Myth-busting: Do teams win because of team chemistry? A new book looks for answers

I have missed baseball so much since the coronavirus suspended the 2020 season in March, before the season even officially started. In my longing for a pastime that has filled my life with joy and memories since I first became a fan in 1971, I’ve found myself watching vintage games from that era.

The players seemed super human to me because I was at my most impressionable as a fan and because I could share the love of the game with my childhood hero, my dad.

One of the great teams of that era were the Oakland A’s, a long-haired, mustachioed collection of rebels who won three consecutive World Series titles even though they were fighting among themselves.

A great myth of baseball has always been that teams win because of “good chemistry” and camaraderie. The flip side of the myth was that toxic relationships and in-fighting bred losing.

OK, so how do you account for the A’s owning the World Series in 1972, ‘73 and ‘74? There has never been a good answer to this question even though the “good chemistry” myth is as old as the game. That is, the myth is as old as dirt among fans and writers. Many players and managers – some of the best who ever lived – think that “chemistry” is bunk.

Opinion

Who is right? What’s the real answer to this question?

Joan Ryan, who is based in the Bay Area and is one of the most distinguished sports writers of her generation, takes a big swing at these questions in her new book, “Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry.

I sought the book to fill my longing for real baseball and because I must admit, I’ve believed that “team chemistry” was a lazy cliché trotted out by too many people in the press box. Especially now, when players make so much money and have no need to be confessional with writers, and when access is so restricted by teams, we don’t know these guys.

Baseball chemistry is misunderstood

There is so much to the game that we are not allowed to see. And what we do see is often shrouded in lies and deception for competitive reasons. When a big story does break – like the cheating scandal that engulfed baseball over the winter – it was because A’s pitcher Mike Fiers voluntarily blew the whistle on the Houston Astros, his former team. A player pulled back the curtain, not those of us on the outside.

Ryan is able to pull back a curtain on the inner sanctum of team chemistry because she is a smart storyteller who understands what information is available to her and what isn’t. And what she has available to her is considerable.

She tells us about the science of team chemistry as it is understood and quantified by some of the leading minds in social interaction among humans. Chemistry between groups of people is not mumbo jumbo. There is a real science to it and Ryan is a skillful narrator who translates the science without getting bogged down in it.

But particularly for audiences in Northern California, what makes “Intangibles” a book worth reading is that Ryan took on one of the great myths about team chemistry in baseball history: The supposedly toxic relationship between Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, the two biggest names and biggest egos powering the Giants in the era just before they won three championships starting in 2010.

How was she able to do this? Well, Bonds and Kent are retired. And paraphrasing Ryan, retired players – even the most irascible ones such as Bonds and Kent – get a lot nicer and a lot more approachable the farther they are away from the heat of competition.

So with willing scientists and willing retired Giants icons, and a host of supporting characters, Ryan tells an interesting story about team chemistry in the game of baseball.

Bonds vs. Kent, myth vs. reality

I personally hate when reviewers give away too much about a book so I’m not going to do that. I will say this: I was around the Giants a lot in 2001 and 2002, when Bonds and Kent were at the height of their powers as players and when their relationship was most heated.

Remember the big fight between Bonds and Kent in the Giants dugout in 2002? It was on TV for all the world to see. And the image of Bonds grabbing Kent by the throat became emblematic of how they felt about each other – at least to those of us outside their inner sanctum.

Ryan took them both back to that time and place and she produced details that I had not heard before. The relationship between Bonds and Kent was fascinating then, and is now in Ryan’s book. Kent won the National League MVP in 2000. Bonds was MVP in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Obviously, Bonds is black and Kent is white. Both were like supernovas in a confined clubhouse and the tension was obvious.

I was there. I saw it and frankly, I miss those guys. When they were playing, the Giants were far more interesting than the teams the franchise have trotted out since their championship run ended when they were eliminated by the Chicago Cubs in the 2016 divisional playoffs.

What’s particularly interesting is when Ryan sits with Bonds and Kent, major skeptics of the whole “team chemistry” concept. These passages are satisfying and entertaining. Ryan presents a deeper portrait of two seminal players we thought we knew.

And she shows us that team chemistry is not bunk. It’s real. It’s based in science and can be exploited for big wins, even by people who deny team chemistry while practicing it to great success..

In a sense, Ryan challenges both Bonds and Kent – not with clubhouse swagger, but with the years of research she brings to the topic. She captures one particular scene with Kent that is very funny.

In the end, “Intangibles” scores because it does cut through the lies and deceptions that baseball people instinctively toss out like smoke screens to shroud how they succeeded in the game. The book made me miss the game even more.