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He very well might have. But that's supposition and faith. And faith is the opposite of proof...

Its a thread about clutch. Easy mistake. As for momentum, you compared an example of one football game to counter her statement that its not predictive. But she eas talking about streaks of multiple games. A better example might have been Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. Did any og us think the Yankees had a chance then? Of course wr also probably felt the same way for Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS. And the results wete a little less predictable given the momentum in that series...

Actually it doesn't beg that question. But I do know that no one (except a few people on this board) watched this year's Super Bowl and said "Wow! That was an amazing comeback by Tom Brady! This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt thst certain baseball players can gain extra skills and exceed their normal performance level repeatedly when key games are on the line!"

That play was definitely Edelman bailing out Brady. Are you saying it was anything else?

Well no one called Brady clutch when Weller didn't catch that pass in the Super Bowl against the Giants...

No I didn't. I credited Edelman with the most spectacular catch in SB history. That's hardly calling it luck. I just didn't credit Brady for that play, which isn't the same thing as calling it luck. They were lucky Atlanta' OC never said "Let's just run the ball a couple times and kick a safe field goal." But I didn't discuss that...

While I agree I can't say the Patriots would have lost if thst ball had hit the ground, you also don't get to define Brady as clutch based on plays that never happened. It was simply a great all around team effort (including Brady) with other factors involved. ..

Not the point. Bledsoe was a guy the fans and media always labeled as "couldn't win big games." Outside of lazy sportswriting, I'm not sure why. He won an ARC championship game. He relieved Brady in the another one in Pittsburgh and took the team down field for their only offensive touchdown, which sent the Patriots to what would be the first Super Bowl title in team history. But his label was always "can't win big games." Probably because his offensive line failed him massively in thr second half of his only Super Bowl appearance. So is Bledsoe's inability to win big games real or a media-driven label that got repeated too often?

In baseball, you always throw out there thr other factors involved. But nit in football? If Edelman doesn't mske what was probably the most spectacular catch in Super Bowl history, the Patriots probably don't tie that game. As that ball was obviously defensible, if it hits the ground and the Pats lose, is Brady still clutch?

Ifv we have to keep going to other sports, was Drew Bledsoe clutch or not?

So any player who comes through in the clutch one time suddenly gains this ability as a repeatable skill?

I think the problem is that fans LEAP to conclusions like this as if being incapable to handle the pressure is the only possibility. The media does help heavily in this regard. There are always other possibilities, like fatigue. Price typically throws in excess of 200 innings before every post-season. Or small sample sizes spread out. Swisher, for example, was not a great hitter to begin with. And while he did hit worse on the post-season, the small sample sizes were results of extremely minor drops in performance or luck. And that its over too many seasons. I seriously doubt anything that happened on the field in 2009 still bothers bothers Price, but people talk about games that long ago like they were yesterday. But the media pushes it and fans buy into the whole "pressure/choke" thing as the only viable excuse...

No one said that. Try and get past that part of the argument...

Yes we do use it all the time. But there is a big differences between a clutch hit and a clutch hitter. ..

While true, it doesn't change the fact that Jackson's home run was the difference and is largely forgotten, and certainly diminished comparatively...

Actually the studies don't include those situations. Fans typically do include them all however. Much like in the recent example of Jeff Bagwell. ...

Mathematically its very far from Catch 22...

THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT. But it can be taken a step further. Fans tend to remember the big plays THEY THINK decide big games, and do do at the expense of alot of other equally important plays. For example, Bucky Dent is immortalized, but the actual game winning run that day scored on a solo home run by Reggie Jackson that no one remembers...

I can agree with that. However even you said hits in losing series are often disregarded or lessened with regards to their clutches. And gave a great example. And I agree with that as well. So really what we might be looking at is an intersection between "clutch" and memorable. But are they really the same?

I agree, but does that mean hits in an eventual losing effort are not clutch? And how important to the win SHOULD a hit be to be clutch? If the Sox lost game 7 to Cleveland, would Drew's slam have been less clutch?

Realy? Always? The entire clutch debare you repeated your opinion would side with players and coaches, not statistics...

So was game 5 of the 2008 ALCS against Tampa. But in that game the Sox were trailing 7-0 in the seventh inning. Drew hit a 2 run homer in the 8th to bring it to 7-6 and had a walk off single in the ninth. So were these hits more or less clutch thsn the grand slam? Both were elimination games, but in 2008 the Sox were down big late and these were major hits in a huge comeback. Yet we all remember the grand slam first. Even me...

I knew someone would say that and it would be a very common choice. But was it a clutch hit? It was a big situation, but ir was the first innong and the Sox did win that game by like 10 runs. Drew certainly had other very big post-season hits for the Sox, including a game-winning home run off Fernando Rodriguez in thr 2007 ALCS and his last 2 at bats in game 5 of the 2008 ALCS (which included a walk off single). Or his single in game 2 of the 3007 World Series that set up the winning run. These hits were all probably more important. But people do gravitate to the grand slam. Not proof or anything, but does this lend itself tp clutch being a perception or an illusion?

Since no one can define "clutch" (other than mvp), I wonder one thing. What would any of you say was the most clutch hit of JD Drew's career in Boston? I warn you. This is a psychological test being performed by someone with zero knowledge of psychology....

See when you get into coaches at "all levels", that really leaves too much open. I could possibly be included there. But enough about that. But you did mention Jack McDowell, Stanford alum. Not that you said you actually met him or talked to him, but that's not the point. McDowell is reportedly a bright guy. I can see trusting his opinion, assuming you ever heard it. But really, should we trust McDowell? I don't know if he believes in clutch. But I do know he doesn't believe in pitch counts, and thinks they're useless and bad for the game. This is in spite of the fact that his career probably ended prematurely because no one was monitoring his pitch counts. So if players do believe in clutch, is that more or less relevant than them believing they need to leave the car at exactly 33 past the hour or need to eat chicken before every game? Is "clutch", whatever it is, another superstition? As for believing the players, should I also believe them when they say corked bats help them hit home runs, despite the FACT that cooking a bat is about the worst thing you can do to one? (Although to be fair, sometimes it does enable a hitter to generate more bat speed. But this only works because the first bat was too heavy and the hitter should have simply gone for the perfectly legal maneuver of using a lighter bat.)