Motivational speaker amazes Yankees
Yankees right fielder Nick Swisher during practice at Spring Training. (March 1, 2012) Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams, Jr.
TAMPA, Fla. -- Nick Swisher had seen Donnie Moore's act before but was no less impressed than most of his teammates seeing it for the first time.
"Amazing," Swisher said.
That was the operative word around the Yankees' clubhouse Wednesday morning after watching a demonstration by Moore, a motivational speaker who also serves as the A's team chaplain.
Among the show of strength Moore, whom Swisher got to know in his time with the A's (2004-07), exhibited was tearing two phone books in half and snapping three bats over his leg by pushing them onto the leg, not driving them down like an angry player after a strikeout.
"That guy was amazing," said Robinson Cano, also marveling at Moore ripping a soda can in half.
The show-stopping number, however, appeared to be when Moore, in Joe Girardi's words, "rolled a frying pan like a burrito."
Cano said players looked at each other beforehand saying, "Are you serious?"
The guests Girardi has speak to the team each spring -- he's had Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and former Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson speak in the past -- are brought in by Chad Bohling, the team's director of mental conditioning.
"If each guy takes one little thing of what he says, I think it's a success," Girardi said. "Sometimes during the course of the year you want a different voice and I think it's good."
Cano said the message he took from Wednesday's performance was the power of the mind.
"If you think you can do it," he said, "you can do it."
