Catching up with Mackey Sasser

[Lil Bit Special]

http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-spjim1208,0,3572624,print.column

Like every head coach on every level of baseball, one of Mackey Sasser's responsibilities at Wallace Community College in Dothan, Ala., is to throw daily batting practice.

Except for Sasser, the routine act of throwing stopped coming natural to him many years ago.

To him, throwing batting practice was no different than throwing the ball back to the pitcher. The same mental block that used to make him pump his wrist repeatedly before throwing was still there.

"I was still having problems," Sasser, a former Mets catcher, said by phone the other day. "There would be times when I couldn't throw, and then I would just sit down. But it would come back."

The problem began in July of 1990 after a collision at home plate with Atlanta's Jim Presley in which Sasser hurt his right ankle. Sasser never could explain why, but from that point on when he was just about to throw back to the pitcher, he ****ed his wrist two, three maybe four times.

It happened at random, and he couldn't control it then as a catcher, and he couldn't control it as a coach tossing batting practice.

That's why when he received a random call two summers ago from a friend who wanted to refer him to a Long Island psychotherapist working on a book about performance blocks, Sasser agreed to meet him.

On Aug. 4, 2006, Sasser met for three hours in Manhattan with Dr. David Grand, who has a practice in Bellmore. In a telephone interview, Grand said they spoke in detail about past traumas that occurred on and off the field, going as far back as when he was 10 years old. And then, using a system he calls "The Grand System," Sasser identified and released these memories from his body.

According to Grand, throughout the session Sasser kept saying, "I feel relaxed. I feel safe. I can't see it anymore. And I can't feel it anymore. My body feels clear."

Then when Sasser returned to Alabama, he suddenly could throw batting practice without any hitches. And this was so stunning to him, considering he spent several years as a player trying everything from working with some of the nation's best psychologists to such activities as yoga.

"It's not hypnosis, or anything like that," Sasser said. "They find out about you personally, the trauma in your life, that kind of stuff. And they work from that. And it actually helped me, believe it or not. You find out a lot of stuff about yourself that you really didn't know.

"It really is kind of scary. But it brings peace to you. It opens up a lot of windows to look at your history. I think it would've helped me handle that situation a lot better."

Without going into detail, Sasser said he learned a lot about his past injuries and about his father, whom he lived with after his parents divorced when he was 10 years old.

All of those incidents contributed to his throwing yips, with the Presley collision in Atlanta pushing him over the edge.

"When Jim Presley ran him over blocking the plate, it was literally like being run over by a truck," Grand said. "That's a combined physical injury and an emotional injury, and because the emotional injury you feel like you're going to be damaged or destroyed

[anskyruben]

How's Benny Agbayani doing ?