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Dorfman’s wife of thirty-one years, a schoolteacher who’d grown used to and welcomed these visits from shy, awkward athletes, lived in a house at the top of a hill on a secluded cul-de-sac. He and Moyer would do multiple two-hour sessions in Dorfman’s study each day, go for long walks in the Arizona hills, and have breakfasts of oatmeal and bagels with Anita. Dorfman didn’t usually work with players who weren’t in the A’s system, but this was a favor to Moyer’s agent, Jim Bronner. The kid was nearly thirty and had a losing record. There was a lot of work to be done.
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    At least there’s no couch , Moyer thought, entering Dorfman’s study. Dorfman settled in behind a big oak desk, in front of a bookcase that housed many of the inspirational quotes and anecdotes that Dorfman would pepper his life lessons with. Moyer would hear those gems over the next twenty-odd years; they’d seep into his consciousness much like Harvey himself, everything from Cromwell’s “The man who doesn’t know where he’s going goes the fastest” to Marcus Aurelius’s “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
    Moyer didn’t know what was in those books, and he didn’t know what to think. He was about to pick up the conversation where he’d broken it off in the car—with a recitation of all that he was doing wrong—when Dorfman lurched forward.
    â€œThere are a couple of things you need to know, kid,” Dorfman said. “First, this doesn’t work if you’re not honest with me. I don’t have time for you if you’re not going to level with me. And second, none of this goes back to your agent or your club or the media. This is just you and me.”
    Just you and me . The words washed over Moyer. The mound, once a calm escape, had become frightening in its solitariness. On it, he was keenly aware of them : the fans, the manager, the teammates. He’d hear them, or he’d imagine what they were thinking about him. When a fan heckled him for his lack of speed, he’d carry on an angry pretend dialogue in his head: You think this is easy? When runners got on, he’d wonder what his teammates were thinking, he’d decipher the body language of his catcher—was he against me now too? He sensed—or invented—collective doubt all around him, and it led him to wonder, Do I belong? But now here was someone who actually wore a major league uniform saying he was there with him.
    Moyer returned to his narrative, cataloging all that he can’t do on the mound. Can’t get ahead of hitters. Can’t throw the changeup, once his money pitch. Can’t stop furtively glancing into the dugout to see if the skipper is on the phone to the pen. He talked about how the middle twelve inches of the seventeen-inch plate belong to the hitter, but how the umps rarely consistently gave him what he believed to be rightfully his: the outer inches on either side. Finally, Dorfman, who’d been listening with his eyes locked on Moyer’s, had heard enough.
    â€œBullshit.”
    Pause. “Excuse me?”
    â€œBullshit. You have control over that. Over all of it.”
    â€œI do? How?”
    â€œBy changing your thought process. You gain control over all of it by acknowledging that you have no control over any of it, the umpire, or the manager, or what other people think, and by taking responsibility for what you can control.”
    Moyer wasn’t getting it. “Are you aware of how you talk about yourself?” Dorfman asked. “It’s all negative. ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ I’ve seen your act, kid, and you need to get better. You need to change your thinking. Your process needs to be positive . You have to train yourself to hear a