Psychology strikes out: Coleman R. Griffith and the Chicago Cubs

Coleman R. Griffith is widely known as the father of sport psychology in the United States. He directed the Research in Athletics Laboratory at the University of Illinois in the late 1920s and early 1930s and produced many articles and books on the psychology of sport. In 1938, P. K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, hired him to help improve the team's performance. Griffith and an assistant filmed and measured the players' skills, attempting to build a "scientific" training program for the team. Many of Griffith's subjects, most notably the managers, objected to his interference (as they saw it) and attempted to undermine his work. Griffith wrote more than 600 pages of reports on his work with the Cubs between 1938 and 1940. This article examines the content of those reports and the reasons for the failure of Griffith's project.