After the Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt voluntarily ended his 18-year baseball career in 1989, four months short of turning 40, he started thinking about a life in golf. With others, he developed an athletes-and-celebrity golf circuit. By his late 40s, he started devoting himself fulltime to golf, to see if he could get good enough to make it on the senior tour. He got very good. But not Bruce Fleisher-Allen Doyle-Bob Duval good. There are layers and layers, in every sport. Looking back, he says, he spent too much time practice time hitting full shots on the range, and not enough on the putting and chipping greens.
“If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting,” Schmidt says in the latest GOLF Originals episode. He applies that phrase to every aspect of his life.
Mike Schmidt’s approach to golf and baseball was so clearly methodical and cerebral. If you play golf with Schmidt, and you see him making a slow, purposeful walk from cart to green, putter in hand, it’s hard not to think of how the thousands of times he made slow, purposeful walks from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box, bat in hand. He’d have the pitcher in mind then. He has the putt in mind now.
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2 Comments
Wow, A baseball – MLB hero !!!! I grew up in Chicago and spent many days at Wrigley. Mike was a beast !!!!!!!!
Great interview of my favorite HOFer. Had no idea he was so much "in his own head" when he was in the batters box or standing on the tee.