Weekly Reading — 2026-09-08

This article is part of our Life on the Other Side of the Game series, which looks at the lessons former athletes have learned in retirement about success, fulfillment and perspective.

An NFL career that ends in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is rare enough. But even fewer players have a second act that was just as successful, if not more so, than their football career.

And one person can claim the following: a Hall of Fame career, an NFL MVP award, more than two decades as a Supreme Court justice and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Alan Page did all of those things.

As a member of the Minnesota Vikings’ famed “Purple People Eaters” defensive line, Page was named MVP in 1971. After his career, he served on the Minnesota Supreme Court for more than two decades, becoming the state’s first Black justice.

Page and his wife, Diane, launched the Page Education Foundation, which has helped thousands pursue higher education. In 2018, he became the first former professional athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I wanted to speak with Page, 81, about the lessons he carried from football and the perspective he has gained in retirement.

Mostly, I wanted to know: How could one person accomplish so much?

Professional football and a judicial career seem very different, but I’d love to know if there were core principles or skills that allowed you to achieve success in both. 

Different only in that they are different things, but the core underlying principles that allow for success are the same, it seems to me, no matter what the endeavor is.

It’s the ability to focus on the task at hand. It’s the ability to work hard, the willingness to work hard. Perseverance. Thinking through a problem, analyzing it, making a decision, and then acting on that decision.

You earned your law degree while you were playing for the Vikings and then practiced law during the offseason. You also had a family. What did it take to pull that off and show up as the best version of yourself?

Understanding that when you’re in the law school classroom, you’re in the law school classroom, and when you’re on the football field or a game is near, you’re not at law school.

And yes, while all of that was going on, I had a family and a life beyond football and law school.

But when I reflect on that sort of thing, it’s deciding that you want to do something, or that you’re going to do something, and then consciously showing up, as you say, as your best self, or trying to be your best self, in whatever you’re doing. So I didn’t feel burnt out. I mean, if anything, I was energized and motivated by all of it.

You don’t have a lot of time to feel sorry for yourself when you’re busy.

I love that. 

Truth be told, my law school education was really a benefit. I had been playing professional football for nine years. Not that I’d done everything you could do on the football field, but I’d done quite a few of them. And so at some level, it becomes a little boring. Boring isn’t quite the right word, but it becomes routine.

The classroom and law school gave me something new to think about and do, beyond simply thinking about and performing on the football field.

It actually probably extended my football career.

Because you learn to appreciate it more when you step away from it?

Well, at some level, it’s a little too much time in the candy store. The need for something else in life comes along.

What do you think is a skill from football that made you a better judge? 

Two things. One, the ability to focus on the task at hand, whatever that may be. Whatever the distractions may be, focusing on the job that’s in front of you, what you’re working on, and not getting sidetracked.

And two, seeking excellence in whatever you’re doing.

Your relationship with competition and success and excellence, did that change at all? Being in such a different field? 

No, not at all. Because for me, seeking excellence means being as good as you can be at what you’re doing, not as good as your competition is, not as good as the person next to you, but fulfilling your highest potential. Whether that’s on the athletic field, in the law, or just in relationships. That elevates you in ways that I think seeking excellence to be better than somebody else really just limits you to the competition.

I should note that the one thing I concluded early on is that success is not a destination. It’s in some respects a man well traveled. It’s the journey that’s important, not the milestones along the way. Because once you reach a milestone, you’re sort of saying, what was that all about?

Can you tell me more about that?

Well, I don’t know that I can articulate why it’s important, but I can tell you that from my experience — and I had the good fortune to reach a number of destinations — once you reach the destination, it’s always, “That was all it was about?”

In 1971, after I was selected MVP, it was kind of a turning point for me because, first of all, it was unexpected. Second of all, as I said, once you’ve done it, what’s left?

Do you want to do it again, or do you want to do something else? For me, I had to work through, mentally, the challenges of having achieved — at least the perception of — about as much success an individual can have on the football field.

Do I walk away now because I’ve accomplished what there is to accomplish? Or do I take another look at this and rethink how to go forward?

I ultimately concluded that it was the journey, not the destination. It was working to be the best football player that I could be that was important, that was fulfilling, not simply being recognized for it.

What does that process look like for you, to come to that kind of conclusion? 

It was a lot of introspection.

Even back then, before we had the internet moving us at warp speed, we as people tend to look at things and want solutions and answers. Well, I don’t think it works that way.

You have to reflect. You have to think; you have to really work your way through it. And that’s what it took for me: a great deal of thinking about what does all this mean.

When you look back on your judicial career, what was fulfilling about that particular journey?

Absolutely every moment. I loved every moment. From the beginning to end.

The challenges, the intellectual stimulation, working with other people, trying to understand how the facts interrelated with the law as it existed. Trying to understand and come to grips with those who disagree or saw the world in a different way than I did. And trying to use that to either strengthen or change or help understand what I was thinking.

I just loved every minute of it.

Was there anything from that side of your life that helped you understand things differently or taught you something the NFL didn’t?

That we don’t have all the answers, no matter who you are. The fact that I was a Supreme Court judge didn’t give me any monopoly on understanding the human condition.

Quite frankly, the understanding that law was always a work in progress.

I was always trying to do the best that I could with what was in front of me, making sure that I could, to the extent that it was humanly possible, account for my biases in my decision-making. And making sure that I treated everybody and every organization that came before the court the same.

At the end of the day, when I look back, what is really important to me — I understand we’re talking about career here
— but what I was most proud of actually is my relationship with my family.

The woman who was the love of my life, well, has been the love of my life for 57 years, although she is no longer with us. That’s what I look back on. That’s the one thing.

Family is the one time I allow myself to look in the rearview mirror.

There’s something about family that goes well beyond what you do. It becomes who you are, what you are part of. The football career and all those wonderful people and all the great things that happened, that ends and you move on. Same with the law. I worked with a number of incredible people, but that ends and you move on.

Family doesn’t end.

I always like to leave it open at the end if there’s anything else on your mind.


One of the things I’ve learned, and it’s something I hadn’t really thought about.

One year I was visiting a school, and one of the students showed me their student calendar. On the back of the calendar, it said, “Be kinder than you need to be.” And that really struck me.

That, as people, no matter what your endeavor is, no matter who you are, if we’re going to survive, we need to figure out how to be kinder than we need to be.

When I saw it, it was kind of one of those moments that takes your breath away. I just happened to see it. And it was like, “Wow, oh!”

It makes so much sense, right?

Thank you for spending time with me. I always feel like I’m learning in these kinds of conversations. And the goal is for other people to feel the same way. 

You said this a couple of times, but, well, the idea of ongoing learning. That was for me the beauty of life. You either grow or you’re stagnant. And growing is so much more fun!

The Life on the Other Side of the Game series is part of a partnership with Prudential. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

Cory Edwards knew.

He saw the fighting off of tears. The sulking postures. The finger pointing. The coming to grips with the end of something special.

But he didn’t want his players to go out all sullen. So while his team from Paseo Verde (Henderson, Nev.) was a few more balls and strikes away from losing the 2026 Little League World Series final to the team from Curacao, Edwards gathered his group and delivered a message that there is only one way to finish it out.

“Hey, listen, no matter what happens, you have to hold your head up. You have to not get on each other. You have to have good body language,” he said. “Those things are important. You have to stay mentally tough. When it gets tough, you get tougher. You understand?”

That message — captured and posted during the LLWS final on ESPN — went viral. The advice from that 17-second clip wasn’t rehearsed. It just hit him in the moment when he saw his players’ reactions.

“If you don’t lose the right way, if you don’t hold your head up and go about it the right way, sometimes that sour taste in your mouth is going to wash away all the great things you did,” Edwards said in an interview.

“When something hits you in the face, you’ve got to respond with some strength,” he added. “Whether it’s emotionally or spiritually, whatever you need to do, that’s not a moment to lay down and crumble. That’s a moment to be your absolute best.”

Edwards has been a Little League coach in the Henderson area for the last eight years. (During the day he’s a district manager at Starbucks.) Not long after his talk on the mound, he said his players were shouting in support of teammates in the batter’s box and even saw some smiles return to the dugout.

That was his point all along.

“Baseball, in and of itself, is a game you should find joy in,” he said.

It was a coaching moment Edwards did not anticipate would garner millions of views online, but it’s one he hopes inspires other coaches to relay confidence to their players regardless of the circumstances of a game.

“Self-confidence is an interesting term, because it’s all about self and how you feel about yourself, but I think a lot of confidence comes from other people acknowledging the good things or the good work or the good person you are,” Edwards said. “If you can just get a little bit of light in there from somebody else, sometimes it uplifts you. I think in that moment, where it felt all negative, here are some positives.”

The tears that returned after players embraced family members at the conclusion of the game eventually dried up. After the game, Edwards met up with his team at the Little League World Series Complex, where they celebrated by eating pizza and playing pickup basketball.

They took their coach’s advice: When things got tough, they got tougher. And there was pizza.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a comeback speech. It was more a moment of a life lesson of: You can still be proud of the work you’ve done, and also you have to go about this the right way. Not just for the people around, not just for me, but for yourself,” Edwards said. “Because I wanted them to understand how you respond to challenges shows a lot about your character. I know this is probably the hardest moment in their 12-year-old lives, but they’re going to face something a lot more difficult down the road.”

Matt Arnold, the general manager and president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers, keeps in his office closet a whiteboard on which he sketches his zaniest trade concoctions. The more complex, the more he’s tickled by the daunting premise.

Arnold has been building rosters since he was a kid studying Street & Smith magazines, scribbling scrupulous notes and then tagging along for his dad’s workplace fantasy baseball drafts. While working under Andrew Friedman in the innovation hub that is the Tampa Bay Rays front office, Arnold learned the value of satisfying the “give” and “get” for all sides to push a trade to the finish line. The deals they pulled off — and the many that fizzled — are “on the whiteboard somewhere,” Arnold said.

With trade season at hand, executives will keep a death grip on their phones and their eyes glued to laptops (or whiteboards) until 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 3. They’ll try to find a partner to align on a surplus-for-deficit deal, or an exchange of a veteran for prospects. Many conversations will ultimately plow into dead ends. Yet some stalled talks, with a little creativity and courage, can be revived by bringing in another party to facilitate the deal.

In most cases, a three-team trade is the product of a failed two-team trade and bullheaded persistence. It’s hard getting two teams to agree on fair value, said Major League Baseball’s most notorious wheeler and dealer, San Diego Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller. “Adding a satisfied third party is even harder.” One side tends to feel shortchanged, and the other two have to decide whether to kick in more value to save the deal. “It’s almost like you’re going to dinner with a bunch of people, and someone’s got to throw in a little extra money to pay the bill,” said Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos.

In recent months, The Athletic canvassed MLB general managers and presidents of baseball operations to dissect the anatomy of a three-team trade. It’s a delicate and frequently fruitless dance. “I hate doing three-team deals,” one exec grumbled. “They’re such a pain in the ass.” They require the right players, an intimate knowledge of the market, and trust that introducing a third team won’t irk your original trade partner, and that the other two teams won’t run off together and leave you alone at the altar. Billy Beane, the Athletics exec of “Moneyball” fame, coined these complicated deals “hairballs.” The framework of the trade can grow so gnarly and convoluted that you wish you had never brought it up.

One such hairball started innocuously after Arnold took over as the Brewers’ chief decision-maker in October 2022. The then-Oakland Athletics expressed interest in speedy Brewers outfield prospect Esteury Ruiz. Those talks, like most, went nowhere. The teams weren’t a fit.

A few weeks later, reports emerged that the Braves were working to acquire Athletics catcher Sean Murphy. The Brewers liked the catcher set to lose playing time to Murphy: William Contreras. Sensing the ingredients were there for a three-team trade, Arnold re-engaged the Athletics.

Each trader has a different operating style and appetite for intricate deals. Arnold is a transaction fiend. At the mere mention of a three-team concept, a grin spreads across his face. “I love trying to get in the middle of those things,” he said. “Especially if you have a whiteboard at the Winter Meetings and you’re just kind of bored and you’re trying to get some stuff done, it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can insert ourselves in a deal.’”

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Three-team trades aren’t unique to baseball. They are far more frequent in the NBA because of its strict salary-matching rules for teams over the salary cap (which is almost all of them); a third team with cap space is brought in to balance the money. Similar brokering is common in the NHL. In the NFL, however, three-way deals are virtually non-existent these days, as there are fewer trades overall and more ways to create cap space.

Unencumbered by salary caps or mandatory money-matching, MLB tends to produce more three-team trades that meaningfully benefit all sides. Often, one team is primarily focused on future value — a team targeting prospects — and because most MLB draft picks are not tradeable, clubs’ massive farm systems become the currency that can bridge the gap.

In MLB, three-team deals have accounted for roughly 1.5 percent of trades in the past five seasons, according to data from FanGraphs’ transaction tracker, with as few as one and as many as four three-teamers in a year.

No team has embraced the Rubik’s Cube nature of the three-team trade like the Rays, who have nudged their way into five of the past six three-way swaps. That bit of trivia surprised Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander, but not his counterparts across the league. Tampa’s front office looks to eke maximum value in trades and find exact fits, even if it means involving additional teams. In theory, the matchmaker GM brokering a three-team trade could try to play both sides and obfuscate who’s getting what in the trade. Neander lays all the cards on the table.

“The Rays are not only going to be creative and open-minded,” Pittsburgh Pirates GM Ben Cherington said, “but they’re going to be pretty honest about how they’re valuing players and honest about the different components of the deal. That leads to trust.”

In December, Cherington, pursuing lineup upgrades, was working with the Rays on a deal centered on second baseman Brandon Lowe. Cherington was also talking to the Houston Astros, who wanted controllable starting pitching but weren’t inclined to trade big-league hitters. Neander realized their trade talks already formed a triangle. “It pretty quickly turned into, maybe this is easier if we involve all three,” Cherington recalled.

A couple calls later, a three-way text thread was established. The resulting six-player trade ticked boxes on each team’s offseason checklist.

There’s a reason the same clubs regularly appear in three-team trades. Many of the GMs involved worked together in the past, and they know each other to be open to considering complicated solutions in order to piece the puzzle together. Some front offices aren’t interested in such creativity.

The spiderweb sprawl of a three-team trade often starts from a kernel of interest, like the Athletics kicking the tires on Ruiz. Initial trade talks rarely involve more than two teams. The three-team concepts you dream up in your office and then pitch cold to the other two teams “tend to not go very far,” Cherington said with a laugh. The necessary conditions for a three-team trade generally arise when there’s smoke between two teams but no perfect match. Team A has a surplus of pitching, but Team B needs a big bat. Rather than throw up their hands, they might ask Team C about parting with a slugger for some pitching. In other cases, the third team might elbow its way into a deal to access a player it couldn’t otherwise.

The executives surveyed for this story explained the key to tri-team harmony is to clearly communicate what you’re attempting to accomplish — which can mean showing your cards and hoping it won’t come back to haunt you — and to understand other teams’ surpluses and needs.

At the 2012 Winter Meetings in Nashville, Cleveland GM Chris Antonetti was desperate for starting pitching, so he pursued Trevor Bauer, a top pitching prospect who had worn out his welcome with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Antonetti was trying to move right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, who was entering a contract year, but the Diamondbacks wanted a shortstop. They were after well-regarded Cincinnati Reds prospect Didi Gregorius. Cincinnati wanted Choo.

Knowing all of this, Antonetti suggested a three-team arrangement and coordinated with Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers and Reds GM Walt Jocketty until everyone was on board. The trade ultimately involved nine players.

Nine years later, Cleveland and Cincinnati reunited for another three-teamer involving Bauer. This time, though, as Antonetti and Reds president Dick Williams wrapped up negotiations and awaited a postgame sign-off of medicals, they watched in horror as outfielder Yasiel Puig, a part of the trade, was in the center of a benches-clearing brawl at Great American Ball Park.

“That one was a mess,” Antonetti said.

They often are. Seattle Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, a high-volume trader in sickness and in health, finalized a three-team deal in December 2018 from a Las Vegas hospital bed, where the gunslinger was being treated for blood clots in his lungs. Another exec insisted he was once on the cusp of a significant trade, then invited a third team into the mix and watched the other two cut a deal without him.

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One night when Perry Minasian, the now-former Los Angeles Angels GM, was a young staffer witnessing the whir of the Winter Meetings for the first time, he saw three executives huddled at a smoky hotel bar. One would jot down a trade concept on a napkin and slide it to the next.

Technology has all but retired that sort of scene. GMs now communicate via texts and calls, even when they’re under the same roof. Only occasionally do the parties in a three-way trade jump on a call or initiate a group text thread. Typically, one GM runs point.

In January, Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall anchored talks on a three-team deal that started with a call to Minasian. The Reds were interested in lefty reliever Brock Burke. They dangled infielder Gavin Lux, but the Angels were looking for a lefty-hitting outfielder. When Neander asked about Lux, Krall helped orchestrate a trade that sent Lux and an Angels pitching prospect to Tampa, Burke to Cincinnati and outfielder Josh Lowe to Anaheim.

Krall said the deal was “pretty easy” to complete. “That, for a three-team trade,” Minasian echoed, “(was) one of the easier ones I’ve been a part of.”

But few trades, especially three-teamers, wind up closely resembling the initial concept that was proposed, one exec said.

If there were such a thing as a prevailing rule of three-team trades, it’s this:

Be transparent.

If you’re talking to a third team, keep the original partner in the loop. Kansas City Royals president of baseball operations J.J. Picollo fielded a call last winter from an exec with whom he had discussed a trade. This time, the exec surprised Picollo by saying the GM from a third team was on the other line. “You get caught off guard, like, ‘Where’s this going?’” Picollo said.

If you’re acquiring a player intending to flip him to another team, say so. “There is some sportsmanship of, ‘Hey, we’re gonna take your player and send him here,’” Preller said. Some GMs won’t care. Others will ask that the player not be traded to a division rival or a team fighting them for a playoff spot.

When the Guardians traded infielder Andrés Giménez to the Toronto Blue Jays for first baseman Spencer Horwitz and a prospect in December 2024, Antonetti was direct with Toronto’s braintrust that he planned to flip Horwitz to the Pirates. But there was a hurdle to clear: Horwitz had a wrist injury, and the Guardians couldn’t trade him until the Pirates signed off on his medicals. Had Pittsburgh not approved, Cleveland would have kept Horwitz. So, what looks like a three-team trade on the surface was actually separate deals completed hours apart.

“I’ve learned it’s better to be upfront about what that whole picture is going to look like,” said Guardians GM Mike Chernoff. “You’re not going to pull a fast one on someone.”

In the end, Arnold’s 2022 hairball included three teams and nine players. The Braves wound up with Murphy; the A’s got four prospects and a backup catcher; the Brewers landed Contreras and two relievers. Arnold’s give-get calculation — one prospect for two big leaguers and a Double-A arm — checked out at the time. It looks even better now. Ruiz has bounced around the league, and Contreras is a three-time All-Star batting cleanup for the Brewers.

All six of MLB’s three-team trades since then have included Arnold’s former Tampa colleagues. The only non-Rays three-team trade of the past three years involved Freidman, the ex-Rays exec whose Dodgers are currently jockeying with Milwaukee for the best record in baseball.

In February, after finalizing his third three-team exchange of the offseason, Neander joked to MLB.com that the Rays only get attention for all their three-way trades because they haven’t executed a four-teamer. It was said in jest, yet the sport’s most audacious instigators might take him up on it.

“Oh yeah, I noodle on all that stuff,” Arnold said.

“If a two-team trade is like 1 in 100 and a three-team trade is, I don’t know, 1 in 500,” an AL executive said, “a four-team trade is 1 in 5,000.”

At the 1977 Winter Meetings, on the shores of Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, the New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Braves and Pirates consummated an 11-player blockbuster that stunned the baseball contingent gathered at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel. As the elaborate arrangement was announced, Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda looked on and quipped: “This thing must have been put together by the teamsters.”

That degree of complexity is no easier to hammer out a half-century later. Today, four-team trades are little more than whiteboard fodder. “God, I can only imagine,” Anthopoulos said. “You’d have to be really motivated.”

Chernoff said the mere suggestion of a fourth team — a Hail Mary when the optimism of a three-team setup is fading — can torpedo a conversation. “That’s when we’re like, ‘There’s no chance,’” he said. “‘Let’s be realistic here.’”

Krall was an Athletics intern in 2002, when they were discussing a deal that eventually expanded to include the Reds, Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays. Krall just so happened to be interviewing for a full-time gig with the Reds as the trade was materializing at the Winter Meetings in Nashville. He bounced between the teams’ hotel suites as they reached the finish line on a four-player reassignment: Erubiel Durazo to the Athletics, Elmer Dessens to the Diamondbacks, Felipe López to the Reds and prospect Jason Arnold to the Blue Jays.

“It was crazy,” Krall said.

Ten years later, at another Winter Meetings, Arnold was working the whiteboard as the Rays shopped pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis. Before settling on a seven-player swap with the Royals, they pondered permutations of a four-team trade that also included the Diamondbacks and Rangers. The simpler structure proved to be the winner. But the head-spinning four-team concept was undeniably more fun.

To some maestros of the whiteboard, the wackier, the more parties involved, the better.

“I’d say 99.7 percent of the things we work on never happen,” Arnold said, “but they’re fun to dream on.”

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

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When Raul Ibañez joined the Kansas City Royals a few weeks before the 2014 trade deadline, nobody graded the move or broke it down.

Why would they? The Angels had released Ibañez nine days earlier after he posted a .157 batting average. His power was fading. He was 42 years old.

Even in Kansas City, Ibañez’s addition didn’t crack the front page of the sports section.

In 33 games with the Royals that season, Ibañez hit .188 and did not make a single appearance in the playoffs.

And yet this is what Danny Duffy, a young pitcher on that team, had to say about him recently: “I think Ibañez played a massive part for a lot of people.”

Every baseball season, dozens of players move teams at the deadline, arriving in new clubhouses and fortifying contenders for the stretch run. For good reason, we spend most of the time thinking about the stars — the ace starters, the stud closers, the rental bats who can flip a playoff series with one swing.

But there are still aspects of winning that remain elusive, an alchemy of leadership, culture and chemistry that cannot be quantified.

The veteran who infuses a clubhouse with presence and confidence. The pinch hitter who brings energy to the room. The utility player who provides leadership by doing nothing more than showing up and fitting in.

This is not an argument that one of those types of acquisitions, such as Ibañez, will mean more than pure talent. Just that it could mean something.

Full disclosure: This story wasn’t planned. Recently, we were interviewing Duffy for another story on the mentality of winning teams. Unprompted, he brought up Ibañez’s role on the 2014 Royals.

Not long after, we were interviewing former Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer for a totally different story. He also brought up the importance of Ibañez on that team.

In the summer of 2014, Ibanez joined a young team carrying the weight of history. The Royals hadn’t made the playoffs in 29 years, and on July 21 they lost their fourth game in a row, falling to 48-50.

Ibañez had been with the Royals for three weeks when he stood in front of his teammates to speak.

“We were playing against the White Sox, and we were in the crappy clubhouse they have on the visiting side,” Hosmer said. “He basically talked to us about what opposing teams thought of us: Did we realize how good we were? Did we realize other teams fear us?

“For us to hear that was so important.”

The Royals’ roster was loaded with first-round picks. They believed they had talent. But Ibañez brought something they did not have: veteran perspective and wisdom.

By then, Ibañez had lived several baseball lives. He spent his 20s struggling to stick in Seattle. He became a full-time starter in Kansas City at age 29. He made his first All-Star Game at 37, the same year he played in the World Series for Philadelphia. All the while, he developed a reputation as one of the friendliest men in baseball.

To hear someone like Ibañez say those words caused the players on the 2014 Royals to see themselves in a different light.

“It clicked for all of us,” Hosmer said. “This guy’s a legend, so if people really do think of us like that, maybe we’re really good and we should play with some confidence.

“I’ll never forget that speech.”

The Royals went 52-27 from that point on, including the postseason, and steamrolled their way to their first World Series appearance since 1985. Ibañez spent the season’s final weeks settling into the role of a leader, keeping everyone engaged during games and talking to hitters about upcoming situations. Little things that Hosmer said were important more than a decade later.

Not every season will include an acquisition as experienced or respected as Ibañez. But on Monday, a collection of contenders went looking for roster help at the edges. Reasonable minds can disagree on how much veteran leadership matters. Ibañez is merely an example of a time when it did and a reminder that it can.

In September, he prepared another speech before the postseason, telling his young teammates the story of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, who, as the legend goes, once told his men to burn their boats before battle, leaving no room for retreat.

“I’m guessing everybody else in that entire clubhouse had chicken skin just like I have right now as I’m talking about it,” Duffy said. “I mean, I still get goose bumps.”

The 2014 Royals lost in Game 7 of the World Series to the San Francisco Giants, and Ibañez retired after the season, eventually taking a job in the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

His leadership wasn’t the reason the Royals went on that run. But it was a reason, however small, however out of sight, however unquantifiable. He was part of the story.

It was Aug. 3, the day of baseball’s trade deadline and an off-day on the East Coast before a series in Baltimore. About a dozen Los Angeles Angels were gathered near the first tee, ready to begin a long-awaited round of golf at the course that Tiger Woods designed for superstar Mike Trout.

Little did the players realize, some of them would be former Angels very soon.

“It seemed like every four or five holes someone was getting the call,” said Trout, who watched his team bonding event turn into one big breakup.

Trout, 35, was eager to host his teammates near his hometown of Millville, N.J., at his private, invitation-only club, Trout National — The Reserve. But he’d planned the outing in the spring, without realizing the date’s significance on the baseball calendar. Nor could he know back then that the Angels, a team that rarely acts as sellers at the deadline, would tear it down.

Suffice it to say, no team ever experienced a deadline day like this.

Three players were traded while taking in the rolling hills of Trout National — reliever Brent Suter, outfielder Jo Adell and reliever Ryan Zeferjahn. A fourth, reliever Kirby Yates, learned he was dealt after the round was over while in a car heading back to Trout’s home.

“It was pretty wild watching everybody go,” said Yates, a 12-year veteran. “None of us have ever seen that many guys get traded at once.

“After somebody went, we just kept saying, ‘All right, who’s next?’”

A fifth Angel traded that day, right-hander José Soriano, wasn’t part of the group, which the previous night boarded a bus upon landing in Baltimore for the two-hour drive to Trout’s home in New Jersey.

Soriano, 27, doesn’t golf. He was asleep in his hotel room when he was awakened by a phone call the next morning informing him he was heading to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Everyone else — the dozen or so players who stayed overnight at Trout’s home, plus coaches and staffers who arrived on a bus from Baltimore the following morning — was at Trout National.

“I’m bummed I wasn’t invited,” Angels interim general manager John Mozeliak joked. “I was a little tied up that morning.”

Mozeliak, preoccupied with trade negotiations, did not know nearly half his team was golfing. Trout came to realize, as he organized the outing, that it might be an unusual day. The group, he said, had an idea that trades were coming.

Suter got the first call, right before the players teed off.

“Everyone was putting on a green,” Trout said. “We were all sitting there, all on the tee box.”

Mozeliak, who conducted the calls with Angels assistant GM David Haynes, told Suter he was going to the Atlanta Braves. Suter, 36, is an 11-year veteran. The Braves are his fifth different team. But it was actually the first time he was dealt.

“Never in a thousand years did he think he’d get traded,” Zeferjahn said. “His first question was, ‘Can I finish the round? Can I golf?’”

The answer was yes. Mozeliak recalled telling Suter he’d be hearing from the Braves, then concluding the call by saying, “Hit ‘em straight.”

“I just instantly started hugging everybody,” Suter said. “Luckily, I was able to play the round and enjoy the last couple hours with the guys before I caught the last flight out of Philly to Atlanta.”

The players sensed the action was only beginning.

“Once that happened,” Yates said, referring to the Suter trade, “we all had a feeling this is probably gonna pick up.”

Adell, 27, was next. He was on the seventh hole, a long par four, when Mozeliak and Haynes informed him he was going to the Cleveland Guardians.

“I was in shock,” Adell said.

The 10th overall pick in the 2017 draft, Adell had spent his entire career in the Angels organization. And while he knew a trade was possible, the end came suddenly, in a way he never imagined.

“You were hearing some cheers and some hugs going on throughout the golf course as guys were getting traded,” Adell said. “We got to hole nine and I was pretty much giving out hugs.”

He’d be gone by the turn.

“At least I got to play half the course, though,” Adell said. “That’s the positive.”

Even those that weren’t ultimately traded endured a strange day.

As the round continued, a report surfaced that left-hander Reid Detmers had been traded to the Chicago Cubs. For weeks, Detmers had endured speculation that he was a candidate to be traded. The report, though, turned out to be inaccurate.

“I think it was good he was golfing,” said Trout, whose group included Yates and Detmers. “It took his mind off it. When that trade with the Cubs came out, that’s when we started asking questions. But we knew it wasn’t legit. We were right there with him.”

Detmers completed his round and remained an Angel.

“We were kind of waiting for his phone to ring,” Yates said. “And it never did.”

Zeferjahn, 28, did not originally plan to go on the golf trip, describing himself as a last-minute addition. With four additional years of club control remaining, he also was not an obvious candidate to move.

At the time of the deadline, however, Zeferjahn’s 33.5 percent strikeout rate was ninth-best among major-league relievers. Teams coveted him. The Cubs landed him.

Around the 12th or 13th hole, Zeferjahn said, it started raining. The players gathered in a hut to stay dry.

“That’s when I got the call,” Zeferjahn said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ It was a surreal moment with everyone around. (The other players) were telling me about the Cubs. It was nice with everyone together one last time.”

Once the round of golf was complete, the players piled into cars to return to Trout’s home. But the whirlwind of trades still wasn’t over.

Yates, who, like Suter, had joined the Angels on a one-year deal, was stunned to receive his call.

“I didn’t think I had a chance,” Yates said. “I did not think there was a market for a 39-year-old throwing 90 mph.”

There was, in the form of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yates went just before the buzzer. His trade was reported publicly right at 6 p.m.

Yates made his way to Milwaukee, where the Pirates were opening a series against the Brewers, and threw a scoreless inning the next night.

Some of the surviving Angels took a bus right back to the team hotel in Baltimore. Others stopped at Trout’s house first before getting on their own bus. Trout drove to Baltimore with his parents the next day.

Back in Anaheim, Mozeliak sorted through his five deals, appreciative that the players who were golfing “took it in great spirit” when informed of their respective moves.

“I guess if you’re going to get news like that,” Mozeliak said, “you might as well be having fun.”

For Trout, the flurry of trades was somewhat expected, “just because of the rumors and stuff.” But the day he planned for his teammates at Trout National sure wasn’t what he initially envisioned.

“It was just different,” Trout said. “We were all enjoying a round of golf. It was different, for sure.”

With apologies to Jim Nantz, call it a deadline day unlike any other.

— The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma contributed to this report.

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

One evening in the spring of 2001, I forgot how to throw a baseball.

I was in eighth grade, on a new team, and had been sidelined by a knee injury for close to a month. When I returned to practice, I fielded a ground ball at second base but spiked the ball into the dirt when I tried to throw to first. I moved to the outfield and threw one over the backstop. When I tried to play a simple game of catch from 50 feet away, I could only guide the baseball to its target, lobbing it weakly.

I felt a pit growing in my stomach. My heart pounded. The more I thought about how to throw a baseball hard and straight — something I had done a thousand times before — the more anxious I became.

A friend seemed to realize what was happening before I did.

“Dude,” he said. “Knoblauch!”

Chuck Knoblauch was the New York Yankees second baseman whose career was derailed by a mysterious condition known in sporting circles as “the yips.” In 1997, Knoblauch had been one of the best defensive second basemen in Major League Baseball. Two years later, he could not throw the ball 45 feet to first base.

Knoblauch was not the first baseball player to have the yips. In the 1970s, Steve Blass, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, battled them. In the 1980s, Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Steve Sax had similar struggles. And in the 2000s, they befell Rick Ankiel, a promising young pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Athletes in other sports were susceptible, too. Golfers seemed particularly vulnerable. So were NFL kickers and darts players, where the condition was known as “dartitis.” At the Tokyo Olympics, gymnast Simone Biles suffered from a case of the “twisties,” where she lost control of her body and withdrew from competition.

The general understanding of the yips is fairly straightforward: They occur when we lose our instincts for certain task-specific movements, leaving us to try to intentionally control actions that usually happen subconsciously.

After decades of research, we know more than ever about the complex relationship between the mind and body. But not enough to understand the unease or identify a single cure. In many ways, the yips remain a black box.

Many “yippers” report that performance anxiety is not a factor until after the yips begin. For others, the task-specific nature of the issue is confounding. Jon Lester, an All-Star starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, could throw a 93 mph strike on the outside corner. But he could not even attempt to throw the ball to first base.

For years, I tried to understand what happened to me when I was 14 years old. I white-knuckled my way through high school baseball, managing the condition as best I could. But the mental scars never quite disappeared, so I tried to bury the memory.

Then I received an invitation last summer to play in a co-ed softball game. I showed up to the park and clutched a ball in my right hand. In an instant, the anxiety flooded back.

I lobbed a throw to my friend. I threw another one low. He could sense something was wrong.

“Do you have the yips?” he asked.

Late in the game, the ball came to me at third base. I fielded it cleanly. Then I thought about what I needed to do next.

I spiked the throw 10 feet short of first base. The pit in my stomach returned.

A few weeks later, I decided to look for answers.

The term yips was coined by Tommy Armour, a golfer who won three majors in the 1920s and ’30s despite struggling with putts and possessing what he called “a brain spasm that impairs the short game.”

For decades, the consensus was that the yips were a psychological issue — a matter of stage fright or choking under pressure. But that started to change in the late 1990s, when a group of doctors and scientists affiliated with the Mayo Clinic began to suspect some of the causes may be neurological.

One of the scientists was Charles H. Adler, a specialist in movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and dystonia, a neurological disorder defined by involuntary muscle contraction.

There was a suspicion, Adler said, that the yips may have been similar to issues like writer’s cramp or musician’s dystonia, a neurological condition in which a small percentage of musicians lose control of their fingers and can no longer play.

When Adler joined a team that started studying golfers in a putting lab (using devices to monitor brainwaves and arm muscles), they found some participants who reported having the yips also had excessive co-contractions in the forearm muscles and a slight rotation in the right wrist, often imperceptible to the naked eye. But participants who did not report the yips did not have the co-contractions.

The findings suggested a focal dystonia. The studies led to a groundbreaking idea: The yips were not solely psychological. But they weren’t completely neurological, either. They instead existed on a continuum. On one side was performance anxiety or choking; on the other was a task-specific movement disorder.

That finding provided hope that, in some rare cases, a fix could be found. If cases were neurological, they could be treated in the same ways doctors treat dystonia — with prescription drugs like Botox, sensorimotor training, beta blockers, or even procedures like deep brain stimulation or thalamotomy.

It sounded complicated.

But, I would soon learn, it was even more complex than I thought.

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There is a great irony with the yips: They almost never begin when you’re doing something difficult.

For Alena Sharp, it started with a short putt.

Sharp, an LPGA professional, was playing in the 2009 Kraft Nabisco Championship, the first women’s golf major of the year. Her playing partner was Karrie Webb, one of the best players on tour.

In the middle of the round, Sharp missed a short putt, which was surprising. When she missed another, it caused her to overthink.

She had always been a perfectionist who analyzed every aspect of the game. She knew, for instance, that the average success rate of an 8-foot putt was around 50 percent. If she had missed from that distance, she would have given herself some grace.

But when she missed another short one, she started to spiral.

“It’s almost like you forget how to do the easy things, and then it becomes so complicated and your brain just won’t get off that loop of trying to make the putt instead of just making the motion,” Sharp said.

Sharp spent the next few years in the throes of yips hell. She researched the yips online. She called other golfers and coaches. At the recommendation of one, she changed her grip.

At one point, as the yips threatened her tour status, she sought out Joan Vickers, a scientist with expertise in cognition and decision-making, famous for her “Quiet Eye” approach to putting. The Quiet Eye strategy demands a series of visual fixations on a target, which gave Sharp something else to focus on and provided some relief.

Every solution proved temporary.

John Buck, a former major-league catcher, told me an even weirder story. Buck played in the big leagues for 11 seasons. But one year he suffered a concussion, and as he tried to recover, he started overthinking. When he returned to the field, he struggled throwing the ball back to the pitcher, a real-life example of Rube Baker, the young catcher with the yips in the film “Major League II.”

When the game was live, Buck could throw a dime to second base to cut down a base stealer. But when it came to softly tossing the ball back to the pitcher, he felt paralyzed.

“If there was a foul ball and the ball was dead, I was very conscious and I would have to whip that s— back at the pitcher like I was throwing it to second,” Buck told me. “How weird is that?”

I told Buck about a similar experience I had. When I came down with the yips in eighth grade, my dad was perplexed, so he sent me to take lessons with a private pitching instructor.

On the first day, the unwitting instructor asked me to play catch. For the next five minutes, I awkwardly lobbed the ball back to him, occasionally spiking throws into the ground or hitting the top of the net in the batting tunnel. I can still remember the quizzical expression on the instructor’s face.

Moments later, I stepped onto an indoor pitching mound and, relieved that the game of catch was over, started pumping strikes.

“You know what?” the instructor finally said, still a little bewildered. “Some guys just can’t throw soft.”

For reasons I could not understand, stepping on the mound caused my anxiety to dissipate. A neuroscientist and yips researcher named Christian Marquardt told me that actually made sense.

“The easier it becomes, the more you think you need to be accurate, and the more you are endangered,” he told me. “This is the paradox. Yes, it’s more easy (to play catch). But for the brain, it’s the opposite. And that’s something which needs to be understood.”

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As I heard more stories, they all had a similar pattern, a basic mistake creating a negative feedback loop that spiraled out of control. Marquardt even had a name for it: “The Vicious Circle.”

Marquardt was an expert in motor control who spent most of the 1990s studying movement disorders and rehabilitation. In the early 2000s, he turned his attention to the yips and founded Science & Motion, a German company that makes motion-analysis systems for golf.

The work culminated in a 2009 paper, which included a data set of 264 amateur golfers who had putted in the Science & Motion Putt Lab and presented a model for how golfers became trapped in the disorder.

1. It starts with a trigger, such as a missed putt or wild throw.
2. The athlete then becomes perceptive and hyper-aware and begins anticipating another mistake.
3. The awareness leads to anxiety, which causes an impulse to overcontrol the situation.
4. The overcontrol causes interference with the brain’s automatic motor program, which often leads to yanking or jerking. Whatever is happening in the subconscious has become scrambled.

“We cannot control our automated movements because they are organized differently,” Marquardt said.

To illustrate, Marquardt told me to imagine the difference between drawing and handwriting. When we draw, it is slow enough to control consciously. But when most people write letters by hand, they do so subconsciously without thinking about each letter.

What was different about Marquardt’s circle is that he argued it could start with any stage. The trigger might seem innocuous at first, so subtle that you don’t even notice, but in time, it might feel more traumatic.

It was one reason I could roughly remember the day I developed the yips, but I couldn’t remember the exact moment.

It often comes out of the “clear blue sky,” Marquardt said.

“All of a sudden you felt something was different,” he said. “And the more you felt it was different, the worse it became.”

There are ways to break the cycle, Marquardt said. When I told him my story, he posed a question I’d never heard.

“When you had the yips,” he said, “did you ever try to throw with the back of your hand?”

I was confused.

“Like did you ever try anything really different?” he asked.

In essence, I needed to reset the program, to try something so radical that it might help focus attention away from the failed task and out of the negative feedback loop.

It seemed logical, but it still felt difficult. A quarter-century had passed since I first experienced the yips, and I still felt a measure of anxiety when I held a ball in my hands.

But then I heard about a training method that helped Tyler Matzek, an MLB pitcher, and Lucas Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion.

Not long after, I was on the phone with a former Navy SEAL.

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Before Jason Kuhn started trying to help athletes cure the yips, the condition ended his college baseball career.

It happened at Middle Tennessee State in 2002, when Kuhn, a reliever, appeared in an intrasquad game and did not throw a single strike. Not long after, he entered a game and threw more than 20 balls to the backstop.

Unsure of where to turn, he spent eight years in the Navy. When he left the military, he ventured back into sports, working with the Vanderbilt football team on teamwork and leadership. Through a chance encounter, he connected with Tyler Matzek, a 2009 first-round pick who was suffering with the yips. When Matzek turned his career around and won a World Series with the Atlanta Braves, Kuhn started working with Glover and 2013 PGA Championship winner Jason Duffner.

The curriculum was informed by personal experience and years of searching. Because of his Navy experience, Kuhn believed the yips had nothing to do with a lack of mental toughness.

“It’s very similar to post-traumatic stress,” he said. “You have to heal the wound.”

He developed a process he called “closing the loop,” which included repetition, positive reinforcement and a cue. Glover thought of it as a toolbox to use when “the monster” arrived. When an athlete felt tension, Kuhn told them to acknowledge it and use self-talk: I trust freedom.

Next came the cue — the most technical part of the process — a 1-2-3 mental checklist to provide assurance and consistency. It reminded me of something I started doing during pitching lessons.

Because pitching did not carry the same mental baggage for me as playing catch, I started to use my same exaggerated pitching mechanics when I played catch before practice. I imagined myself swinging my hands apart, as if I was pouring out two pitchers of water, as a coach had once taught me. I added a little crow-hop to make me feel athletic.

I was, in essence, closing the loop.

It worked … until it didn’t. I told Kuhn the feeling of the yips had never gone away. When I started talking to professional athletes, I was shocked at how many people said the same thing.

The most severe stories like Knoblauch’s generate headlines and remain associated with the yips. But one of the deepest secrets, as Buck told me, was just how many baseball players he knew during his playing days who dealt with it. The list included star players who will make the Hall of Fame.

I thought about that one day last month when I returned to the softball field. As I started to warm up, I felt a measure of anxiety. My throws felt shaky. But I tried to interrupt the Vicious Circle. Then I tried to think of a cue.

I pointed my shoulder at the target, felt my hands breaking apart, did a little crow hop, and hit my friend in the chest.

Peak newsletter | A version of this story first appeared in The Athletic’s weekly newsletter covering the mental side of sports. Sign up here to receive the Peak newsletter directly in your inbox.

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Before every pitch, Bobby Witt Jr. repeats the same routine. He steps out of the batter’s box, grips his bat, looks at it and takes a big deep breath.

Witt is the 25-year-old star shortstop of the Kansas City Royals and one of the most exciting players in baseball. As a Kansas Citian, I’ve watched Witt perform this routine hundreds of times, but only recently did I think to ask this question:

What’s the benefit of a single deep breath? The answer surprised me.

Witt developed his routine when he was a freshman at Colleyville High School in Texas.

Brian Cain, a mental performance coach, helped him develop the steps he still uses to this day: find a focal point on his bat, take a deep breath, say something positive.

But the power of that single deep breath clicked for Witt in 2018.

That summer, Witt participated in a high school home run derby. The event was held at National Park, home of MLB’s Washington Nationals, and featured some of the best young hitters in the country.

Witt was certainly one of them. The son of a major-league pitcher, Witt possessed a rare combination of speed, power and athleticism that already had him pegged as a future top pick. But that night, he was just a nervous 18-year-old.

There were 40,000 people inside the stadium, including baseball’s biggest stars: Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper. Witt could feel their eyes on him as he walked up to the plate. His legs felt as if they “were going to fall out beneath me,” he said on Cain’s podcast.

And then he took a deep breath.

“Just right there, it cleared my mind,” he said, and completely shifted his thoughts from the pressure of the environment to the familiarity of the task: All right. You’re back here in the box. It’s just like you’re hitting BP in the cage. Here we go.

Witt won the home run derby that night and realized the power of a single breath to change an outcome.

Witt is not alone. LeBron James has done it during timeouts. Scottie Scheffler has done it during big golf tournaments. An NFL player did it on the field in the Super Bowl. Some pro teams use an app to show their players the effect deep breathing has on their heart rate.

As Peak’s Rustin Dodd wrote last year, the science is clear: Regular deep breathing (or breath work) can reduce anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate while improving mental health. Researchers have also found that a single five-minute session of deep, slow breathing can be beneficial.

But what about a single deep breath?

Sylvain Laborde can trace his initial interest in breathwork back to his asthma, which forced him to drop out of sports. Now a professor and researcher at the German Sport University Cologne, Laborde has spent the last two decades trying to understand and explain the power of breathing techniques.

Yes, those techniques could often help people relax, but he realized that was only a part of the benefits. So he and three other experts wrote a book, “Heart Rate Variability: Science and Strategies for Peak Performance,” that explores the different benefits of breathing.

One of their takeaways: Breathing not only impacts our autonomic nervous system, but the kind of breath we take impacts it in different ways.

By measuring heart activity, Laborde and his team found that deep exhalation triggered the parasympathetic nervous system, which acts as the brake pedal in a car. It’s the reason why our heart rate slows and our anxiety reduces when we let out a long breath.

But deep inhalation triggers the sympathetic nervous system, or the gas pedal. Laborde’s team found — and recent neuroscience backed it up — that deep inhalation sharpens our concentration and makes us more alert.

Laborde said there was an easy test people could do at home. Take two fingers and put them on your pulse. Take a really deep, exaggerated inhale. And then take a really deep, exaggerated exhale.

Each time you inhale, you should notice your heart beats faster. And each time you exhale, your heart should beat slower.

That’s what Laborde noticed when I sent him a clip of Witt’s routine: Witt inhales deeply. He doesn’t let out a long, slow exhale like you might expect. He just takes a really sharp inhale, almost like he’s sucking in.

“The inhalation was stronger and longer, which made me think: Perhaps he uses this unconsciously to activate himself and to focus,” Laborde said.

As I watched the Royals the other night, Rex Hudler, the team’s television analyst, brought up Witt’s breathing routine. Hudler played 13 years in the majors, but never quite lived up to his promise as a first-round pick.

As he talked about Witt’s breathing, Hudler said: “I wish I would have learned that when I was a player. It would have helped.”

If you want to read more about Witt’s routine, Elise Devlin tried out parts of it for a week. Her takeaway? Witt has next-level discipline.