Dodgers backup catcher Gary Bennett said he has been seeing a sports psychologist to help solve his problem of not throwing the ball back to the catcher correctly.

"I would have to say it's mental," Bennett said. "I don't know how to explain it."

Bennett said that when the problem first arose last season with St. Louis, some throws would feel funny and then he would be forced to think about others. This year, he said the problem arrived almost at the start of spring training and has been fairly significant and he has been working with various people to help correct the problem, though he has not talked with other catchers about it.

Bennett has even been working on the problem in the bullpen, trying different throws to get rid of the mental block but so far, nothing has made him snap out of it.

Instead of throwing the ball with any force back to the mound, Bennett's throws are almost soft lobs, like he was throwing to a small child in a backyard and did not want to risk hurting the child.

Manager Joe Torre has said that other catchers have gone through this problem before and it was even parodied in the movie Major League II, in which catcher Rube Baker could not accurately throw back to the mound unless he was reciting descriptions from a lingerie catalog.

"There is nothing I can pinpoint," Bennett said. "It's very odd and very frustrating. It's just a weird thing."

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