When you are asked to name as many sports as you can what sports come to mind? For me I think of Baseball, Football, Basketball and Soccer. Now as someone who doesn’t play sports you would say that all of the people that play these sports are athletes, correct? Well you would be correct but, the people that play other sports don’t consider baseball players as athletes. They say that baseball is an easy sport and takes no athleticism to play. Which is completely untrue and in this paper I will tell you the reasons why it is not true. A major argument that I have heard is people compare their sport to baseball and they think that their sport is what athletes should be playing. I have also heard that it is a lazy sport and takes no athleticism. I have heard that it is a weak sport because there is no contact. I will tell you why these people are wrong. The biggest reason baseball is an athletic sport is the mental side of the game that it takes. An athlete should be smart and able to overcome any adversity that they encounter.
When people compare their sport to mine I often laugh and say that they don’t know what they are talking about. Football players have made the argument that baseball is a weak sport and is no fun without any contact. This is true to the person that is saying it. For many people they like to hit someone as hard as they can and try and knock them out. To me that doesn’t sound very fun. That’s why I choose not to play football. One of my friends in High School only played football. He would always say to me that baseball is such a weak sport and baseball players are weak and can’t take a hit. As an argument to the contact you must have never seen a base runner slide into a short stop or second basemen while trying to make a play. You may have never seen an outfielder go running after a ball and collide with the wall. You also haven’t seen two fielders going as hard as they can after a ball, running into each other. You must have never seen a play at the plate when a base runner runs over the catcher with a big collision. As baseball players you give everything up to make a play, diving hitting the ground, running into the wall and even sometimes going over the wall into the stands to make a play. Just because we don’t take a brutal beating every play, doesn’t mean that we don’t contact and aren’t athletes. They just need to look at the difference on sports before they voice their opinion.
From basketball and soccer players I have heard that baseball is a lazy sport. Well compared to those sports I would agree that there is less running and conditioning then required in baseball. My friend Nick played both basketball and baseball in High School. He would always say that compared to basketball baseball was such a lazy sport. To me he didn’t really look at what was required for the different sports. Also baseball in High School was a joke. It was no conditioning. Now had he continued to play in College he would have probably changed his mind because as you go on you learn what is required to play at a higher level. What is required is short burst of speed and agility. Having quick feet to get to a ball up the middle. Going in the gap and laying out for a ball that you should have no chance of getting. That is the speed and endurance that is required for baseball. Yeah you stand around and look like you’re not doing anything but in reality you are always on your toes waiting for the ball and reacting. As a pitcher you have running every day. Distance running for starters to build up endurance so that you can keep going and keep throwing during the game. As a reliever you have short sprints, these are used to be explosive and throw for an inning or two and give it all you got. Now yes in appearance baseball does seem like a very lazy sport but when you dig a little deeper and discover what it actually takes in order to be good at baseball you learn that endurance and agility are just as important as basketball and soccer.
One thing that many athletes don’t understand about baseball is that it is a mental game more than a physical game. As you play you learn the mental side of the game. You learn how to be ready for a ball and know what you are going to do before it ever comes to you. As a pitcher you need to learn how to read batters and to know what pitch to throw in which count. Also as you get better you need learn how to process the feeling of what you just did. If your outcome is good you need to log in your brain what you just did and be able to go back to that feeling so that you can re do that same motion and same action over and over again. As a batter, you learn what feels good for you and what works. Being able to do this takes an athlete. Not only is an athlete physically good but they must be mentally good and that’s why baseball players should be considered athletes. They take a mental beating. Every single thing that you do can cause a mental block and overcoming those blocks can be a hard thing to do. When you don’t believe in what you’re doing it takes you to figure out what you need to do to get out of that funk. Being able to get yourself out of that funk takes a serious athlete. Being mentally strong enough to get out of that is what being a baseball player is all about. That’s what makes an athlete, that’s why baseball players should be considered athletes.
For these reasons I think that baseball players need to be considered as athletes. We do things just like other athletes. The only difference is you need to look at it in a different perspective. If you will look at the sport with a broader view and you will learn to respect baseball players as athletes.
