I also play baseball too…but that could soon change Wednesday, Jun 7 2006
Sports Talk 3:56 pm
I’m in quite a few pools this year:
- My standard rotisserie pool “Sandlot”
- A Beat the Streak pool - pick an MLB player each night hoping he gets a hit. Beat the magic 56 and win a cool 100 g’s. (not as easy as I thought it sounded)
- An elimination pool
I’m not just an observer. I also play baseball as I’ve eluded to in previous entries. The NCR league has started up again and the Sybae Sluggers are defending champs. So far we’ve beaten the teams we’re supposed to beat. But we have lost a couple games to teams that we just simply cannot seem to beat — and for no good reason. One team is the Manulife Mudhens. They are a bunch of no-good beatniks but they seem to step up and feed us a good helping of whoop-ass each time we play them. It’s the classic case of that one team that has your number. The other loss came last Monday to the Flyers - perennial top place finishers who usually end up with 1 or 2 losses a season at the most? How do they do it? They’re experienced. More so than us. And it shows. We were winning and in good position to take the game. Instead of them succumbing to pressure, they stepped it up while we crumbled like a pack of saltine crackers. The end result was an inevitable loss.
Typically we are a confident, optimistic bunch. That is how we won last year. That is how we won 3 seasons ago. But Monday brought out the worst in this team. We’ve made mistakes in the past. This game was not any particular anomoly in terms of number of errors made. It was how we dealt with them. A good baseball club does not lay blame, does not add undue pressure to themselves when mistakes are made. They are dealt optimistically during the game and then practiced and re-hashed afterwards. It was an embarrassment and a disgrace to watch the fingers being pointed and the under-the-breath utterances made when balls were hit to certain positions during the game in expectation of errors occurring. This reminds me of the bad old days when we were striving to break through but just couldn’t quite make it.
That approach didn’t work. That’s why we lost. When we re-structured and changed our attitudes, we starting winning championships. Last Monday was a step in the wrong direction. The team needs to change its attitude sooner than later or it will once again lose players that have been around through the good and bad and the team will fail.
Remember this: the season is for fun. The playoffs are for winning. Stay fun and the wins will take care of themselves throughout the summer. I never again want to hear that it would be more ideal if we keep the number of girls to a minimum for certain games. Every player on the team has a right to play any game. Period.
Anyone up for some golf? I soon could very well have more dates open that need to be filled.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
But this is the A team, right? See, I never got the feeling the A team was for fun (not to be confused with the A-Team, who always had fun. And a plan that came together). And whether it’s number of girls or caliber of players, the separation of the A team made it about winning.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:44 am
This is a big reason why I never felt very committed to the Sybase team, and ultimately decided not to play with them at all (that and moving an hour away). It just wasn’t fun playing with the negative attitudes.
It is very strange how people who are genuinely nice, good people who off the field turn into people I would like to sucker punch when playing softball with them. To some extent, I am guilty of the same thing - I can be a real bastard when I play sports. I think this is facilitated by the people you play with though. The teams I play with now seem to have a much better attitude and an ability to laugh at themselves when not playing up to our potential.
And they drink a LOT more beer post games than any sissy-assed corporate team ever could
June 8th, 2006 at 9:20 am
The A-Team is about winning (and running from the law). Biff nailed it on the head though. You need to laugh it off when you have a bad game. Everyone on the team has proven their capability to win. And the formula that has facilitated it was to enjoy the game and the wins will take care of themselves. I forgot to memtion a key point: Each person is required to play a specific number of games (I think 12 which is 1/2 the season) to be eligible for playing in the playoffs. In the past we’ve been burned because we chose to carry the minimum # of girls through the season only to experience injury or simply have the team tire out. This year we are pleased to have 5 girls who need to play and we want to play in order to be fresh for the playoffs. Therefore, we are going to need to field more than 3 a game. If it’s against the top team, then it’s against the top team. Gotta play when they can because vacations are coming up.
Regardless, a competitive team, even in the majors, are going to play people throughout the season when possible because it’s a long season and they need playing time to be sharp later on.
I firmly believe the approach that we have fun first and win second is actually the best way to generate wins.
June 8th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Biff, you’ll laugh to hear that we have yet to get together for beerfund after any game so far this year….and there have been some damn fine evenings we could have taken advantage of. Granted, I wouldn’t have been able to go to about 1/2 of them but I have yet to be even tempted.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Just a side note…the team generally does have fun and gets along well with each other and the other team we are playing. We’ve been playing these teams for several years now. It just seems to be a couple of teams that generate some not so fun moments. Mike hit it; we always do better when we are having fun which is why we came out on top again last year at the tournament. Pressure brings mistakes, arguements, and negative attitude. So does the other team changing the rules to benefit themselves, but we can’t control what the other team does so we need to focus on ourselves.
As for beer fund…once there is babysitter, there will be beer fund!
June 8th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Just to give you an idea of the benefits of post game beers, this year we bought $1000 worth of new bats based on beer fund profits from last year.
August 24th, 2006 at 10:41 am
[…] Since the debacle that I wrote about on June 7th, things have markedly improved. After discussing with the team the negativity that was abounding, an assertive effort has been made to be eliminate criticism during play and only offer shouts of encouragement. In addition, the team has a mandate to do a lot more cheering from the bench and on the field. This sort of chatter has proven to be beneficial in elevating motivation. […]