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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Psyche outs in sports
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Don Park is pulling for the Red Sox in the playoffs, partly because of their underdog status. Maybe they'll win - anything can happen - but they have a huge monkey on their back. The monkey is the 84 years of failure to win the big one - often with amazing flameouts (Think Bill Buckner). This weighs down in the players heads after awhile. If you think it doesn't, you haven't played competitive sports. As a high school kid, I ran track and cross country. There was a local high school that always seemed to win - and the mere fact that they won so much was an extra weight on the shoulders of every other team. It meant that we got more keyed up than we should have before every meet with them. It meant that we applied too much thought to the problem. It meant that, ultimately, in the back of our minds, there was always a question. That's where the Red Sox live, in that particular ring of hell. It's kind of fitting in a way that they now have Byung-Hyun Kim - he has that same monkey on his back due to the way the Yankees have played against him (not to mention his less than stellar year this year). He's going to go into any series with the Yankees feeling a need to prove himself - and that's just extra pressure. The Red Sox as a team feel that pressure, and it's going to take a lot on their part to overcome it. They might; anything can happen in a short series. I wouldn't count on it though.
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