"Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure"
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Lasorda’s line is classic coach alchemy: take an abstract menace and re-label it as a self-inflicted thought pattern. “Pressure,” he argues, isn’t a force acting on you; it’s the moment your mind quietly switches from playing to bracing. The phrasing is blunt on purpose. By calling the word “misused,” he’s not nitpicking semantics so much as policing the clubhouse vocabulary. If you let athletes narrate a game as “pressure,” you’ve already allowed the frame that matters most: fear of the bad outcome.
The subtext is less Zen than competitive. Lasorda is defending a culture where attention stays on the next pitch, the next decision, the next routine. “Pressure” is what happens when you start bargaining with the future, imagining headlines, hearing boos, picturing the error before it exists. In that sense, “pressure” becomes a socially acceptable way to admit anxiety without saying “I’m scared.” Lasorda cuts through that euphemism and treats it as a tactical mistake.
Context matters: he coached in an era when sports psychology was often folded into toughness talk, not therapy language. So he offers a usable mental shortcut, one that works in high-stakes environments because it’s actionable: don’t manage pressure; manage attention. It’s also a subtle challenge to fans and media. If you keep asking about “pressure,” you’re inviting players to rehearse failure. Lasorda’s real message is control the story you tell yourself, because the story controls your body.
The subtext is less Zen than competitive. Lasorda is defending a culture where attention stays on the next pitch, the next decision, the next routine. “Pressure” is what happens when you start bargaining with the future, imagining headlines, hearing boos, picturing the error before it exists. In that sense, “pressure” becomes a socially acceptable way to admit anxiety without saying “I’m scared.” Lasorda cuts through that euphemism and treats it as a tactical mistake.
Context matters: he coached in an era when sports psychology was often folded into toughness talk, not therapy language. So he offers a usable mental shortcut, one that works in high-stakes environments because it’s actionable: don’t manage pressure; manage attention. It’s also a subtle challenge to fans and media. If you keep asking about “pressure,” you’re inviting players to rehearse failure. Lasorda’s real message is control the story you tell yourself, because the story controls your body.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
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