With the start of spring training, Phillies’ slugger emeritus Ryan Howard took questions from the Philadelphia sports media on Tuesday. Given that this will certainly be Howard’s last spring training in Clearwater as a player, and in light of a fairly peculiar set of accusations from Al-Jezeera over the winter, the desire for the media to speak with Howard seemed reasonable. However, Howard was defensive and bristled at the line of questioning:

“Last year was a tough year,” Howard said. “Last year was a tough year. I wasn’t happy with the media. I was always happy with my team. I wasn’t happy with the media last year…

…The way I felt with everything that I’ve done here in Philadelphia, I just felt I was being portrayed as something worse,” Howard said. “To be honest with you guys, I felt like I was being portrayed as the bad guy. That’s why I didn’t talk to you all last year. I didn’t have a problem at all with my teammates.”

Later in the press conference, he defended his performance.

“The track record speaks for itself,” he said. “I’ve always been a guy that’s been a team player. And I’m always going to be a competitor. I always want to be able to go out there and it doesn’t matter righty or lefty, I know I can get the job done. I know all the talk over the past few years, this and that. I’m not going to focus on that. For me, it’s taking advantage of the opportunities when I get to go out there and play…

“..Check the numbers, check the track record. I know I can hit lefties. There’s been talk in the media and all this kind of stuff over the past three years about not hitting lefties and whatever. It’s about just going out there and doing it…

“..I think there was one year that I had, what, the most RBIs and home runs against lefties? That was what, two years ago? I think people forget that.

Actually, the record does speak for itself Ryan, and you just haven’t been a valuable major-league hitter over the last few years. For three of the past four years, Ryan Howard has been a well-below average hitter in the big leagues. As a matter of fact, these statistics are so clear, that one would think a rational human being has to feel or know they haven’t been effective.

Just as you are beginning to wonder what planet Howard has been living on, you get a clue  as to his thinking from this statement:

“As far as last year? There’s nothing you can do about it. Last year is last year. This is a fresh year. Just as last year was bad, this year I can go out and hit .300 against lefties. Then what do you say? If I was able to go out and hit .300 against lefties this year. Then what?”

One of the reasons why Ryan Howard was one of the greatest sluggers in baseball from 2005 through 2011 was the supreme belief in his abilities and his ability to forget his  failures. Remember, even in his prime, at peak oppo-boppo, Howard would strike out 199 times in a season. For most of us, failing that many times at whatever the task was would shatter our confidence. But not Howard — or any other elite athlete for that matter.

In order to be the top 1% of the human race in any endeavor, whether it’s on a playing field or in a corporate boardroom or a research lab, you have to have an unwavering faith in your abilities and the probability that you will succeed. While Howard’s defensiveness may seem odd to us as fans, we can’t forget that this is a characteristic ubiquitous to all people who perform at an elite level.

If you think Ryan Howard’s at-bats are tough to watch now, just imagine what would happen if he was telling all of us, “Yeah, lefties… I just don’t have an answer for those guys.”