Identity. It’s something all of us are trying to figure out every single day of our lives. We are on this never-ending journey to find a sense of self, trying to figure out what drives us, gives us purpose, or motivates us to be better people. Often we seek to find our identity in external forces that we can't control, like our job, outside noise, or another person.
I became more curious about finding your identity and its role in baseball after a podcast interview with another organization I work for called Major League University. We interviewed Zach Nehrir, a former Arizona Diamondbacks prospect who currently plays for the Cleburne Railroaders in the independent American Association league. "You can't find your identity in what you do," Nehrir said. That simple yet so powerful sentence carries so much meaning.
It can be easy for many baseball players to lose their identity in the game since all they know is baseball from a young age. External and outside pressures make you feel this mandate to live up to expectations from so many. MLB free-agent starting pitcher Tyson Ross has spent over ten years playing in Major League Baseball. Like many other professional baseball players, he has gone through the highs and lows that come with the game and has to find his identity outside the game he loves.
"As ballplayers, we spend a lifetime working to make it to the major leagues. Along the way, our talent and success stand out to those around us, and we are labeled 'the baseball player,' Tyson said. "I had that identity as a ballplayer from an early age, through high school, and into college."
It becomes increasingly difficult to separate yourself from the game you love and your performances on the field at a young age when your talent as an athlete becomes more important than who you are to those around you.
"I had to embrace my identity as more than a ballplayer as an adult. Baseball is what I do, not who I am," Tyson said. "It becomes tough because everyone you know is proud of what you have achieved and how far you have come, and sometimes they are more interested in you, the athlete more so than you as the person."
This notion can ring true for so many. It reflects deeply on the idea of forgetting who the human is behind the statistical numbers and the talent. The expectations that we place on athletes and people, in general, can lead us to forget about the individual's well-being. There are times when people around you want to live vicariously through you, whether it is your family, coaches, or even fans. The expectations build, and you suddenly start to feel like you are letting others down if you aren't perfect. The pressure leads to increased anxiety and stress and being even harder on yourself mentally when things don't all come together.
Former Los Angeles Angels relief pitcher Ty Buttrey went through some of the same and even at one point left the game in the prime of his career at 28 years old. "I started to realize I was losing my identity when I was the best reliever in baseball early 2019, and I was at the time I thought ‘bored’ with the game," he said. "I knew something was up. It wasn't the feeling I thought would pop up. My anxiety never went away either. To me this was an identity issue and made me think at the time, well, maybe I have been playing this game for all the wrong reasons? Do I love baseball? Do I want to do this and not try another career path?"
Buttrey hits home on the point that it can feel like you might not love something that has been a significant part of your life every single day when you have a sense of lost identity. So many varying factors can lead to players not loving the game. It could be the business side of the game, the constant anxiety that comes with having to perform daily, not knowing whether the last performance you had will get you sent down to the minors, or just the unknown of what you will do when your career is over.
Dealing with the Highs and Lows of the Game
When you lose your identity in what you do, you can let your performance — good or bad — take control of how you feel. It can take a toll on other aspects of your life, especially your personal well-being. "Separating your on-field performance and your real life is hard," Ross said. "You work your whole life to get to the highest level, and your performance on the field dictates the type of life you live…Baseball is a tough game, physically and mentally."
Ross realized that it can be grueling when you are struggling or living with the fact that you might be just one bad inning away from being sent back to the minors. "Looking back, I don't consider those early struggles failures because I learned from them," he said. Even though it can be overwhelming at times, those struggles and low points can become lessons that ultimately help develop and shape a better you. Once Ross separated the performance results from who he truly was, it became easier to set routines to help prepare himself and be okay with whatever happens. Knowing that the game or the performance didn't define who he was and that when he went home at the end of the night, he knew he did everything possible to be prepared for that game, regardless of the outcomes.
Zach Nehrir talked about going through a similar path. "I finally got to a point where I didn't care, wasn't going to allow how I play define me, and I played better than I ever have," he said. Zach allowed himself to separate the game from who he was. Once he did that, he put up some of his best numbers for the Cleburne Railroaders in the American Association independent baseball league and won the American Association Finals Most Valuable Player award.
Taking the time to reflect, build a foundation, and separate your performances from who you are can help players find who they are outside of the game, as it did for Ross and Nehrir. That doesn't mean the struggles through the highs and lows of the game are a piece of cake. Sometimes it takes an even more giant step back. Ty Buttrey said the ups and downs of baseball played a toll on his well-being as a person. "I didn't handle them well. My highs were very high, and my lows were very low," he said. “I would spend hours after a bad game practicing my delivery and overthinking to try and be perfect. It consumed way too much of my life and happiness. I wanted to be perfect."
Striving to be perfect and come back from the lows took the happiness and joy away from Buttrey.
"My biggest realization was when I completely lost my drive to show up to the ballpark, pick up a weight, do my arm care. I lost my drive to compete and fight,” he said. "I realized I couldn't change my inner being of who Ty was. I had to just change the course. I needed a career path that would allow me to build and grow as I did in baseball for so many years… and I needed to draw way closer to my wife Sam." He had to take a significant step which takes a ton of courage. He left the game, a crucial part of his everyday life, to focus on himself. To find ways that he could be a better person and find joy in not only him, but for those around him.
It can be challenging to chart a completely different course for your life. The fact that Buttrey decided to do this for his betterment of himself is enormous. Not many people can say that they've done that. "I do miss a lot of aspects that baseball gave me. With this time away, I came to realize my perspective on the game and reality was very unhealthy."
Sometimes your greatest strength can be a reflection and taking the time to change your mindset instead of forcing yourself through something that doesn't make you happy at the time. Taking that time to self-reflect improves who you are and enhances the person you can be for many around you. And it might mean you can find joy and happiness in something else or get your mind back to a place where you can once enjoy the game again.
Finding Joy in Life Outside of Baseball
So many people in society are constantly trying to find things that they can do outside of their job that bring them joy. A good friend, mentor, and founder of Zephyr Wellness Jake Wiskerchen once said “You can have passion for things without conflating it with your identity.” It can be a walk through nature, music, traveling, or for like many of us, sports.
For those who play baseball professionally, baseball has been an outlet that brings them joy from the realities of everyday life. But many ballplayers face the fact that as they further progress in their careers, the more baseball becomes a business and less of a game. "The keys for me and embracing my identity outside of the game were to follow my passions," Ross said. “ I love to travel, and so in the off-season, I began investing in myself and taking trips to do things as far away from baseball as possible. Later in my career, I started getting up early and checking out museums solo…I found my morning trips to various museums to be good for my mind and soul; aimlessly wandering through art galleries with my AirPods became one of my favorite parts of road trips in the big leagues."
Having an outlet from the daily grind of baseball helped Ross put some separation between the game and his identity as a person. It allowed him to develop a better sense of self and find joy in other things that weren't just baseball. Many of us try to find the same thing through our daily grinds of life and work. Sometimes our 9 to 5's can be so overwhelming that we need an outlet to help us step back from the anxiety and stress that come with trying to perform at a high level.
Developing foundations and routines can help us retain the identity we have lost.
"My routine was the key to my success…One mental skills trick I learned that helped me was freestyle writing before bed, especially the night before a start," Ross said. "I would take a single sheet of paper and just write, get it all out. I wouldn't let the pen stop moving until I emptied my head of my thoughts." Having the sense of a routine can help put an individual's mind into a sense of ease and peace when there is this feeling that you have lost your identity. Ross was able to do this through writing. Through his ability to take his thoughts and put them on paper, he found a way to give himself a sense of peace, make sure the game stayed enjoyable for him, and he didn't let it become something that overtook his life.
The same went for Buttrey as well. "To find my identity outside of baseball, I needed to realize I was no longer Ty, the baseball player. I just wanted to be a normal guy that worked hard to try and build up his current career path…," he said. "Which is why I started working together with my wife Same to create this non-profit Behind The Lights along with this social media company called Drip Social." Stepping away from the game helped Buttrey find his joy and passions outside of baseball. It allowed him to develop two outstanding organizations and create a closer relationship with his wife. It allowed him to realize that there is more to life and more to who he was than just the game of baseball.
Career Transitions
Luckily for Buttrey, he was able to find some potential options that could play a significant role in his post-baseball career. The reality for many baseball players is that they have a much quicker timeline to their career ending as their next day on the field is never guaranteed. Careers vary in length, and even the longest career in baseball still has most retiring in their later-30s and, if they are lucky, their early-40s. Ninety percent of players in the minor leagues will be released from an organization at some point in their career. Many of these players have not obtained higher education beyond high school. These factors can speed up the notion that many ballplayers have to figure out what to do once baseball is over. Even though a player's career is over, whether long or short, there is still so much life left to live and so many opportunities for players to transition into new fulfilling careers and find new passions that bring them joy.
Unfortunately, most MLB teams and their affiliates have not efficiently addressed post-sport-career transitions of professional baseball players. Dr. Caleb Mezzy, an assistant professor at Neumann University, is trying to change the way we look at athletes' career transitions. He did his dissertation to understand the career transitions of professional athletes to identify existing career transition models and factors to develop a career transition model for professional baseball players. In his study, he discussed that baseball players who felt competent in areas outside of their sport were more likely to open their identity further than only being an athlete.
Having a program that can help baseball players transition to careers outside of the game could help many find their identity and help them cope with the transition out of baseball. So many factors go into finding your identity. Providing baseball players with resources to help them understand their identity, transferable skills, ability to obtain further education, and psychological factors could play a massive role in supporting players during and after their career.
The Humans Behind the Numbers
As all of us fans, supporters, coaches, family members, and so many other people look at the statistics, performances, and the athlete. As important as those things are to the game of baseball, it is essential to understand that behind the baseball player is a human being. Sure, they play a game that we all love and wish we could play at the highest level, and many get paid well to do so. That doesn't mean we can't treat people with decency.
Baseball players are more than the monetary value they make, their performances on a good or bad day, or the numbers that they put up. They go through many mental battles daily that many of us can relate to. We can be fans who are happy or frustrated with team wins or losses but can also be fans who are supportive and remember the individual that makes up the baseball player. By sharing these stories, we can hopefully be more understanding and help so many others asking themselves the same question… "What brings me purpose and happiness?"