Sports and life often go hand in hand and sports is always a good way to learn some important life lessons. I have learned many of those life lessons in my thirty-seven plus years on this earth. For instance I have all the compassion in the world for Matt Harrison right now since I just finished having surgery on my lower back for some issues that included a pinched nerve. But one of the main things I have learned in many conversations I have had and articles I have read is that baseball people, the ones of us who look forward to sitting down day in and day out and watching the game, are different than most sports fans. We tend to be numbers people, we tend not to get too excited at the little high and lows that come with everyday life, and we tend to be matter of fact about most things.
Since baseball is more of a grind than any other sport out there, if you are not in love with the numbers and the day to day ebb and flow, you will most likely get bored at some point during a baseball season. Baseball is more of a commitment than a hobby, just ask my wife. If you are a hardcore football fan, then you know that you have a week to discuss what went wrong in the last game that your team played, which player messed up the most, you can even put out polls asking about a specific game. Talk show hosts and bloggers can break down every aspect of the game until you are sick of hearing about it. And football fans love it like that!
In basketball they play many games as well, but only half as many and it is a different feel. Basketball is a very high
paced game with scoring opportunities almost every trip down the court for each team. Fans stay engaged the entire game because something exciting is happening for the entire time. One player can turn a franchise around in basketball, and college players can be ready to play as soon as they are drafted in many cases. There is not a lot of waiting around for basketball fans.
Hockey is a little closer to baseball because it is also a grind and a low scoring game overall and it is also a grind. But in the South, hockey has never been near as popular as it is in the North and if you have not followed it your whole life it can be hard to keep up with. Even the year that the Dallas Stars won it all DFW as a whole was not that interested long term. Hockey is more about big hits and working together as a unit than it is about crunching numbers and calculations OPS.
No, I have learned over the last decade or so that I have been into baseball hardcore the type of people I get along with. We enjoy the laid back attitude our sport brings to us and we enjoy the calming effect that a game every night brings to us. I love consistency, and that is why I never know what to do with myself during the baseball off-season. My routine is completely thrown off. Now please don’t think I am baking us all in one big pie here, not all baseball fans are just like me. And not all fans of other sports are exactly like I described above. I am just stating, that in my experience, we tend to be stressed during a regular season game than a football or basketball fan might be. Now when it comes to the post season, all bets are off! We become a messed up head case during those time!
So why did I bring all this up to you this morning? Simply to say, I am not concerned about the Rangers losing two of the last three games. Yu had a very bad inning against the Mariners in the first, but settled down and gave up no more runs after that. The Rangers beat King Felix the day before behind Justin Grimm, so these things seem to work themselves out. They have a mother shot at the Mariners tonight as well. Long losing streaks are concerning, and long winning streaks are exciting, the rest is my favorite part though. In between a long winning streak and a long losing streak? That is what I call baseball and that is what I love. Enjoy tonight’s game.
