The "Yips"

The yips have been big news this week because Jose Altuve, Houston's golden-glove second baseman has made three throwing errors in two games. Glaring, costly errors. He's bounced balls to first base and to second base -- throws of twenty or forty feet which he has made successfully thousands of times in his outstanding career.

The "yips" is sports jargon for the sudden, inexplicable inability to make an ordinary or routine play. It's commonly used by golfers when they start missing short putts --but baseball has its famous yippers -- Steve Saxe, Chuck Knoblauch (both of them second baseman who have the shortest, easiest throws)  and now, possibly Altuve. Sometimes a good pitcher will lose his control and start to miss badly; the retired pitcher at the microphone will say, "he's lost his release point," which is a yippish diagnosis without using the word. Athletes think that the problem is psychological but it's possible that the condition is merely neurological - a "focal dystonia" or muscle spasm in the wrist. Basketball yips? Yes, sometimes a good foul shooter will miss four or five in a row. 

I suspect that the yips may not be a sports-only syndrome.

Once, a decade or two ago, I was driving across the country on a four-lane and needed to brake. For some reason, my feet (I was driving a standard transmission so both feet and the clutch pedal were involved) couldn't remember which was the brake pedal. I flailed with both feet and was utterly panicked for about five long seconds. Then I came to my senses, put the correct foot on the correct pedal, and continued on in normal fashion. Life continued. But if I had crashed the car and killed myself, which was certainly a possibility, investigators would have thought that I had fallen asleep at the switch. They'd have been wrong; it was just the yips -- a failure to perform a task that should have been entirely routine.

I wonder how many road disasters are caused by undiagnosed yippishness.

Do actors get the yips? Do musicians? Dentists?  Airline pilots? Surgeons ("You know, I've done that back surgery hundreds of times but three out of the last four, I've sliced entirely through the guy's spinal cord").

Comments

[Don Z. Block]

Altuve getting the yips? It's understandable. He no longer how a drumbeater telling him what pitch is coming when he is at the plate. His batting average wasn't so hot this year, was it? Guessing can make a player nervous, and the yips can carry over onto the field. Altuve could probably benefit from drum therapy. Have someone beat a drum incessantly in batting practice, and soon Jose will be hearing it even if it isn't playing. And he'll be hearing it while he is trying to go to sleep. And he'll be hearing it i n restaurants and anywhere else. Drum therapy may cure Altuve's yips. It was unfortunate, however, that the Rays pushed the Astros out of the playoffs. It would have been nice to see the Houston Cheaters face off against the Los Angeles Horse Thieves, the team that stole and in effect murdered the Brooklyn Dodgers, the most heinous crime in sports history.