Damion Easley's batting average was hovering around the Mendoza
line late in the '95 season when he received a letter in the
Angels clubhouse from Pete Siegel, a Marina del Rey, Calif.,
hypnotherapist. Siegel had been watching Angels games on
television and reading Easley's tortured quotes in the
newspaper, and he thought Easley might be a candidate for some
mental cleansing. At first Easley dismissed the idea as "a
scam," but as he continued to struggle with the bat, Easley
consulted his hitting coach, Rod Carew, and the seven-time
batting champion acknowledged that he had used hypnosis during
his career.
Hypnotherapy helped make Easley a better hitter.
(Rick Stewart/Allsport)
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Easley contacted Siegel, and one afternoon before a game, the
therapist placed Easley in a hypnotic trance over the phone,
giving him some positive suggestions to take to the plate.
Easley cracked a single up the middle in his first at bat and
phoned Siegel the next day to sign on.
Three seasons and one trade later, Easley is Detroit's starting
second baseman and had a .312 average, 17 homers and 51 RBIs
through Sunday. He recently put together a 19-game hitting
streak, and his 34 RBIs in May were the most in a month by a
Tiger since Rocky Colavito had 38 in July '61. Though Easley is
still unheralded outside Motown, failing to make the top eight
in the latest All-Star balloting at second base, Tigers manager
Buddy Bell believes he deserves to be the All-Star starter.
"There are plenty of good second basemen out there like [the
Yankees' Chuck] Knoblauch and [the Orioles' Roberto] Alomar,"
Bell says, "but right now I would take Easley over any of them."
Says Easley, "I prefer to downplay my numbers. If I'm climbing a
mountain, I'd just as soon be climbing up the back side of it.
Everybody can wait and see me when I'm on top."
Certainly nobody noticed Easley when he was dealt to Detroit on
July 31, 1996, for righthander Greg Gohr. That was the same day
the Tigers traded Cecil Fielder to the Yankees. After pinballing
among the Angels, the minor leagues and the disabled list for
five years and admitting that he "would try to get two hits in
every one at bat," Easley thrived immediately in Detroit,
hitting .343 in his 21 games with the Tigers in '96. Then in '97
he experienced a breakthrough year, launching 22 homers, 16 more
than his previous high.
The 5'11", 190-pound Easley credits his turnaround to an
improved weight-training regimen that has kept him off the
disabled list and allowed him to play every day as a Tiger. But
the bedrock of his success is the hypnotherapy. Siegel, who has
been a hypnotherapist for 20 years, has previously worked on the
subconsciouses of Sid Fernandez and Orel Hershiser. Now he and
Easley have three or four sessions each week by phone during
which he helps Easley visualize his most successful moments at
the plate. "Damion was a hitter with great potential who was
anguishing over each at bat," Siegel says. "He just needed to
get out of his own way, to strip away all the emotional
encumbrances and just think about seeing the ball, hitting it
and having positive expectations. Confidence is like a
muscle—it needs to be trained."
Easley only recently told anyone about his hypnotherapy, fearing
that the approach would be ridiculed but finally deciding it
might help other struggling players. "I had some doubts about
whether I could succeed in this game, and I used this method to
get out of the rut," Easley says. "I've always believed that I
had the talent, but I was just stopping myself mentally. The
therapy allowed me to finally let my natural abilities take over."
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Issue date: June 15, 1998
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