The Power of Positive Thinking: How Cliffy Got His Groove Back

The day was May 15, and Cliff Floyd was mired in a season-long slump. The Mets’ most feared hitter a year earlier, Floyd’s batting average sat at an abysmal .195, and his slugging percentage was a Rey Ordonez-esque .297.

As the Mets boarded a St. Louis-bound plane, it seemed the baseball gods had forgotten about Uncle Cliff to that point in the season. Mets fans everywhere were starting to get flashbacks to a post-1999 Robin Ventura, or a post-1996 Bernard Gilkey.

But then something happened. Something lit a fire under young Cliff. Since May 15, Cliffy has upped his average 39 points by amassing 16 hits in his past 49 at-bats, good for a .327 avg. in that span. Along the way, Floyd clubbed 3 home runs, 6 doubles and a triple.

It wasn’t greenies, human growth hormone, or flaxseed oil (we think). Nope. It was a little something from a man named Norman Vincent Peale, and a lotta something else from a deity named God.

You see, back before Carlos Delgado sauntered into town with the most famous notebook this side of Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, it was Floyd who made waves as the most literate Met.

As you may recall, Cliff attributed much of his success in 2005 to confidence-inspiring self-help books, and he used that off-day on May 15 to go back to that winning formula.

On May 16, SportsNet New York reported that Cliff could be seen reading a copy of Dr. Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking in the clubhouse before the opener of the Mets-Cardinal series in St. Louis.

As the past two weeks have shown, things haven’t been the same since.

So what gives? What is it about this book that has helped Cliff break out of his season-long schneid?

It’s all guesswork on some level, but the principle effect seems to be that Cliff has a renewed sense of confidence in his abilities.

As we all know, baseball is a mental game. The peaks and valleys of hitting streaks and slumps can be an emotional rollercoaster for fans, and we can only imagine what it’s like for the players themselves.

Or we can believe what we read. Reading the papers in the days leading up to May 15, Cliff sounded a lot like a man who had lost confidence in his talents as a ballplayer.

And that’s where The Power of Positive Thinking comes in. “Believe in yourself!” the book begins. “Have faith in your abilities!” (Peale, 1). Beginning with this simple phrase, Peale articulates his formula for a successful, confident life.

This formula relies heavily on two things: faith in yourself, and faith in God. Indeed, The Power of Positive Thinking is, at the end of the day, an unflinchingly religious book.

The religiosity of the book isn’t a problem for Peale because literally every man, woman and child he comes across, no matter how seemingly base or depraved, is, underneath it all, a devoutly religious person.

In this way, reading The Power of Positive Thinking is a lot like reading an issue of Penthouse Forum, except that instead of every woman being a lesbian, every person you encounter is a Bible-toting, verse-quoting Christian.

That isn’t to say that it’s a completely worthless read for those of us who aren’t entirely like the men and women who populate Peale’s stories, but it does mean that a secular person would have to read it more selectively.

As for Cliff (who is a pretty religious dude as far as I know), this book is full of pointers, both religious and secular, that would help him refocus his energy away from negative thoughts (“Man, am I in some kind of slump”) to positive ones (“Know what? There’s no reason I can’t get a hit in this at-bat”).

“If you think in negative terms you will get negative results,” Peale writes. “If you think in positive terms you will achieve positive results. That is the simple fact which is at the basis of an astonishing law of prosperity and success. In three words: Believe and succeed” (Peale, 167).

For those out there who aren’t particularly religious, that’s all you really need to know. Believe and succeed. Simple as that.

Panicked before you enter a room full of people you don’t know? Say to yourself that you’re a confident, likeable person. Worried that you’re no good at your job? Tell yourself that you’re as capable as anyone else and turn that frown upside down.

Of course, Peale supplements aphorisms like “believe and succeed” by quoting Matthew 21:22, “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive them” (or other such Bible verses) throughout, but you can choose to ignore them if so inclined.

One way or another, the point stands. In baseball as in many other things, it’s easy to get caught up in your personal shortcomings or to magnify your defeats. This is exactly the tendency which Peale hopes to counteract.

In case any of this was lost on old Cliff, the good news is that Peale, it turns out, was a bit of a baseball fan. Scattered throughout his narrative are references to baseball players struggling to get hits, or memories from experiences with Branch Rickey, who is described as a good friend.

“To be a successful big-league baseball player there must be a flow of easy power through every action and of course through the mind,” Peale says. “The most effective way to hit a ball is by the easy method, where all the muscles are flexible and operating in correlated power. Try to kill the ball and you will slice it or maybe miss altogether” (Peale, 180).

I mean, it’s true. How many times do we hear our commentators say that the surest way to keep the ball in the yard is to swing for the fences? A nice, easy stroke, that’s the ticket.

Now the truth is that in trying to tailor this review to Cliff’s struggles at the dish, there’s a lot I’m leaving out here about The Power of Positive Thinking.

The book is decidedly more religious than I’ve made it out to be (although again, it’s possible to read selectively and still benefit from some of its principles). Peale’s Christianity is, for the most part, not particularly pushy, but he does slip into fire and brimstone mode from time to time.

One example is when he warns that church-going people live longer than those who do not attend church: “A survey shows that church members live longer than non-church members (better join the church if you don’t want to die young)” (Peale, 116).

Chapters about sending “prayer thoughts” to people so as to effect positive outcomes will cause serious eye-rolling among less devout readers, and skepticism among less devout readers, such as myself, who attempt to get David Wright to hit a home run by sending prayer thoughts his way, only to see him come up empty (which happened to me and David during the 16-inning game).

But in the end the religiosity of the book doesn’t make it useless for secular readers, and as for old Cliff, the results speak for themselves.

Whether Cliff felt compelled to repeat the line, “I don’t believe in defeat," as Peale suggests, "until the idea dominates your subconscious attitudes” (Peale, 114) or to repeat the Bible verse “If God be for us, who can be against us” (Romans 8:31), he’s found a way to get himself back on track, and the Mets are better for it.

And so are all of us, not only for Cliff's resurgence, but also for this blessed Friday. Enjoy your weekends everyone, and if you head out to Shea, be sure to boo the shit out of Mr. Flaxseed Oil himself, Barry Bonds. And if you're staying in, be sure to keep checking Y2K over the weekend -- you never know when we'll post on a Saturday or Sunday.

- A.F.O.M.G.