) (2006)

Seriously, if you haven’t at least heard of this one, you have been living under a rock.

• Bye Bye Bye - ‘N Sync (2000)

Props to Laura Ratsch and Cindy Fierros for performing the world-famous dance to this one at the 2009 CSUN psychology department talent show.

• Umbrella - Rihanna (feat. Jay Z) (2007)

The first time I heard “umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh” I was like, seriously, that sounds really dumb.  Shows how much I know.