ENCINO, CALIFORNIA, February 13, 2007: A dozen of the best pitching prospects in baseball lay side by side in the dark, their eyes closed, their mouths shut, their minds open. They pulled their sweatshirt hoods over their faces. They let their feet dangle over their yoga mats. They breathed in unison, inhaling for three seconds through their noses, exhaling for five seconds through their mouths. Yoga instructor, Alan Jaeger, is putting pitchers through a training regimen which lasts five hours, and for the first four hours no one touches a baseball.
The pitchers meditate, stretch, listen to music, perform yoga poses, meditate again and listen to more music. They talk about dreams and visualize games. Two of professional baseball’s most durable arms, Barry Zito of the Giants and Joel Zumaya, who plays for the Tigers, have used Jaeger’s yoga practices for years. In theory, they are improving their balance, sharpening their concentration and learning to take deep breaths in the face of high anxiety.
“If you can calm yourself down in the middle of those poses, you can do it in the middle of the game,” said Errol Simonitsch, a pitcher for the Minnesota Twins. “That’s why, before every pitch, you’ll see me take a deep breath.” By thinking about his breaths, Simonitsch is limiting how much he thinks about his pitches, and he has a better chance of blocking out distractions. He simply rocks and fires. By the time he reflects on the pitch, it is already released.
This technique was popularized by Zito, who takes so many deep breaths on the mound that it can look as if he is hyperventilating. When Zumaya made his major league debut last season in Kansas City, he ran down the tunnel for a moment to do his breathing exercises. No one laughed at him, at least not after his pitch touched 103 miles an hour on the radar gun. And no one laughed at Zito, not when he signed a contract in December for $126 million.