He helps athletes keep their heads on straight

When it comes to playing games, most of us are head cases. We think too much. We tighten up. Sometimes we choke.

Which explains why John Meyer has such a compelling job. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Meyer began incorporating sports psychology into his practice a dozen years ago.

His most prominent client is the Sacramento River Cats, the Triple-A baseball team.

Seated on the patio of an Alhambra Boulevard coffee shop, Meyer talked about everything from what makes a winner to what makes the Kings' Ron Artest tick. He seemed unfazed, most of the time, by the constant shouting of a little boy at the next table.

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UCLA legend: "I was playing high school basketball during John Wooden's era. I went to his summer camps. He was very kind, but somehow you feared him in the appropriate way. I remember his favorite saying was goodness gracious sakes alive when you made a bad play."

Just relax: "The imaging – the athletes pretending they're in a meadow so they can relax – I don't think it works."

Confidence: "Those platitudes – remember you're a great hitter or a great basketball player – it's rare that it works. What a sports psychologist really does is look into those things that may be the barriers to that person's confidence, rather than pumping them up or patting them on the back."

Pressure: "The nature of sports, even for weekend warriors, is that it's an anxiety-provoking experience. Anxiety tends to regress us. So we'll slide back to some previous version of ourselves, the nerdy kid, the kid who got stuck out in right field, and so on."

Choking: (After a pause, punctuated by more shouting by the boy) "What was I going to say about that? I lost my train of thought."

Tiger Woods: "His capacity to recover from a bad shot, to free his mind, is extraordinary."

Kings season tickets: "I've been a basketball nut for years."

Another basketball nut: "I actually have a kind of empathy for Ron Artest. There's something about him where he'll defeat himself, as if he's tone-deaf, where he doesn't hear the feedback he gets from the public at large. He's probably a good guy who is very, very tough to reach by coaches."

Psychology at play: "It's largely subconscious. It's almost as if our history haunts us even if it has been 30 years since we dropped that fly ball."

River Cats: "I started working with them when they arrived in 2000."

Therapy on the sly: "There's still a stigma – if you're talking to the shrink, you're weak, you can't cut it. Particularly at the Triple-A level, they're so scrutinized. They don't want anything to look like they can't hack it."

His sport: A 6-foot-4 Division III basketball player at Gettysburg College, he keeps fit by cycling.

Coaches who yell: "Excluding the coach who is demeaning, I responded well to coaches like that."

Kids and competing: "The kind of politically correct thing where we don't want any hurt feelings is an unfortunate misnomer. Competition can be a healthy way to discharge or sublimate aggression. I think it's gotten a bad rap."

Real-world preparation: "We have to learn how to deal with frustration in our lives, we have to deal with asserting ourselves, and this is not a bad place to learn it."

Newshound: "I trained my dog to bring in the newspaper. The neighbors probably thought it was odd at first – I was standing out there in my boxers."

Two daughters: "They're both in college. They may follow in dad's footsteps."

Late-blooming guitarist: "It was on that list of things I wanted to accomplish. When my kids were young and my life got smaller and I wanted to be home, after they went to bed, I would pick up the guitar and play."

Playlist: "Beatles and folk songs."

Home entertainment: "I play every Sunday night with a group of friends. We've been doing that for 10 years. We're strictly living room players. No public appearances so far."

Riding a bike: "It just feels like a way of staying well, not just physically but mentally. I wish I could still play competitive sports, but I've torn up both ACLs (anterior cruciate ligaments, critical to the stability of the knee joint). There is enough in riding the bike that satisfies."

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