Daniel Bard recognized the knot in his stomach. He recognized the racing mind that kept him awake at night. He recognized the tension in his muscles as he drove to the ballpark before games. And he knew these symptoms all stemmed from a feeling he was all too familiar with: the sudden inability to throw a baseball where he wanted.
He recognized it all from more than a decade ago, when an extremely public bout with the yips sent him searching for answers for seven years. It was like stumbling around in a dark room, groping desperately for the exit. At times, as yet another hypnotist met him in yet another poorly lit Holiday Inn, hiding because he was so ashamed of what he then called a failure, it felt “like drug deals,” says his wife, Adair. “Like illegal activity.”
But he found his way out, reinvigorating his career as the Rockies’ closer, even earning National League Most Valuable Player votes last season, and Adair had just begun to watch games without a knot in her own stomach when he reported for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic in March, and everything came apart again.
