Motivation Quote by Dennis Eckersley

There is something almost disarming about a Hall of Fame closer admitting the job made him cry. Eckersley’s line strips pitching of its mythic toughness and returns it to what it actually is: a craft performed under a microscope, where a single mistake can feel like a public indictment of your competence, your nerve, even your identity.

The ellipsis matters. “Pitching...” hangs there like he’s searching for the right handle on an experience too big for the usual sports clichés. It’s not “baseball,” not “the game,” but pitching specifically: the lonely, repetitive act of trying to command a small object with surgical precision while thousands (and later, millions on TV) wait for you to fail. The subtext is that the pain isn’t abstract. It’s physical, immediate, and humiliating in the way only performance-based jobs can be: you can’t hide, and you can’t talk your way out of a hanging slider.

Culturally, Eckersley sits at a crossroads: the macho era of “play through it” meets the modern willingness to name the emotional cost of excellence. For pitchers, especially relievers, the role is designed to concentrate pressure into a few high-leverage minutes. Tears here aren’t weakness; they’re evidence of stakes. He’s admitting the part fans often consume like entertainment: the quiet terror behind control, and the fact that greatness doesn’t inoculate you against collapse.