Eric Young Jr. stole a pair of bases in Thursday afternoon’s 5-2 defeat of the free-falling Diamondbacks, giving the Mets outfielder 6 swipes on the season. During the radio broadcast, Josh Lewin and Howie Rose expressed dismay that recent reports of Young visiting a Scottsdale “mental sports trainer” were fodder for internet yucks. Rose found it sad that in 2014, fans would be so unenlightened as to poke fun at such things, while Lewin argued seeing such a specialist was no different than seeking out extra guidance for a physical pursuit.
Trouble is, as SBN’s David Roth points out, the mental sports trainer in question is not exactly Dr. Allan Lans.
Freeman’s bio is notable for a wealth of unmotivated capitalization — “Whether its, Cheer leading Baseball, Hockey, Basketball, Football, Soccer, Arena Football or Olympic type of sports figure skating, weight lifting, track the list is endless…Sports is competitive and it’s all mental,” all (sic)’s in the original — and for Freeman’s tendency to compare herself to Dr. Dani Santino of the short-lived USA Network show “Necessary Roughness.” (“She has been called the ‘Dr. Dani Santino of Necessary Roughness’ Because of her techniques of overcome fears and doubts with athletes.”)
It’s a pretty extraordinary website, and one that mostly reads — in syntax and capitalization and general half-distracted grandiosity — as if it was written on a smartphone during a bumpy bus ride. The parts of the site that read best, on baseball and baseball slumps, appears to have been lifted wholesale from this website. Freeman’s other website, hypnosisbypattie.com, is more concerned with selling Freeman as a hypnotist-entertainer for corporate events. It is written much the same way — “Pattie is one of the Top Rated Female Stage hypnotist in the US. Voted #1 Entertainer of the year” — and notes that Freeman was the “Arizona State Fair hypnotist for 2012.”
This all raises various questions, starting with why the Mets couldn’t connect one of their players with a visualization specialist or hypnotherapist who is 1) an actual doctor and/or 2) whose bio does not contain the words “Pattie’s Comedy Hypnosis Shows is a SOLD OUT hit at Dave & Buster’s.”