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Motivation Quote by Frank Robinson

"You have to have a short memory as a closer"

About this Quote

A “short memory” sounds like a flaw until you remember what a closer is paid to do: walk into other people’s chaos and end it on command. Frank Robinson’s line is clubhouse pragmatism with a therapist’s insight smuggled inside. The ninth inning is an arena where the past is weaponized against you - the blown save, the hanging slider, the boos that linger longer than the box score. A closer who carries that baggage becomes predictable, tight, easy to break.

The intent here is instructional, almost managerial: forget fast or you won’t survive. But the subtext is sharper. Baseball pretends to be a sport of patience and process; the closer’s job is pure present tense. That role compresses failure into something intimate and public. You don’t lose gradually. You lose in a few pitches, on national TV, while 40,000 people practice the same hindsight. “Short memory” is a defense mechanism against the cruelty of specificity.

Robinson, who lived as both a star player and a manager in eras when “mental health” wasn’t language teams used, frames resilience as a craft. Not denial, not delusion - selective amnesia as performance technology. The line also hints at a cultural truth about sports labor: we celebrate closers as ice-cold, but we rarely admit how much of that “clutch” is just emotional triage. If you can’t delete the last mistake quickly, the next batter will make you relive it.

Quote Details

TopicResilience
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You Have to Have a Short Memory - Frank Robinson
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Frank Robinson (August 31, 1935 - February 7, 2019) was a Athlete from USA.

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