DALLAS — Somewhere along the way, every parent buys every child a first book. A "Goodnight Moon." "The Cat in the Hat." Some kind of ABC book. Something to help at bedtime and to foster reading.
And so it was with Al Leiter and his third youngest child, Jack. He brought one home one day.
The title: “The Mental ABCs of Pitching.”
“My dad’s not the biggest of readers,” Jack said recently. “So, it was about pitching.”
“No, no, no,” Al said laughing a few days later. “There had to be something else in there first. A nursery rhyme book. Dr. Seuss. Something. My wife, Lori, would be so mad.”
OK, so maybe for the record it was something with a far cuter title and immeasurably adorable illustrations.
But, as Jack closes in on the first anniversary of being drafted second overall by the Rangers, he’s not carrying around "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."
Before or after every start, though, he’s still flipping through the highlighted and worn-out pages of the late Harvey A. Dorfman’s third book on the mental side of baseball. This one, published in 2000, the same year Jack was born, was a companion piece to "The Mental Game of Baseball," which Dorfman wrote in 1988. The book — and Dorfman — were seminal in the elder Leiter’s career.
It helped Al Leiter understand there were things beyond his control on the mound and that he had to let them go. When he did, he blossomed into a 19-year MLB starter. The book, Al wrote in the foreword of its third printing in 2005, helped him “cultivate the right perspective — even about matters beyond baseball.”
“It was a difference-maker,” Al said. “He was a difference-maker. The book turned my career and my life around. I miss him. I miss him every day. The things I learned from him, I pass on to Jack and every young player I talk to. Jack has heard some version of Harvey Dorfman-isms since he was born.”
Pitching guru
In the pitching fraternity, Harvey Dorfman and his series of books on the mental side remain legendary even more than a decade after he died at the age of 76 in 2011. Rangers GM Chris Young calls the books one of the “pillars” of his philosophy. Co-pitching coach Doug Mathis read the books in his formative years as a pitcher.
Over a 20-plus year career in baseball, which followed more than two decades as an English teacher, Dorfman worked with the likes of Leiter, former Rangers Kevin Brown and Jamie Moyer, and Roy Halladay, among others. He held positions with three teams — Oakland, the then-Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay — and won World Series rings with two of them.
He was the most unusual looking coach on the field: slight of build, bald and with pants that always seemed too big for him. And he had an innate ability to connect with players and speak directly with them at a point in time when sports psychologists were either rare around the game or mostly hidden. The Rangers now have an entire department dedicated to mental skills. In large part, Dorfman was responsible for the exponential growth in the field.
In 1991, Al, then a struggling pitcher who’d been traded once and injured a lot more often, went to meet Dorfman at his home in Arizona. They spent three days talking.
If Al made excuses, Dorfman had a way of calling him on it. If Al got too complicated in his thinking, Dorfman helped him unravel it. When Leiter struggled to understand why his “stuff” alone wasn’t allowing him to dominate hitters, Dorfman helped explain it.
“I discovered the book at a point in my playing career when I had begun to realize that the difference between mediocrity and greatness was governed by what was between the ears,” is how Al described it in the foreword in 2005. “As a pitcher, I’m now absolutely convinced that pitching a poor game or dominating a game shouldn’t be attributed exclusively to a pitcher’s stuff. A pitcher who can simplify his thoughts to one pitch, one moment in time – and execute that pitch – will be far more successful than one who cannot.”
Al also wrote that in that third-edition foreword that there was only thing left to say “about this classic baseball book: The content will always be up to date — relevant.”
Prescient words written 17 years ago.
Chasing perfection
As Jack Leiter navigates a rather unusual jump in his first year of pro ball, the books are still very worthwhile reads.
“It continues to help me,” he said. “The mental game is not something that anyone can easily master. That book is the gospel. I will just go back and read three random chapters the night before a start. It’s just very easy.”
Jack likes that "The Mental ABCs" are in alphabetical order. He had some first-inning trouble in a start. There’s a chapter for that.
In fact, there are chapters from “Adjustments” to “Zeros.” And everything in between, including “Breathing,” “Excuses,” “Joy,” and “Nice Guys.” It is, after all, an ABC book.
The “W” chapters, however, don’t include one on “Wind,” which always seems to be blowing out in the Texas League. Nor is there an “A” is for asphalt, which often describes the sun-baked infields of the league. These are all parts of the adjustment Jack is having to make after dominating the Southeastern Conference in 2021.
The strike zone is smaller in pro ball than it is in college. Hitters are better. Even things like “Breathing,” are now a little more complicated thanks to pitch clocks in the minor leagues.
With 14 seconds between pitches, it’s hard to step off the mound, catch your breath and refocus. And, in The ABCs, Dorfman actually referred to Al’s mechanism for “Gathering” himself, in which he’d squat behind the mound to “get it together.” While it’s made games quicker, which was the intent, pitchers are having to deal with finding quicker ways to refocus.
Through his first 10 starts, entering Saturday, Jack had a 5.75 ERA. It’s hardly telling. The Rangers are pleased with what Young calls “peripheral” numbers, such as Fielding Independent Pitching (4.07) and his robust strikeout rate (11 1/3 per nine innings). The Rangers are also fine with Leiter having to master challenges now; the challenges only get bigger.
It’s difficult to evaluate Leiter’s start. Even if you compare him to recent top pitching picks to come out of the talent-rich SEC. There still isn’t an easy comparison based on experience. Leiter had one real season of college ball, didn’t pitch the summer after he was drafted and made his first pro start at Double-A.
Detroit’s Casey Mize, who went first overall out of Auburn in 2018, was more dominant at Double-A. But he also had 11 starts at rookie or Class A before that and pitched in the more pitcher-friendly Eastern League. Kyle Wright, like Leiter a star at Vanderbilt, was fifth overall in 2017. He made nine starts at lower levels before going to Double-A the next season. Both pitchers also had far more college experience than Jack, who essentially had only one season because the pandemic wiped out most of 2020.
“But I’m my own worst critic,” Jack said. “I want perfection and I know that’s not possible. To my dad, a perfect game is not 27 up and down, it’s executing every pitch. It’s about how many pitches you execute. I felt like there were times I wasn’t executing as many as I would like.”
It’s led Al to occasionally wonder this when he’s gotten off the phone with his son: What would Harvey say?
“I was thinking that the other day,” Al said. “Sometimes, there just isn’t an explanation. I can’t tell you how many things there are that are behind here are things beyond your control. The dad in me comes out. I don’t really know what to say sometimes.
“I want to be [Jack’s] dad first,” Al added. “I love talking about this stuff though. I love the mental aspect. I embraced that. I love talking about pitching. I just spew it. I think a lot of that is my dedication to what Harvey taught. But it’s got to be dad first, pitching second.”
Sometimes, though, the two become muddled.
Father-son bond
Jack, the only boy in a family that includes daughters Lindsay (27), Carly (25) and Katelyn (17), quickly learned to love the game. When Al retired after 2005, the family did some traveling. Everywhere they went, though, Jack insisted on bringing his glove and a ball. They played catch in Central Park. In London. In Prague.
Somewhere, the Leiters have a picture of Jack posed just so it looks like he’s holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But more vivid for Al: Playing catch with his son in the open space between it and the Duomo.
“I remember those fondly,” Al said. “It’s not like there is just one memory that sticks out. It’s all those places we threw the ball. A ball is a universal language for a kid. That was so much fun for us.”
There is a father-son relationship between them, but pitching is, after all, the family business. Al’s brother Mark pitched parts of 11 years in the big leagues. Mark’s son, Mark Jr. (Jack’s cousin), has appeared in seven games for the Cubs this year and parts of two other major league seasons. Pitching is also a universal language for them all.
Conversations will start elsewhere. They will talk about the NBA Finals. Or golf. Or, recently, like everyone else, they’ve bemoaned the price of gas and inflation. But eventually, it gets back to pitching. Jack is driven; Al is invested.
“This is his job,” Al said. “It’s healthy to have those diversions and distractions. That’s all part of it. It was good for me when I was more than just a baseball player, but I was on the same treadmill a little when I was pro. And what I’ve learned is that guys who are driven to be great, it’s really hard for them to turn it off.”
He believes his son is going to be great. He’s got the work ethic. He’s got the ability. And thanks to a second generation of the late Harvey Dorfman’s influence, he understands The Mental Game of Baseball.
