Troy Percival reflects on his early days as a rookie setup man in the Angels organization and how witnessing Lee Smith's response to failure significantly influenced his career. After a difficult game where Smith gave up a grand slam, Percival expected an emotional reaction. Instead, Smith maintained composure, teaching Percival the importance of resilience in professional baseball. Percival later succeeded Smith as the Angels' closer, attributing much of his success to the lessons he learned from Smith, similar to the hope for Kenley Jansen to mentor younger talent like Ben Joyce today.
He came in, and I'm thinking, 'Oh God, here we go,' Percival, now 56, said in a phone interview. "Lee sat down, took a deep breath and said, 'Give me a beer, boy,' and within a few minutes, he was back to his normal self."
I began to realize that if you want to have a long career, you have to be ready to deal with failure. Just watching his reaction to failure, even if he never said a word, was huge.
Percival credits the 'immeasurable' lessons he learned from Smith as a factor in his success.
Three decades later the Angels hope a similar dynamic will play out with Kenley Jansen, the 37-year-old closer who signed a one-year, $10-million deal on the eve of spring training, serving as mentor to 24-year-old right-hander Ben Joyce.
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