Rick Wolff’s résumé is about so long as a Main League roster, his disparate professions linked by an adoration of sports activities and a fascination with sports activities psychology.
He was knowledgeable baseball participant, a school baseball coach, an creator of books about sports activities psychology and an editor and writer of books by athletes like Tiger Woods (in addition to enterprise figures).
Within the early Nineties, he grew to become the psychological coach for the Cleveland baseball staff now generally known as the Guardians, serving to them rise from the American League basement to perennial pennant contenders. And for 25 years he was the host of “The Sports activities Edge,” a present on the New York sports activities station WFAN devoted to serving to households navigate the more and more aggressive world of youth sports activities.
His final episode, which handled whether or not youngsters had been turning into much less considering youth sports activities, aired two weeks earlier than he died on April 10 at his dwelling in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was 71. His son, John, mentioned the trigger was mind most cancers.
Mr. Wolff started his quarter-century on WFAN after ending his stint as Cleveland’s roving psychological coach. Turning into a broadcaster was hereditary: His father, Bob Wolff, was a radio and tv sportscaster for almost eight a long time, longer than anybody else, in response to Guinness World Information.
Over a whole bunch of Sunday-morning episodes, Rick Wolff tackled weighty youth-sports subjects like hazing, the influence of social media and the chance of concussions, in addition to extra lighthearted ones like Huge League Chew bubble gum.
The dangerous habits of overcompetitive mother and father and the psychological well being of younger athletes had been motifs. In an episode final yr that served as a primer on sports activities psychology, Mr. Wolff mentioned that sending youngsters to compete with out mentally getting ready them was “like sending your child to take a significant check in class, however they actually haven’t studied or ready for that examination.”
His psychological insights had been solid within the crucible of Main League Baseball.
He began with Cleveland in 1990, when the staff was mired in one of many longest playoff droughts in Main League historical past — Cleveland had not made it to the postseason since 1954.
Cleveland was so infamous for dropping {that a} fancifully woeful model of the staff was on the coronary heart of the 1989 film comedy “Main League.”
Mr. Wolff labored with many younger gamers within the Cleveland system, which within the early Nineties included future stars like Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome.
He usually traveled with Cleveland and its minor league groups and had a devoted dwelling cellphone line on which gamers might name him at any time. Whether or not they had been coping with a batting droop, pregame jitters or anger points, he was there to listen to them out.
His counseling method concerned visualization strategies, muscle reminiscence and pushing gamers to face their failures. He had some unorthodox views; for example, he maintained that setting overly bold targets might be paralyzing as a substitute of motivating and that pregame nervousness might usually be embraced as a standard a part of sports activities.
Despite the fact that sports activities psychology was uncommon in baseball, Mr. Wolff mentioned on his present final yr, Cleveland’s gamers “took the psychological aspect of the sport critically” and inside a number of years had been a “powerhouse within the American League.”
The concept caught on, he added, and “today it’s the uncommon, uncommon sports activities staff or skilled or school group that doesn’t have at the very least one sports activities psychologist on their workers.”
As an editor at numerous publishing homes, Mr. Wolff acquired a slew of New York Occasions finest sellers, together with Robert Kiyosaki’s “Wealthy Dad Poor Dad” (1997) and the Common Electrical chief government Jack Welch’s “Jack: Straight From the Intestine” (2001). He additionally acquired quite a few sports activities books, together with Roger Angell’s “A Pitcher’s Story: Innings With David Cone” and Tiger Woods’s “How I Play Golf.”
As an creator, he wrote, amongst different books, “Secrets and techniques of Sports activities Psychology Revealed: Confirmed Strategies to Elevate Your Efficiency” (2018) and “Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Journey Enjoying Minor League Baseball” (2007), which he wrote with John Wolff.
Starting in 1988, he additionally had a stint as editor of “The Baseball Encyclopedia,” when he was with the writer Macmillan.
Richard Hugh Wolff was born in Washington on July 14, 1951. His mom, Jane (Hoy) Wolff, was a Navy nurse who grew to become a homemaker. His father was the broadcasting voice of the Washington Senators on the time.
In 1961, the Senators moved to Minnesota, the place they grew to become the Twins, and the Wolffs ultimately moved to Edgemont, N.Y., in Westchester County, the place Mr. Wolff grew up. He performed baseball and soccer at Edgemont Excessive College, graduating in 1969, and attended Harvard.
As an infielder enjoying for Harvard, he started in search of a psychological edge however discovered little details about sports activities psychology. In time he tailored the visualization strategies superior by the surgeon Maxwell Maltz in his ebook “Psycho-Cybernetics.”
The Detroit Tigers picked Mr. Wolff late within the 1972 newbie draft, and he performed of their minor league system in 1973 and 1974 whereas finishing his Harvard bachelor’s diploma in psychology.
After enjoying within the minors, Mr. Wolff grew to become editor in chief on the Alexander Hamilton Institute, a now defunct group that printed academic supplies on enterprise and administration. He continued to carry that job after he grew to become head baseball coach for Mercy Faculty in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., in 1978. He coached there till 1985, main the staff to a 114-81-3 file.
In 1982, he married Patricia Varvaro, who survives him. Along with her and his son, he’s survived by two daughters, Alyssa Wolff and Samantha O’Connor; a brother, Dr. Robert Wolff; a sister, Margy Clark; and three grandchildren.
Mr. Wolff earned a grasp’s diploma in psychology from Lengthy Island College in 1985. His ebook “The Psychology of Successful Baseball: A Coach’s Handbook” (1986) caught the attention of Harvey Dorfman, a psychological coach for the Oakland A’s and one of many first within the main leagues. He referred to as Mr. Wolff and advised him that different groups had been in search of psychologists. After talking to a number of groups, Mr. Wolff selected Cleveland.
He bonded with Cleveland gamers by carrying a staff uniform and working towards with them.
On the time, his enjoying days had been more moderen than the younger gamers he endorsed might need thought — simply the yr earlier than. He had performed three video games (and had 4 hits in seven at-bats) with the South Bend (Ind.) White Sox of the Midwest League in 1989, when he was 38, an expertise he wrote about for Sports activities Illustrated.
His South Bend teammates had handled him gingerly, till he fielded a grounder and hit a dribbler to quick of their first recreation collectively. He wrote that after the sport one pitcher requested him, “Inform us, Rick, it’s essential to have identified him, what sort of participant was Babe Ruth?”
With that little bit of ribbing, Mr. Wolff knew he had made it. “I had grow to be the goal of some old style needling — the final word acceptance in baseball.”