Staying Focused On the Positives
In times like these, as the world goes through the Bubonic Plague part II, it’s incredibly important to focus on the positives in life. For some, that’s being able to spend more time with family, for others it’s being able to relax and read that book you’ve been meaning to get to for almost a decade or finally cleaning up your apartment/home. Regardless, everyone has their own thing, and for me, it’s baseball. Now, you might be confused considering the MLB season is cancelled (at least as of right now), so let me be clear, that is what I am thankful for.
Now, this is probably not the smartest thing to confess as I am hopefully entering the professional world of sports marketing (please hire me) but if this is the blog that makes me impossible to hire compared to all my other ones, then oh well. If you thought this was going to be my first blog full of unbridled positivity, you’re absolutely wrong, it’s another mostly sarcastic rant.
Anyways, one might say that I’m not a fan of baseball, and they would be correct. I don’t know what it is, I guess it’s just something about watching a grown man scratch his balls for 15 seconds before hurling a ball at a guy with, at best, a like 33% chance to hit it isn’t really my thing. I think it’s somewhat of a side effect of being a soccer guy because it seems like most soccer fans feel the same way, but I also think it’s a family thing.
Once, my parents got me and my siblings tickets to a Washington Nationals game while we were in DC. We made it 3 innings before we, as a collective, decided that watching the 7 randos in the upper deck covered in concession stand sauce while 12 beers deep trying to start the wave for the seventeenth time in 6 hours because that’s how long it takes to get through an inning and a half wasn’t our thing.
Don’t get me wrong, the 7 people in the upper deck trying to start the wave are my absolute favorite people on earth and possibly the only positive to baseball, but we just couldn’t do it that day.
Now, for some other reasons I dislike baseball.
First, how the hell can a regular season have 162 games. When every game accounts for less than 1% of the total, how the hell am I supposed to be interested or think that there are stakes involved in that game. Not only that, but how the hell can there be 162 games in a season but like half the teams don’t play each other in the season. Does Braves v. Marlins round 37 not get boring??
Next, how the hell do you have one league playing under two sets of rules it’s absolutely nonsensical. I get it, there’s the AL and the NL and they were both their own leagues at some point but the AFL and the NFL merged and they play under the same rule set. The NBA and the ABA merged and guess what, they play under the same damn rules too. It makes absolutely no sense and I just don’t get it, in what world is it better to have one league with different rules.
But wait there’s more! The unwritten rules of baseball, if you don’t know what they are, congrats, you’re on the same page as most of the MLB. First of all, the only one I know is that you’re not supposed to do a big bat flip after you hit a home run. To be clear, If I hit an absolute dinger off a pitcher, you can be damn sure I’m tossing my bat into orbit. The rest of the rules, I don’t understand, but evidently, they don’t include beating drums to understand what pitch is coming so you can cheat and win a World Series. Oh well, that’s baseball.
These are not my only grievances with baseball. Trust me, there are more. But I feel like you kind of get the picture at this point. So, I’m going to wrap it up here. Seriously though, stay focused on the positives in life, whatever they may be for you, as we struggle through these trying times.
