.
Foreword: how worried is Dr. D about Wilson's (very) poor performance against the Chargers?
1. As a general principle, the sabermetrician is more concerned with Clayton Kershaw's last three years of K's and BB's than he is in two spring training games.
2. In this specific case, our Man On the Scene would be Pete Carroll. This man is delighted with Wilson's situation as we speak.
PS to Foreword: Dr. D never did mistake Russell Wilson for Joe Namath. (Or even for Philip Rivers.) The knock on Wilson/Carroll has always been the number of yards that they throw for. They're efficient, the QB rating is great, but the ball just isn't moving North and South that much. The Seahawks win games by keeping the other team in front of them, and coming at them in waves for 4 quarters. ... how BOUT them defensive line waves, amigos? Slap me silly and call me Colin.
Okay, on to the Recovery Water shtick.
......
This month's episode of Field Gulls is brought to you by the word "Wingnut."
:- )
If you just missed it, Russell endorsed a particular vitamin water. Included in that was his statement that he banged his head, felt pretty good after, and it seemed to him that the water was of help to him.
Okay, that's kind of a little weird to say, and if you wanted to throw out a quip about it, good on yer. ... But! If the commenters there were ribbing this kid about his product placement, if they were rolling their eyes about his endorsement, then ... hokay. YOU pass up a million bucks for endorsing Diet Mountain Dew as putting pep in your step, and then call Dr. D in the morning.
But that ain't what they doin', not by a long shot. There's a big end zone section of the blog-o-sphere now that is seriously worried about Russell Wilson's sanity. Or at least his rationality. There's a grim, hand-wringing tone to the site now that has not been in their own interest. "Leave room for the opposing view" indeed. The only view permitted there about Wilson's Twitter account is that Now We All Get It. He Was Daft from the Beginning.
Dr. D realizes that SSI denizens are not sitting in this end zone, and that they themselves are rolling their eyes at the phenomenon. But Dr. D can't resist to (attempt to) draw a Life Lesson out of the whole surrealistic mutiny against RW3.
........
First principle: Dr. D, if nobody else, takes it as a given that Wilson believes in his supplements. Dr. D has seen cynical athletes, and Wilson doesn't appear to be one of them.
.........
Second principle: a fitness fanatic will tell you that she worked out, ate right, took some Magnesium and now she's bulletproof against everything. Not "might" tell you that, but will tell you that, and as long as you care to listen. They all tell you that. Tony Horton, the P90X guy, skiied into a tree at 35 MPH, came out surprisingly un-dead (not that kind of undead!) and credited his diet and exercise for his resilience.
It's not particularly weird. For Wilson to credit his supplements for a little extra edge in healing and prevention. That's what workout freaks do. ... does a diet high in boiled chicken, cabbage, and carrots leave your blood chemistry in different shape than does a diet high in Beef & Cheddars? Would a "cleaner" blood profile be of any help if you banged your head and your cell biology had to rush to the rescue?
Who's to say. Cell processes, immune systems, and living organisms deny all attempts to be dogmatic. When Dr. D goes up to the rocket scientists at the UW to figure out his own little medical issues, they shrug and say "There's something going on in your system that" causes X, Y, and Z. They don't know what it is. They don't know much at all, for sure. The beginning of wisdom is the admission of what you don't know.
A smart aleck who went to college might call Wilson literally insane, but I'll bet you Dr. Grumpy won't; I'll bet his attitude would be I'm quite skeptical about this issue, but it's open to discussion. The human body is an extremely complex machine, far too complex for us to regard it as one more lawnmower engine that is captured by a Chilton's manual.
Russell Wilson reports that he banged his head and felt surprisingly good after. He reports that it seems to him that his new supplements regimen were somehow connected to this pleasant surprise. For this, Dr. D recommends that we not haul him away like Gaston hauling Belle's dad away in the middle of the night.
.........
Second principle, corollary: suppose that 30% of this effect is the Placebo Effect, or you could say "self-fulfilling prophecy." Hey, I banged my head and bruised my brain. But I'll be okay because, man, I'm in great shape. I'm resilient. Nothing can stop me. I can shake this off.
Doctors are big on attitude. Would they rather treat a sourpuss hypochondriac, or a fitness buff who believes they're unsinkable?
Modern society tends to snicker at the Placebo Effect. It shouldn't. Placebos offer real benefit. If you take a sugar pill and your headache goes away, well ... your headache is gone, right? People forget that part of the story.
And so does a positive attitude offer real benefit. If Jillian Michaels wants to juice, and to tell herself it is all part of a Fitness Big Picture, and that she's got her body figured out and that she'll live to 100 years of age ... who am I as a couch schlub to tell her she shouldn't? Her doctor loves her for it.
:- ) In the big picture, what you've got here is us couch schlubs sniping at a very, VERY fit person for his attitude about body and mind. Take into consideration the fact that he's winning and we're losing. The battle of the body, that is.
.........
Third principle: there are a lot of guys with 4-year degrees in natural science, and a materialistic attitude, who believe that they have their arms around Human Knowledge. They are Rational, with a capital R. And when they hear something fringy, they file their fellow human being in the Irrational file drawer.
No good can come of this. After we take that first step, to consider --- > this whole group of people over here < --- to be lesser human beings than we are, then what's the second step? You got it. Something we'd rather steer clear of. You want to participate in the evolution of mankind, LrKrBoi29? You want to be progressive and enlightened? Then what say we stop drawing 2-D cartoon caricatures of people who think differently than we do.
Bill James had a snappy line ... actually a mantra, for a few years there. He said, "You pay a price for everything you believe that isn't true." Just so! In this case, the "belief" is "Russell Wilson is unbalanced" and the "price" includes "diminished enjoyment of the Seahawks for no good reason."
........
Dr's R/X: How should you and I view Wilson's offseason? What would be a forwardgoing, and healthy, and rational, way to adjust our view of the Russell Wilson world?
I think it's rational to move the dial one notch toward ARod-ness. This kid has places to go and people to meet, including the President. He is grooming his corporate "brand" with as much gusto as he heaves a long ball toward the Green Bay end zone. So sue him.
That's what he's choosing to do with his life. He wants to be the face of McDonald's, well, of Gatorade and Hanes and he wants to own an NFL team and he wants to be President of the U.S. of A. in the year 2050. The 19-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger had the same 30-year plan all mapped out and copied in triplicate.
I find it a little off-putting, but I'll take it over where RGIII is. Part of the Wilson Shtick is also that he is obsessed with the Seahawks winning 7 Super Bowls.
Russell Wilson "handles it beautifully," the dates with Obama and the invitations to be on the mission to Mars. He is a very, very old 26. We'll roll our eyes at him now and then; there is an asterisk to him, a little ARod asterisk. But that's an asterisk to the overarc'ing statement that we have found Arnold Schwarzenegger to be our quarterback.
Compared to Colin Kaepernick's, or compared to the average NFL jailbird's, I personally like Wilson's cleaner, jock-extreme "Why Not Me/Us" obssessive personality. But if you find his personality to be a problem, well, you're a sports fan. You're used to abstracting the uniform number.
Enjoy,
Dr. D
