Momentous Occasions

Greg Matzek Posted: July 31, 2009

August is here and while we’re in the infant stages of the NFL season, baseball is fast approaching crunch time. Every year around this time, baseball prognosticators size up the teams still playing meaningful baseball and determine who the players and pretenders are. One of the most common words used to justify a position at this juncture of the season is ‘momentum’. It can be said that the Phillies were on a hot streak before trading for Cliff Lee, now they’ll just ride that wave of momentum all the way to the playoffs. Or how about the Brewers modest two game mini winning streak – momentum is starting to build…right?

A team can feel it when they come back from a deficit late in a game, or, conversely, when their lead in the division vanishes. A player can feel it when they hit a game-changing bomb, or when they go 0-4 with three strikeouts. And fans can feel when their team catches fire or when their team can’t hit their way out of a paper bag. Momentum can be damaging to the psyche or positively uplifting – but does it really exist? Does the temporary shift in confidence and mood actually change the outcome of a game or season?

Momentum and “the hot hand” theory go…well, hand-in-hand. Managers commonly stick with the hot hand in the lineup and ride them out. One can never predict when that’s going to happen – but the fact of the matter is that momentum implies a team or player is capable of sustaining an elevated level of play…usually above their day-to-day skill level. So what constitutes the onset of momentum? A 15 game hitting streak, winning 8 out of 10 games? Those types of things are indicative of the hot hand theory which, in turn, leads one to believe that the wave of momentum is being ridden.

Former Brewer manager Ned Yost consistently dismissed the notion of momentum, once saying that “nothing sparks nothing”, but it’s just not that simple. Psychologically speaking, something happens to individuals when things are going well…there is a team wide uplifting that can affect the mood in such a way that is contagious to the community. This feeling was palatable last September when the Brewers rode CC Sabathia’s back to the playoffs.

And although the concept of momentum in sports is prevalent, there is limited understanding as to why it is and perhaps that has added to the confusion and skepticism surrounding the concept. We talk about ‘cycles’, ‘hot steaks’, and ‘being in the zone’ – one thing they have in common is that each are components of momentum.

advertisement

Momentous Occasions