Read any baseball site on the Internet nowadays and you come across a dizzying array of statistics. Wins Above Replacement, Exit Velocity, Barrel %, Walk and Strikeout %, BABIP: Batting Average on Balls in Play. Sheesh!
With all those numbers to crunch, I can’t imagine a ballplayer in today’s environment enjoying the game. “Am I swinging right? Hard enough? Taking the right pitches?
When I played Little League (about a year or two), I wasn’t any good. But back then it was, ‘Can you hit the ball?’ And, ‘Can you catch?’ I remember putting on a catcher’s mitt to warm up our best pitcher. Holy cow! He threw some heat. And what a curve! I knew then, if I had to face him, I’d be bailing out of the box before the ball got anywhere close to me. Then it would probably curve over the plate and I’d look darn foolish.
I decided I’d better try another sport.