Mind Gym

THE MIRROR TEST

When the game is over I just want to look at myself in the mirror, win or lose, and know I gave it everything I had.

—JOE MONTANA

The softest pillow is a clear conscience.

—JOHN WOODEN

At age nineteen the pride of Commerce, Oklahoma, A arrived in the big city wearing a Sears Roebuck suit and carrying a cardboard suitcase. He was The Natural in the flesh. He could do it all and he did. He beat out drag bunts. He snagged Gil Hodges’s deep drive to left centerfield to save Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He hit a ball 565 feet. He became the greatest switch-hitter in the history of baseball. He was number seven of the Yankees—an American icon and my boyhood hero.

Growing up in New York, I called him Mickey, as ...