Haven't you read some of the sabermetric writings on "clutch" hitters? If his name isn't Tejada or Giambi, he's not significantly clutch at the 95% confidence level :-)

Yes, I was heavily cited in the clutch-hitting article and if you want to know more about the measures that my research on over 700 athletes from seven sports including baseball has isolated as being the key mediators of peak performance I suggest you read my academic (non your average pop-psychology B.S.) peer-reviewed book. Critical moments during competition: A mind-body model of sport performance when it counts the most (2004, Psychology Press) is based on my award winning research and presents the most potent data to date that scientifically implicates personality measures and behaviors as being central to crunch-time performance.

I noticed a dismissive comment by one reader of your blog above who, obviously, without any knowledge of the construct hypnotic susceptibility maintains it does not play a role in the performance equation because it has to do with "hypnotism" which is a "parlor trick." I suggest this person and anyone who expresses an opinion on a psychological issue or measure read-up and research what they comment about, lest they present a faulty point of view.

Hypnotic susceptibility is a pervasive trait and behavior that reflects a style of cognitive processing of internal and/or external stimuli and is intimately related to focusing on task relevant stimuli or internal distractions (chatter; negative thoughts) as a function of one's level of this measure. It exists independent of hypnosis or being hypnotized, yet persons who are high in this measure are very amenable to hypnosis and or imagery mental training interventions to enhance focus.

In conjunction with neuroticism and repressive coping, hypnotic susceptibility acts to mediate zone states, clutch-performance or failure depending upon the levels of these three measures and how they interact.

This is breakthrough and peer-reviewed science where opinions don't count, but hard data does.

Anyone serious about peak performance needs to know their constellation of these critical measures that predict critical moments performance to a greater extent than any other psychological measures. Note also that these measures have been localized functionally in the brain.

One last comment; Gladstone brought up sport psych. programs at the pro level. He failed however to point out how inadequate most of these programs are, and their lack of evidence-based approaches and procedures that employ sophisticated neuroscientific methods to assess performance tendencies at the level of the brain. As such, current approaches are obsolete, devoid of predictive potency and practical utility. Anecdote pervades, myths, slogans and opinions dominate and in the end player's gain little if any valid insight into critical processes the prevalant stone-age paradigms are incapable of revealing.

P.S. FYI, hypnosis is a highly used evidence-based procedure in the realm of Behavioral Medicine, Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry and has nothing to do with Voodoo or parlor games. Hypnosis is a legitimately area of practice and research in the clinical arena and can also be used to enhance the performance of select athletes, but again, hypnotic susceptibility is a human trait related to information processing and attention/concentration.

Dr. Roland A. Carlstedt
Research Fellow in Applied Neuroscience: Brain Resource Company; Licensed Psychologist/Sport Psychologist; Chairman, American Board of Sport Psychology