Toronto Blue Jays: Roy Halladay: 2003 Pitcher of the Year: with some help, major league victories leader took control of his talent and emerged as one of the game's top starters

Baseball Digest, Jan, 2004 by Jack Etkin

SOMETHING WAS AMISS DURING THE 2002 season for Roy Halladay, although there was no statistical evidence to suggest it.

The victories were mounting. Halladay was beginning to realize his vast potential. He was establishing himself as the ace of the Toronto Blue Jays rotation and one of the better young pitchers in the major leagues.

While building on his success in the second half of 2001, Halladay was putting his past misfortunes far behind him. He was following a steadily upward course that would lead to a 19-7 record and 2.93 earned run average and put him among the American League leaders in most pitching categories at the end of the season.

He won four consecutive starts in May--and not against the A.L. dregs. The victories came at Seattle, at Oakland, against Oakland and at New York, games when Halladay allowed only six earned runs in 29 innings.

More and more, Halladay's teammates were looking to him for big things. Rarely did he disappoint them. But toward the middle of 2002, with minimal reason to worry, Halladay's stress level was rising.

"The easiest thing for me to do is the physical work," said Halladay, an All-Colorado player at Arvada West High School who was Toronto's first pick and the 17th overall in the 1995 draft. "The weight lifting, the conditioning--for me, that's the easiest part of baseball.

"For me, the hard part is controlling my emotions, controlling my thoughts in between games. Some of the things you put in your own head are ridiculous. That's my problem, all those demons. Knowing I have the confidence and what keeps it there--for me, that's the hard part and what I'm still learning."

FEELING PRESSURE

Halladay was named to the A.L. All-Star team, an honor that led him to think he had to pitch better during the second half of the season.

He would finish a start, usually pitching well, and worry about a formidable opponent looming in his next one.

When the Blue Jays began to line Halladay up against other pitchers, he would worry about those pitchers.

During a game, Halladay had reduced his craft to one essential: Just concentrate on making one pitch.

But away from the mound, Halladay's focus was anything but narrow.

"I always felt I kind of view everything as a huge picture," the 26-year-old Halladay said. "Everything was so broad. I'd go into my minor league years and feel, This year is a big year for me. I really have to do well.'

"Even going into 2002 ... I felt I really had to prove myself. Then I learned halfway through the season that stuff wasn't doing anything for me."

The turning point was a chance meeting with Harvey Dorfman, a consulting sports psychologist now employed. by agent Scott Boras. Dofman co-authored The Mental Game of Baseball, a seminal work in the field. He has worked with various teams, including the Oakland Athletics, Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Dorfman was in Toronto to see a client during the '02 season. While on the Sky-Dome field, Chris Carpenter, a former Blue Jays pitcher and Halladay's close friend, and Halladay approached Dorfman, wanting to know if it was all right to ask some questions.

Dorfman had several conversations with Halladay, including one Sunday when he was visiting the Blue Jays camp.

"I've been real worried about what other people thought of me, whether they thought I was going to be successful," Halladay said, "and really, up until 2002, played my career for everybody else but myself. I think last year was probably the first where I was more concerned about how I felt about myself. I was always worried about everybody else."

NOBODY'S PERFECT

Halladay had read The Mental Game of Baseball. Dorfman's book, The A,B,C's of Pitching came out during the spring of 2002. Halladay said he read it six times during the course of that year, to the point where, he said, Dorfman suggested other books for him to read.

The concerns and worries, stresses and fears Halladay coped with are by no means unusual, Dorfman said. Dorfman recalled a very accomplished National League right-hander telling him, "I'm a perfectionist."

Dorfman's response was to ask the pitcher whether he ever met a perfect person, and when told no, asked why this pitcher thought he was going to be the first one.

"You aspire to perfection," Dorfman said. "But all the time, you know you don't reach it. When a guy forgets that, it's just a lack of perspective. His perspective is, 'This performance I just enacted, I know how to replicate it, because I know what I put into it. I know my approach. I know my responses. And I trust my stuff.'

"But when you don't trust things beyond that, you're thinking too big. All you have to say is, That's where I want to be.' But then we start to catas-trophize. You're thinking about your family and security and on and on. We put this tremendous burden on us. It's sort of like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. They're going to a picnic and he says, 'Don't blame me if it rains.'"

Halladay said Dorfman "makes you hold yourself accountable."

In the terms he talks to athletes, Dorfman said being accountable means "you are responsible."