Matt Clement

It's been so long that they're so excited.

And you stay in this race, you're going to get a different kind of atmosphere here.

Maybe like a Steelers-type atmosphere, especially if they're in the race.

It's a mental problem for pitchers, number one.

And it's funny because I lived in a high-rise.

I had a townhouse in a high-rise when I was there.

I rented when I was there.

And you could wake up in the morning and I could hear the wind like when I'd wake up and I'd be like, oh, no, especially like the day I was pitching.

And, and then you'd kind of go outside and like, you'd sheepishly like look out, I'd look like out the window to see which way it was blowing because it could be ugly, uh, real quick.

And, and, and it was, uh, had some of my best games with the wind blowing out.

Um, how, uh,

I took this, I always tried to play mind games as a pitcher.

And my mindset with the wind blowing out was, especially on the, I was on some really good Cubs teams, but I was on some Cubs teams that didn't score a lot of runs.

And I thought to myself, well, hey, the wind's blowing out, I might get some more run support today.

So I'm going to take that mental edge with this and figure out a way.

And one thing I did learn with the wind blowing out, it makes your slider a lot better.

It makes a breaking ball, at least the shape of mine, became a lot better with the wind blowing out.

So it's a lot of tricking yourself and tricking your mind, and that was one of the ways I tricked myself.

Well, I would say this.

It's unfair to put Skeens in this equation because he's like the Maddox version of throwing hard.