I love this post.
Total professionalism is more satisfying still, though, than scrambling for scraps.
I love this team.
That post loves you back. It told me so.
Preparation is always going to play into it and the greater your preparation the more situations you're ready to handle with confidence.
You know, it strikes me that the heart of this game is two of the most difficult things in sports. Executing on one pitch is hard. Getting it all right--the velocity, the location, the spin, the grip, the delivery, the whole thing, getting it all together is hard. And we ask pitchers to do it a hundred times a night.
And we ask hitters to identify the type of pitch, location of pitch, and decide whether, where, and how hard to swing and give them maybe a third of a second to do it.
Every now and then you see good hitters hit good pitches, but so much of this game is built on mistakes. Pitcher hangs a curve, you hammer it. Batter misidentifies a pitch, he screws himself into the ground. Add up all the mistakes and you get a score. Add up all the scores, you get a champion.
This game is fucked. Aint it great?