I got to thinking about some basic differences in the two games for the players. Baseball players play so many games it’s impossible to get emotionally high for any one of them. Football players get all gung-ho in the locker room. . . . If a baseball player got that emotional, he’d go out swinging hard–and miss. I think baseball is more of a skill sport than any other. Hitting is the single most difficult feat in sports. Second most difficult is preventing hitting.
~Jim Bouton, Ball Four
I might argue that riding a bull is more difficult. After all, you’re a success if you stay on 8 seconds.
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Touché. I doubt that Bouton thought of it at the time, but if he had, I feel like he would agree with you.
It’s hard to disagree with someone who played the game, but I will anyways.. It seems to me that most managers have no tolerance for players who aren’t gung ho and who don’t give 110 per cent in every game. Hunter Pence rallying Giant players in the dugout before the game is one of many rah rah rah examples. It’s maybe more subtle, but the same enthusiasm as football seems there in baseball. Maybe it’s better to treat the season like a marathon and most players maybe say they do, but day in and day out, I see some long faces and psychological misery and plenty of batting helmets falling off heads after huge swings.
That’s true, I’ve seen that as well. I think they have to learn to compartmentalize, more than anything. Football players have a week between games, but in baseball, you’re playing every day. Perhaps a better way to say it is that players have to control the gung-ho attitude and not let it have long-term detrimental effects.
You’re right. Its truly something, the 162 game grind even for us fans and our consecutive game streaks stretching into seasons and entire lifetimes loyal to our respective teams.