Tailoring the game to your talents

An extended quote from the book Moneyball, about the baseball player Scott Hatteberg, and his approach to hitting, and his experiences with the lavishly funded Boston Red Sox and the meagerly funded Oakland As organizations: 

[Hatteberg's] cultivated approach to hitting— his thoughtfulness, his patience, his need for his decisions to be informed rather than reckless— was regarded by the Boston Red Sox as a deficiency. The Red Sox encouraged their players’ mystical streaks. They brought into the clubhouse a parade of shrinks and motivational speakers to teach the players to harness their aggression. Be men!

Hatty sensed he might be in for trouble when he saw how the Red Sox management treated Wade Boggs. He’d spent a lot of time with Boggs in the batting cage during spring training, trying to learn whatever he could from the master. Boggs, a perennial All-Star, famously never swung at the first pitch—or any pitch after that he didn’t love. Boggs was as efficient a machine as there ever was for acquiring information about opposing pitchers. By the time Wade Boggs was done with his first at bat, his team had seen everything the opposing pitcher had.

Boggs’s refusal to exhibit the necessary aggression led to his ostracism by the Red Sox. “They would get on him for taking a walk when there was a guy on second,” recalled Hatteberg. “They called him selfish for that.”

If Wade Boggs wasn’t allowed his patience, Hatteberg figured, he certainly wouldn’t be, either. When Hatteberg let a pitch go by for a strike— because it was a strike he couldn’t do much with— Red Sox managers would holler at him from the dugout. Coaches would try to tell him that he was hurting the team if he wasn’t more inclined to swing with men on base, or in 2-0 counts. The hitting coach, former Rex Sox slugger Jim Rice, rode Hatty long and hard. Rice called him out in the clubhouse, in front of his teammates, and ridiculed him for having a batting average in the .270s when he hit .500 when he swung at the first pitch.

When you're lavishly endowed with either money or talent— as both an organization and an individual, in this case— your money and talent can cover for bad doctrine. Or doctrine that doesn't work for people not similarly endowed:

“Jim Rice hit like a genetic freak and he wanted everyone else to hit the way he did,” Hatteberg said. “He didn’t understand that the reason I hit .500 when I swung at the first pitch was that I only swung at first pitches that were too good not to swing at.” Hatty had a gift for tailoring the game to talents. It was completely ignored. The effect of Jim Rice on Scott Hatteberg was to convince him that “this is why poor hitters make the best hitting coaches. They don’t try to make you like them, because they sucked.”

The following is about integrity— not in the usual sense of sticking to principles, but of doing something a certain way, even when you are not supported in it, because it's the only way you can do it, it's the only way you know to do it well: 

Each time Scott Hatteberg came to bat for the Boston Red Sox he had, in effect, to take an intellectual stand against his own organization in order to do what was right for the team. Hitting, for him, was a considered act. He didn’t know how to hit without thinking about it, and so he kept right on thinking about it. In retrospect, this was a striking act of self-determination; at the time it just seemed like an unpleasant experience. Not once in his ten years with the Red Sox did anyone in Boston suggest there was anything of value in his approach to hitting— in working the count, narrowing the strike zone, drawing walks, getting on base, in not making outs.

“Never,” he said. “No coach ever said anything. It was more, get up there and slug. Their philosophy was just to buy the best hitters money can buy, and set them loose.” The Red Sox couldn’t have cared less if he had waged some fierce battle at the plate. If he had, say, fought off the pitcher for eight straight pitches and lined out hard to center field. All that mattered was that he had made an out. At the same time, they praised him when he didn’t deserve it. “I’d have games when I’d have two hits and I didn’t take a good swing the whole game,” he said, “and it was like ‘Great game, Hatty.’”

Pro ball never made the slightest attempt to encourage what he did best: take precise measurements of the strike zone and fit his talents to it. The Boston Red Sox were obsessed with outcomes; he with process. That’s what kept him sane. 

The Oakland As took an ensemble approach that emphasized getting on base by any means necessary, including getting walked. By necessity; they didn't have the money to hire star talents, so they sought out undervalued players who were nevertheless very good at getting on base— the “Greek god of walks.”

The moment he arrived in Oakland, the friction in his hitting life vanished. In Oakland, he experienced something like the reverse of his Boston experience. “Here I go 0 for 3 with two lineouts and a walk and the general manager comes by my locker and says, ‘Hey, great at bats.’ For the first time in my career I’ve had people tell me, ‘I love your approach.’ I knew how I approached hitting but I never thought that it was anything anyone cared to think about.” All these things he did just because that’s how he had to do them if he was to succeed were, in Oakland, encouraged. The Oakland A’s had put into words something he had only felt.

“When you go to the plate,” Hatty said, “it’s about the only thing you do that is an individual thing or seems like an individual thing. When you go to the plate, it’s about the only thing you do alone in baseball. Here they have turned it into a team thing.”

I encourage you to read the book— it's relevant on a lot of levels. The movie is fun, and a good hook for that, but the real stuff is in the book. Maybe the most important point is that there's more than one way to do all of this. Not everything has to be done through the obvious front door.  

Very occasional quote of the day: getting fired

“There’s been times when I was fired from gigs because, lets say I had the ability to get my foot in the door, but wasn’t living up to the expectations that people had. In that process I’d go through a lot of reassessment and then address my weak points and make them strong points. That’s a situation that happens to a lot of musicians. 

Psychologically you can’t let that get you down. You have to use those situations as learning opportunities, not to develop attitudes about people, but to develop a perspective of your strengths and weaknesses. At those times I did a lot of deep analysis of my playing and tried to be as objective as possible. I’ve tried to address my weaknesses and really work hard to develop them into strengths. 

Over the years I’ve been let go for not having good time, not being able to play with a click track, not being a real asset as a guy on the road that has a good attitude, you know any number of things which I’ve learned from and developed my playing and developed my personality to be easy to work with and professional as a musician on tour and in the studio.”

- Steve Smith in The Psychology of Drumming by Chris Peacock

You can download a pdf of the book on Scribd— though I don't know if it was posted with the consent of the author. I believe Peacock is the author of the Drum Ninja site, so maybe you can get it through him, or at least make a donation for pirating his book. 

Confidence

“Hello. Good evening. Hope I'm Funny.”

-Richard Pryor, That N___'s Crazy

“So who’s that big dumb ass out there on the hill?” 

“That’s Steve Carlton. He’s maybe the greatest left-hander in the history of the game. He’s got heat and also maybe the nastiest slider ever.”  

“S**t, I'll stick him.”

- Lenny Dykstra, Moneyball

I'll be honest, the following is how I feel about playing music at times— from Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut:

He had just been elected President, and it was necessary that he speak. He was scared stiff, thought a ghastly mistake had been made. All those prosperous, solid men out there would discover now that they had elected a ludicrous waif. They would hear his reedy voice, the one he’d had in the war. He swallowed, knew that all he had for a voice box was a little whistle cut from a willow switch. Worse—he had nothing to say. The crowd quieted down. Everybody was pink and beaming.

Billy opened his mouth, and out came a deep, resonant tone. His voice was a gorgeous instrument. It told jokes which brought down the house. It grew serious, told jokes again, and ended on a note of humility. The explanation of the miracle was this: Billy had taken a course in public speaking.

...not when I'm playing routine gigs, or playing with my own group, but when I'm feeling some kind of pressure to perform: if the music is harder than normal, or I feel that the other musicians are at a higher level than me, or there's someone in the room I badly want to impress. In advance I have no idea what I'm going to play, or if I can play at all— often I'm pretty sure I can't really play, and something is going to come up that will expose that, horrifically. Once we start playing, a completely different sound from what I expect comes out, and everything typically works fine. It's ridiculous, I'm a good musician, I just don't know it in advance. As much as I've played and practiced, I don't know where the notes come from.  

I also really feel this part of the book Moneyball, the baseball book by Michael Lewis. It's about a very successful relief pitcher, Chad Bradford:  

For his entire career hardly anyone has believed in him and now that they do, he can’t quite believe in himself. “It’s my greatest weakness,” he said. “I have zero self-confidence. The only way I can explain it is that I’m not the guy who throws ninety-five miles an hour. The guy who throws ninety-five can always see his talent. But I don’t have that. My stuff depends on deception. For it to work, there’s so much that has to go right.

That's an extremely high-pressure job for a person to have that mindset, and still be functional. 

Moneyball is largely about Oakland As general manager Billy Beane, who, as a major league draftee had been a phenomenally gifted prospect, which he failed to fulfil as a player because he was totally wrong for the game mentally and emotionally. Comparing himself with Lenny Dykstra, who was basically empty headed, reflexively self-confident: 

Billy sensed fundamental differences between himself and Lenny. Physically, Lenny didn’t belong in the same league with him. He was half Billy’s size, and had a fraction of Billy’s promise — which is why the Mets hadn’t drafted him until the thirteenth round. Mentally, Lenny was superior, which was odd considering Lenny wasn’t what you'd call a student of the game.

The point about Lenny, at least to Billy, was clear: Lenny didn’t let his mind screw him up. The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones. Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not all that far from his head with total confidence. “Lenny was so perfectly designed, emotionally, to play the game of baseball,” said Billy. “He was able to instantly forget any failure and draw strength from every success. He had no concept of failure. And he had no idea of where he was. And I was the opposite.”

Of course Bradford above didn't have that level of confidence either, so there's a range of gifts and weaknesses people can have and still do a thing on a national stage. Though we're also talking about different levels of player there, as well— one a great team player, the other a baseball legend. But if you look at that first quote from Richard Pryor— basically the Charlie Parker of standup, saying that at the beginning of a record that is a comedy masterpiece— and he doesn't know how it's going to go. He could bomb. 

Bombing is an inevitable part of live in that business. Comedians expose themselves on stage in a very personal way, with no idea if they're going to connect with any particular audience, every time they go to work. Musicians don't usually have to face that prospect of failing obviously and totally, while still having to stand on stage alone and keep talking into the mic.    

There is a difference between playing confidently and feeling confident generally, when you're not playing. It's harder to be confident when you're not playing. You have to face these questions without being able to act on them: Would I be able to play X? Why can't/don't I play what X other player plays? What if I have to do X that I know I'm not very good at? What about X horrible playing demand that Y drummer told me he had put upon him, how would I handle that? 

Real burnout pros don't sweat any of this stuff, it's all too familiar. Playing more straightens it all out— creating a comfort zone. You learn that you can actually play, and you learn to fake what you can't play, which is the same as playing. You learn what to expect, and you learn what is reasonable for others to expect when they ask you to do something unexpected. And you're exposed to more players, and you figure out that most people have relative strengths and weaknesses, and don't do everything equally well. You see what those people's attitudes are about things they're not that good at.  

Still, it's a lifelong thing, apparently, for a lot of people— we'll talk more about it. 

Garrison soldier / combat soldier

There were four platoons in the company, and of them all, Second Platoon was considered the best-trained and in some ways the worst-disciplined. The platoon had a reputation for producing terrible garrison soldiers— men who drink and fight and get arrested for disorderly conduct and mayhem— but who are extraordinarily good at war. Soldiers make a distinction between the petty tyrannies of garrison life and the very real ordeals of combat, and poor garrison soldiers like to think it's impossible to be good at both.

- Sebastian Junger, War

I don't like drawing military/war analogies— I'm interested in that stuff, it's also the exact opposite of everything I believe in. I don't revere any of it. But teaching a lesson to an 11 year old recently I was reminded of that quote.

That student is making a good emotional connection with the instrument— he likes to play the drums, likes playing loud, he experiments, makes up his own stuff, and is naturally able to expand creatively with the things I give him. And he can also be pretty bad at being guided through the lesson, at being taught. 

For the most part this is what we want. The point of all of it is for people form their own idea about how to play, and enjoy the physical act of playing, of making sounds on the drums. We're not just making a box for people to get good at living in. As a teaching problem, I'd be hoping to get him to get him to hold the sticks the way I want part of the time, at least (in fact he has improved over time with this). I have to be persistent about keeping the lesson focused and productive, but that's up to me, not him. 

Being a little bit of an ape is good, being a full ape is bad. I'm talking about being personally disordered, engaging in real life mayhem, outside of music. Full apes can succeed as rock performers, for a little while, and then become some of our biggest musical losers. I've known people like that.  

But any form of engagement is good. You don't have to be an ape to play music well. Probably most musicians now are not apes. 

Also noting that I recognize some of that “garrison” type personality phenomenon from music school, and other settings with large groups of musicians— there are people who are very decorous and rule oriented about music, who get upset if anyone pushes that envelope, and who are basically oriented around keeping others in line. That's the essence of mediocrity, right there.  

I don't want to go too far with this— I hesitated even putting it on my site, even more than I did the rather explicit jokes in another post. But, the analogy was unavoidable with that one student.

Feelings and things you can't do

Taking a little break from working on the 2018 Book of the Blog, musing about different stages of attitudes about players who can do things you can't:


I want to be able to do that!
Beginning, early studenthood; you're infatuated with this new drumming thing, and your abilities are all potential, so you don't attach too much of your ego to your abilities relative to other people's.


I can't do that, I suck. 
“Serious” student. A lot of people get stuck in this phase for a long time. I'm 51 and I'm just starting to get over it. In this way of thinking, someone who can do something you can't is “better” than you, and since you can't do it, you can't really play.


I can't do that, he sucks.
Slightly more serious student, or defective professional. The other side of the coin from the last one, and marginally less unhealthy. You could call this an adolescent stage, in which you're hostile about  people who are doing something different from you.


I can't do that, I suck, and he sucks! I have to be able to do that!
Toxic-competitive/self-loathing. Learning someone else's thing to prove he sucks. I've known people like this, and don't really understand it. Leads to being bitterly productive, or just miserably bitter.


That is a distraction.
This has been my feeling sometimes. There have been very talented players I have avoided hearing—they were such overwhelming musical personalities that they would blow out the thing I was focusing on. It's hard to be thinking about Billy Higgins or Paul Motian when some guy is blowing a lot of Tony Williams on steroids spectacle in your face.


Why can you do that? I can't do it!
The arrogant veteran. This is paraphrasing something Mel Lewis reported himself saying to a student. Basically: what I'm doing is the definition of the real shit, and doing more than me means you're doing it wrong. It's easier to be this way when you're a top New York player playing at the Village Vanguard every week.

Hooray, there's something I can't do! More to learn! 
This is the attitude pervading Steve Smith's personal videos— you really get the feeling that he just loves to practice, and has made a life time project of tirelessly learning everything. Not everyone is an extremely gifted relentless practicer, nor should they necessarily be. At some point we have to be able to declare ourselves proficient, and focus on creating.


I can't do that, but he can't do what I do. 
Maturity. There was a video of Jim Keltner talking with Terry Bozzio, Vinnie Colaiuta, and some other extremely able players, and Keltner openly questioned how he could have anything to say about drumming with them in the room, and then stated that this was his feeling about that. It's not so much about competition, but about recognizing that different people have different gifts and different things to say, so being competitive about technical abilities is a little silly.

Truth and negativity

This has been sitting in my drafts folder awhile— some thoughts on an older piece from George Colligan's Jazz Truth blog, a collection of thoughts about negativity, positivity, realism, “telling it like it is”, and all that:

I remember one tour where one of my band mates chastised me for being too negative. “Man, you are always talking s*$t about something.” OK. I decided then that my friend would only see the “positive” side of me.... 

Hey, good morning! I slept so well, did you? You look rested. Have you been outside? It's such a beautiful day. We are so blessed to have the sun shining today. I'm so glad we are on the road together. You are one of my favorite drummers, did you know that? Do you realize how lucky we are to get to play music together? I'm so glad we are friends. Here, come here, I want to give you a hug..... 

After a few hours of that, the consensus all around was that I should “go back to being normal.”

Now, I was thinking, “I'd much rather be on the road with that guy.” Assuming he was sincere, and not trying to be a jerk about it. It's actually not that fun to be around people who are prone to complaining, especially when they're lucky enough to be traveling playing music for a living. I want to enjoy every minute of it as much as possible, and that kind of stuff doesn't help me do that. It took me a long time to learn this, but I think you'll get further in life being sincerely positive with other people basically 100% of the time. That doesn't mean being vapidly sunshiny, or pretending problems aren't happening when they are. Usually it just means keeping your sense of humor when you have to do something stupid or hard, or are a little bit uncomfortable, or when things are not going well.

Continued after the break: