Before he makes his long-awaited return Friday, when his warmups are done and the ball has been whipped around the infield, New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole will walk behind the mound, crouch with his elbows on his knees and stay there a while.
These solitary moments, with a packed Yankee Stadium surrounding him, are as crucial to Cole as any fastball or bases-loaded escape.
“You’re stepping into the ring,” he recently explained to The Athletic. “Everything up to that point, you’ve controlled. Then, within like 15 seconds, the ball is going to leave your hand and you have zero control over what’s going to happen.”
There’s no telling what will happen after Cole makes his first pitch of the season Friday night against the AL East-leading Tampa Bay Rays — undoubtedly one of the biggest games of the year for the Yankees, who hope he will continue on his Hall of Fame trajectory and help them end their 17-year World Series drought.
But before Cole begins the second act of an illustrious career that was paused over the past 15 months as he recovered from Tommy John surgery, he will kneel and take a moment for himself.
Gerrit Cole crouches behind the mound at Yankee Stadium in 2020. (Erick W. Rasco / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
It’s something he’s done for years, though Friday will feel a little different, marking the merciful end of exile for the baseball-obsessed Cole. Though he often tinkers with his preparation, pitch grips, and delivery, which he changed to much fanfare during his rehab to include an old-timey over-the-head motion when he’s in the windup, the crouch has long remained central to his routine.
Sometimes, Cole crouches behind the mound to gather his thoughts. Sometimes, he’ll do it to block out 50,000 screaming fans or to focus on his game plan against a tough leadoff hitter. Sometimes he keeps his eyes on the dirt, and sometimes he closes them. He also uses the break to steady his breathing.
But every time, he knows that once he finally moves to the rubber and throws his first pitch, he’ll spend the rest of his energy fighting to keep hold of what’s most important to him while he’s on the mound: Control.
Control over his emotions. Control over the pace of the action. Control over anything and everything that he can possibly affect in a game steeped in volatility.
“I’m just preparing for that,” he said.
Cole, 35, learned the importance of self-control on the mound when he was an 18-year-old freshman at UCLA. That’s when he met the late Dr. Ken Ravizza, a pioneer in sports psychology who co-authored with Tom Hanson the popular book “Heads-Up Baseball,” which essentially teaches baseball players to not beat themselves.
“You must be in control of yourself before you can control your performance,” the book reads. “Peak performance isn’t about being perfect, it’s about compensating and adjusting.”
Even at that young age, Cole, with his big frame and smooth mechanics, had the look of someone who would accomplish so much in this game — and he has, including a 153-80 record, two ERA titles, a Cy Young Award in 2023 and five other top-five finishes, among other accolades.
But Cole needed work on the mental side, UCLA head coach John Savage said this week in a phone interview.
“Physically,” Savage said, “he was on the path to stardom. I think what he really needed was the emotional part of things and the mental part of things. That was a big part of his development — the mental game, game management. How to deal with things throughout the week and throughout the games.”
Gerrit Cole has been focusing on controlling what he can control on the mound since his days at UCLA. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images)
It’s something Cole still has battled in his six years with the Yankees since signing a nine-year, $324 million contract — then a record for a pitcher. Often, his body language immediately conveys how he’s feeling, whether he disagrees with an umpire or if he’s upset with himself over a bad pitch.
But Cole knows the more he controls himself, the more he’ll control the outcome of his starts. So when the intensity ratchets up, he will find the familiar on the mound — another tip from Ravizza. He’ll rub the baseball a certain way. He’ll clean his cleats on the spikes behind the mound, and he’ll try to focus on the sound his cleats make while he does it.
“There are different things you can do in any competition, and most elite athletes will tell you the same thing,” Cole said, “whether you activate your vision or your hearing — some sort of sense, whatever it may be, to draw you back to your processes.”
“It never gets old,” Savage said. “It never runs out. It’s never not applicable. It’s very, very real, and I think Gerrit understands that, and he likes the feeling of the preparation part of things and certainly having control.”
Cole cited examples around the Yankees’ clubhouse. He noted how Aaron Judge grabs dirt from the batter’s box and tosses it, after disappointing himself on the previous pitch, as a way of throwing the moment away. He pointed out how Giancarlo Stanton digs his back foot into the box in the same place every time and never moves it.
Longtime starting pitcher and National League Cy Young Award winner Orel Hershiser used to think in stages on the mound. Walking around the grass, Hershiser would contemplate the game situation. On the mound, he’d think about the pitch he needed to throw. And when he reached the rubber, he would think about executing that pitch.
Max Fried told The Athletic that he likes to reset before most innings by going to the back of the mound, putting his glove between his knees, tucking in his jersey and taking one last deep breath. Then, he uses his cleat to motion over the dirt near the rubber, “wiping it clean.”
“There’s a way to grab control back and get focus back to the things that you can control,” Cole said.
Maintaining control and focus are a priority for Cole elsewhere, too.
Talk to him for a minute and you’ll see he’s as engaged as anyone you’ve met. He keeps eye contact. He listens actively, giving head nods and affirmations.
Watch him play catch and you won’t see a single wasted movement. He aims for his partner’s target every time. He wears it on his face when he misses his mark, even from long distance.
Last October, during a quiet morning after the Yankees were eliminated from the postseason, Cole trekked to the Bronx for a bullpen session. The problem: It started snowing. It didn’t matter to Cole, who layered up and chucked fastballs through the snowflakes, the echo of catcher’s mitt reverberating throughout an empty Yankee Stadium.
“If you’re only trying to focus when s— is hitting the fan,” he said, “you have nothing to anchor the fan to other than doing this s— (waves his hand flippantly) when s— is hitting the fan, and that’s not really productive.”
Cole said a key to being able to get through difficult moments in baseball, or in life, is an ability to focus regardless of the situation — “when things are going well” or “when things are going badly or when nobody’s looking or when it seems monotonous.”
“That way there’s a continuity in terms of all your work,” he said, “and it connects you back to that moment and it regulates you when the bases are loaded and you have to get out of the situation.”
Cole is pining for the chance to put it all together again Friday night, his first time on a major-league mound in 569 days, since a disappointing Game 5 of the 2024 World Series.
“I missed it quite a bit,” he said Tuesday. “I’m confident. I’m optimistic, but I definitely know there’s some work in front of us. It’s just the right time to take the next step.”
But before Cole takes that step, he’ll stride behind the mound and crouch once again, relishing those final, fleeting moments of control before the glorious fight to regain it begins anew.
