How barefoot walks, mindfulness made Joc Pederson an All-Star again

Joc Pederson’s pregame routine began like any other on the day he became the unwitting protagonist in baseball’s most viral story of the season.

“Hey Harvey, want to go for a walk?,” the Giants All-Star outfielder asked.

Fresh off a flight to rejoin the team in Cincinnati after watching his childhood favorite Warriors win the Western Conference title the night before, the Palo Alto native sought out the Giants staff member with whom he shares possibly a closer bond than anyone in the clubhouse and embarked on the activity they do before almost every game.

They took off their shoes. They headed to the outfield. And they walked.

Reds outfielder Tommy Pham cut Pederson’s routine short that day with a slap over a fantasy football feud. But not even physical assault could interrupt his state of mindfulness. Pederson walked away without retaliating and later said, “I don’t think violence is the answer.”

These pregame barefoot walks with mental skills coach Harvey Martin, Pederson said, help him “regulate your breathing … to be able to work your way through uncomfortable feelings.”

As manager Gabe Kapler remarked recently, “how he’s handled some challenging situations this year, he’s just shown really good leadership qualities.”

It’s been seven years since Pederson was last an All-Star, when he was a rookie sensation roaming the same outfield he will this Tuesday, at Dodger Stadium, where he’ll start for the National League. He’s had two children — with a third on the way — and changed teams three times.

Before managing him this season, Kapler first met Pederson as a rookie — not long before that 2015 All-Star appearance — when he was the Dodgers’ farm director and Pederson one of the club’s top prospects, a few years removed from his legendary batting practice sessions at Palo Alto High School.

“He’s grown up as a man a lot,” Kapler said of Pederson, who turned 30 shortly after Opening Day. “I think he’s more comfortable in his own skin than I’ve ever seen him.”

• • •

Few professions feature a more demanding travel schedule than being a big-league ballplayer. The flights are chartered but continuous. Every few days for six months straight.

It’s not a good field to have anxiety over air travel. Pederson knows this because he’s battled it throughout his career. His hands tingled. His heart raced. Negative thoughts would enter his head.

“It’s just like, how do you cope with that or stop that?” Pederson wondered.

It’s what caused him, sometime in 2020, to open up Instagram and search for remedies.

A few years earlier, Pederson’s life changed when he first discovered methods to cultivate his mental state. Stuff like exposure to extreme temperatures that artificially raises stress levels. He was watching the Gwyneth Paltrow series “Goop” and was introduced to the Dutch speaker and athlete Wim Hof.

“Just understanding that these feelings are uncomfortable but they’re not dangerous and you’ll get past them,” Pederson said. “Just being aware of how to handle that is a huge tool.”

This opened his mind to other unconventional techniques for mindfulness.

And, it so happened, Martin was being introduced to the same methodologies on his own, halfway across the country, around the same time.

Martin’s profile popped up in Pederson’s Instagram search, and the two connected. A few months later, Giants hitting coach Justin Viele introduced Martin to Kapler, and Martin joined the Giants on a part-time basis. When Pederson signed on this offseason, Martin became a full-time traveling member who shares a clubhouse with the players.

On the team plane, Pederson is a “riot,” according to one source. He organizes poker games and occasionally rips off his clothes when the cabin gets too hot. As a veteran, Pederson has a reserved seat at the front. And, right next to him: one for Martin.

• • •

Those pregame strolls with their toes in the grass have a name: grounding.

“It’s an actual thing,” Martin explained. “It’s twofold. There’s a health aspect of it – decrease inflammation, lower respiratory rate, create mindfulness – and there’s a physical side to it: you become more mobile, you get your feet out of the cleat.”

There was a time when it was Martin by himself in the outfield. Last season, Logan Webb was among the first Giants players to buy in to the breathing techniques he introduced and now says he doesn’t go a week without them. But since Pederson began to join Martin on his daily walks, they’re often accompanied by a crowd of teammates.

Webb, Alex Wood, Alex Cobb, Darin Ruf and John Brebbia have all at times joined Pederson and Martin.

“We talk about ball and other things,” Ruf said. “But Harvey always tries to work in a lesson. … He used the metaphor of a river, a big river and a small river, how you want to be in the river because that’s, like, your flow state. The bigger your river is from doing stuff like the cold tub, learning how to breathe, you can be in your flow state longer, as opposed to an anxious state or a stressed state.”

For Pederson and his proclivity for big moments between the lines, that anxiety shows up off the field, in situations such as flying, medical procedures (“Don’t like that”) and giving blood (“Not a big fan”). It’s something he shares in common with Martin, who suffered from such debilitating anxiety that it ended his professional playing career after three years in the Brewers’ minor-league system.

Yet, after all of his most memorable moments this season — his three-homer game, the altercation with Pham, his return to Atlanta, the All-Star nod — Pederson has cited his ability to stay “unemotional” through it all as the foundation of his success.

“I think it’s all connected,” Pederson said. “You perform your best when you’re in a good mental state and you have peace and calmness. … I think it’s a very useful tool just in daily life, let alone sports.”

• • •

By most measures, Pederson is putting together his best season since 2019. His .848 OPS and 34-homer pace would both go down as “bests since.” His wRC+ of 135 would be the best of his career, 35 percent better than the league-average hitter.

But in the context of All-Star starters, those marks are unremarkable. His 266 plate appearances aren’t enough to qualify for the batting title, and that wRC+ ranks 33rd among players who have batted as many times as Pederson.

Pederson earned the second All-Star selection of his career because he is a fan favorite, beloved by fan bases of multiple teams (the Giants, his hometown team for whom he plays now; the Braves, whom he helped win a World Series last season; anyone who took his side when Pham decided to settle a fantasy football dispute with his right hand).

He is known and loved for the ebullient persona that leads a man to wear a pearl necklace on the baseball diamond, who dyes his hair blond and styles it into a curly faux hawk. That is who he is to teammates, too, who fawn over his clubhouse presence.

“He’s just a vibe,” said reliever Dominic Leone.

“He’s such a good dude. Such a good teammate,” said catcher Curt Casali, who has the honor of owning the worst-feeling bats in the dugout, which Pederson uses to break out of a funk. “He just keeps it loose, but he’s really smart, too.”

Attempting to quantify leadership or clubhouse presence can be a fraught exercise, except in the case of Pederson. He has won World Series titles in two cities and never missed the postseason.

“For whatever reason, you get guys like that in the clubhouse and they kind of have this ability to spur guys along and just bring this culture of belief in,” said third baseman Evan Longoria, a 15-year veteran. “I think that’s what he does really well. Every day he believes we’re going to win. He believes that he’s going to do something to contribute to the win. … And he’s funny as hell.”

The smell of smoke from Pederson’s celebratory cigars often emanates after wins.

In the training room, Pederson will slap his shirtless belly and shoot finger guns at teammates.

“My favorite thing,” first baseman Brandon Belt said. “For us, it’s really a great experience and lifts my spirits. … He’s actually in better shape than people realize.”

Pederson’s affable nature and dugout antics date back to Palo Alto High, when coach Erick Raich would make him run laps for disrupting practice. “I loved his personality,” Raich said.

The first step in harnessing that energy was controlling his attention deficit disorder. Pederson has taken medication for ADD since his early teenage years. Only more recently has he incorporated the mindfulness methods that help him exude stoicism under the spotlight.

Early on this season, Kapler was asked what surprised him most about Pederson. After all, it had been years since he last worked with Pederson in Los Angeles, and Kapler had become familiar with his reputation as a goofball.

“I wasn’t sure he was going to be this calm and cool in the dugout,” Kapler said. “Obviously he has a lot of flair on the field but in the dugout, so calm. I think we all really appreciate that.”