BOB TEWKSBURY: YANKEE PITCHER AND ALL-STAR BASEBALL PLAYER ENJOYS SECOND CAREER AS MENTAL SKILLS COACH

I had a fun time interviewing former MLB pitcher Bob Tewskbury last fall, and then writing it up for the TOURIST & TOWN MAGAZINE (winter edition). Here’s the story — with photos by the talented Bob Dennis!

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Sportscaster Joe Buck described Major League Baseball pitcher Bob Tewksbury as “a lighthouse in strong seas.” George Steinbrenner, then owner of the New York Yankees, personally handed “Tewks” a magnum of champagne (“which I still haven’t opened”) after acing his first MLB win. Joe Torre, Yankee manager for 11 years, labeled his young pitcher “an artist,” telling him, “Tewksie, I believe in you. You can pitch, and win, at this level.” 

Did he ever! Over a 13-year MLB career, 6’-4” Bob Tewksbury notched 110 wins on the mound for the New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers, San Diego Padres and the Minnesota Twins. His best year was 1992 when he earned a coveted All-Star ring, ranked third in the Cy Young Award voting, and boasted a 2.16 ERA in 233 innings pitched. Today, he still owns the lowest “walks-per-nine-innings” rate in baseball history. 

One day Tewksbury, a “changeup artist who relied on deception and strategic location of his pitches,” actually squelched power-hitter Mark McGwire, super-star first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, by throwing him an Eephus, the rare and “junkiest” pitch in baseball. Big Mac proceeded to ground out twice. 

Tewksbury also portrayed himself as a Yankee pitcher in the 1994 baseball comedy movie “The Scout,” starring Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser. After retiring from MLB, his 2018 book, NINETY PERCENT MENTAL: AN ALL-STAR PLAYER TURNED MENTAL SKILLS COACH REVEALS THE HIDDEN GAME OF BASEBALL earned kudos from the New York Journal of Books: “Tewksbury’s book should be a fixture in the library of any baseball player or coach.”

Heady stuff.

But the 62-year-old Wells resident is comfortably down to earth, and his breezy humor is laced with humility. He arrived for an interview driving his 2019 white Ford pickup truck, wearing flip-flops, faded Bermuda shorts and a sweatshirt long out of its cellophane wrapping. His once-brown hair, now speckled with silver, would have benefitted from a good combing. The right-hander admits he had a “long and interesting journey" from his hometown of Concord, New Hampshire.

Today, the boy whose passion for baseball ignited at age seven when he signed up for T-Ball, is the proud father of two, a happy husband, a passionate golfer and a contented retiree from “the Show” who still gets three to five written requests daily for his autograph. He takes special pride in having extended his baseball career to become a mental skills coach for the Boston Red Sox, the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs. 

“Baseball was always my passion,” Tewksbury wrote in his book. “Early in my high school years I would walk up the street to a nearby elementary school, packing a piece of chalk, a couple of old scuffed-up baseballs, my glove and a vivid imagination. With the chalk I’d draw a strike zone on the school wall.  With my feet, I would mark off sixty feet, six inches. With my mind, I would create a pretend opposing lineup. Then I would pitch.” 

Tewks played college ball at Rutgers University in New Jersey and later at Saint Leo University in Florida. During 1979 and 1980, he played collegiate summer baseball with the Wareham Gatemen of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Ultimately, baseball beat academics. In the 1981 MLB draft, the college-dropout was selected in the 19th round by the New York Yankees and spent five years “working my way up the ladder.”

“For most players who sign a professional contract, the road to the majors is a long process,” Tewksbury wrote in his book. “There are more bus rides, more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, more cold pizza and uniforms still damp from not being properly dried in the laundry the night before. The per diem barely covers one meal when it needs to buy three. Clubhouse dues (to cover generic food and drink) take a bite out of ridiculous meager salaries, and players take the poorly lit field for another night in front of a ‘transformer crowd.’ Meaning, the overriding background noise inside the tiny ballpark isn’t the roar of the crowd but the buzz of the electrical transformers.” 

But with heart, hustle and chutzpah, the crafty righty made it to the Show. He still savors advice he got from “alumni coach” Catfish Hunter, the former Yankee ace who became the first pitcher since 1915 to win 200 games by age 21. Tewksbury wrote, “Wearing his Yankee pullover sweatshirt and with the omnipresent wad of chaw in his left cheek, Catfish casually turned his head toward me, spit out a thick long stream of tobacco juice and said, ‘Just throw strikes, kid. Throw strikes.’”  

One of his favorite memories was winning his first MLB game in 1986. “I had spent a good part of my life looking at and assessing other players and pitchers, thinking that if they could do it, so could I. And there I finally was, with my wife Laura, my mother and all my siblings sitting in the stands. That was great.” In addition to Steinbrenner’s still-uncorked magnum of champagne, Tewksbury received a standing ovation from the fans at Yankee Stadium that night.

Asked what it was like in the Yankee dugout, Tewksbury answered, “When you’re not pitching, it’s fine. You’ve got the best seat in the house. You chew sunflower seeds and bubblegum, and laugh it up with some of the players. But when you’re pitching, the dugout becomes your office. You’re focused and constantly checking the score. I wasn’t anti-social but the only guys I wanted to talk to on pitching day were the catcher and the pitching coach.” 

“People see the monetary reward and the glory of being a big name athlete, but it’s fleeting,” Tewksbury added. “You have to stay healthy, you have to perform, you’re under a lot of stress and you have to stay grounded. Generally the career of a baseball player ends in his mid-30s. There are tough and constant demands of being away from your family and friends, your girlfriend or wife.” 

 (Of note: in 150 years of Major League Baseball, only 20,261 players have appeared in a major league game. Less than 11 in 100  — about 10.5% — of NCAA senior male baseball players get drafted by a MLB team. Approximately one in 200 — 0.5% — of high school senior boys playing interscholastic baseball will eventually be drafted by an MLB team. Tough odds.)

“None of us know when the winds will change and our own personal GPS will reset, but you can take steps to ensure you’re mentally prepared and in a place to succeed when it happens,” Tewksbury said. In 1998, after 13 seasons pitching in the majors, 38-year-old Tewksbury retired from playing baseball. He sensed that the mental skills he had employed on the mound — slow down, breathe, think positively, focus only on the task at hand — might be useful to other pitchers and players. 

While working as a pitching consultant with the Boston Red Sox’s Double-A and Triple-A teams, Tewksbury pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education at St. Leo University in 2000, then earned a Master’s Degree in psychology at Boston University in 2004. He read constantly, “devouring Og Mandino’s book, THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD, and tearing through books by Norman Vincent Peale. The seeds of my interest in psychology quickly and firmly took root.” 

In 2005, he was named the BoSox’s mental skills coach. Tewksbury had been advised that his pitching career might be both a blessing and a curse.  He says, “The blessing was that it would open doors and I would have instant credibility. The curse? I would need to think as a mental skills coach, not as a former player. There’s a big difference.”

 Tewksbury worked with the Red Sox from 2005 to 2016, during which time they won two World Series. He later moved on to the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs. He also produced audio programs that players downloaded to their iPhones. “Track by track, the idea was to give them, or help remind them, of performance cues,” Tewksbury says. Anthony Rizzo, three-time All-Star first baseman, admitted recently, “I listen to his stuff even now. When I get into a rut, I’ll throw on tracks 1 through 11, put it on repeat and fall asleep listening to it.” 

Nowadays, Tewksbury enjoys retirement at his home (“Rose Cottage”) in Wells, especially walking Mr. Higgins, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel,  along the beach or taking the dog kayaking in the surrounding marshes. On sunny days, he tees off at Webhannet Golf Club in Kennebunk Beach; on rainy days he rides a stationary bike in his third floor family room which offers views of both the Atlantic Ocean and the marshes. He also loves to paint in acrylics, and the walls of his home feature many of his landscapes.

And he still works as a mental skills coach, “just not for a baseball team. I do it more as a private practice for individuals. Currently, I’m working with a national figure skater, a leading equestrian rider in England, two PGA tour golfers and a variety of other people.”

Bob Tewksbury is an athlete who made lemonade out of lemons. When shoulder and arm problems prevented him from throwing fast balls, he became a control pitcher. He rarely feared that his pitches would get hit because he knew that most balls put in play are outs. When his playing career ended, he recalculated and earned a Masters in psychology so he could offer sound and professional advice to other players. 

NINETY PERCENT MENTAL is more than a baseball tome. As one reviewer noted, “Tewks’ book is about so much more than the journey of a veteran pitcher. It’s about the journey of one of baseball’s most inquisitive minds.”

“I write about life skills and situations we have to deal with, and essential components in any successful long-term human interaction — trust and a solid relationship,” he says.  “If you can conceive it in your mind, and believe it in your heart, you can achieve it.” 

And indeed he did.

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Tewks still has the unopened magnum of champagne given to him by George Steinbrenner after his first MLB win in Yankee Stadium — a night Bob will never forget!