"That's the past. I don't agree with retrospect"
About this Quote
A pitcher whose livelihood depended on the next pitch, not the last one, Steve Carlton drew a hard line: "Thats the past. I dont agree with retrospect". The wording is striking. He treats retrospect not as a neutral look back but as a stance one can accept or refuse. In doing so, he rejects the power of hindsight to redefine the present. Hindsight turns messy, contingent action into tidy narratives, assigning blame or genius after outcomes are known. Carlton refuses to live under those narratives.
That refusal fits both the craft of pitching and his public persona. Carlton was famously guarded with the press, wary of being turned into a storyline. In Philadelphia, where each start could swell into a saga, he insulated himself. His masterpiece season of 1972, when he won 27 games for a last-place team, and the struggles that followed made him a magnet for second-guessing and mythmaking. To keep performing, he needed the discipline of immediacy: learn what is useful, discard the rest, and return to the mound unburdened.
There is a practical psychology here. Athletes often speak of flushing the last play, good or bad, because dwelling invites paralysis. Carlton elevates that into a philosophy. Retrospect is suspect because it imports knowledge no one had in the moment, then demands explanations calibrated to outcomes rather than decisions. By denying its authority, he preserves agency in the only time he can influence: now.
Of course, the stance can be double-edged. Reflection can teach; film study and honest review sharpen a pitcher. But Carlton is drawing a boundary between quiet, purposeful learning and public postmortems that rewrite intent as inevitability. The broader lesson is a kind of forward lean: respect the past without surrendering to it, and resist letting yesterday’s story dictate today’s choices.
That refusal fits both the craft of pitching and his public persona. Carlton was famously guarded with the press, wary of being turned into a storyline. In Philadelphia, where each start could swell into a saga, he insulated himself. His masterpiece season of 1972, when he won 27 games for a last-place team, and the struggles that followed made him a magnet for second-guessing and mythmaking. To keep performing, he needed the discipline of immediacy: learn what is useful, discard the rest, and return to the mound unburdened.
There is a practical psychology here. Athletes often speak of flushing the last play, good or bad, because dwelling invites paralysis. Carlton elevates that into a philosophy. Retrospect is suspect because it imports knowledge no one had in the moment, then demands explanations calibrated to outcomes rather than decisions. By denying its authority, he preserves agency in the only time he can influence: now.
Of course, the stance can be double-edged. Reflection can teach; film study and honest review sharpen a pitcher. But Carlton is drawing a boundary between quiet, purposeful learning and public postmortems that rewrite intent as inevitability. The broader lesson is a kind of forward lean: respect the past without surrendering to it, and resist letting yesterday’s story dictate today’s choices.
Quote Details
| Topic | Letting Go |
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