My Facebook Thoughts

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

This Way To Your Table

For those of you who regularly read my blog you know I am a sports fan. I am a fan of baseball and football first and foremost. There were a couple of quotes related to those sports that I would like to comment on.

Baseball first.
With his Boston Red Sox down 3-1, one loss away from the World Series, Manny Ramirez was quoted saying,

"who cares?" if the Red Sox don't get to the World Series. "It's not like it's the end of the world."

I will preface(you know I mean business when I say preface) my comments by saying Manny Ramirez is one of the best hitters ever to play major league baseball. And yes the sun would have risen had the Red Sox not won their place in the World Series. But to say, "who cares ?", is a slap in the face to every kid and adult who have played the game.

Right or wrong, fans live and die by their sports teams. Only 50 out of 300 million people get to play in a World Series each year. So it should be considered an honor to play in one. Boston, alone, had an attendance of
2.9 million people pay to watch them play in person this season. And as any fan knows, going to see a baseball game is not cheap. Who cares? Lot of people that's who.

Football is next.
My Chicago Bears are not having the season many predicted they would have. Some have blamed it on something called the Super Bowl hangover. Tommie Harris, Bears defensive lineman, said that maybe they lost their hunger just being in the Super Bowl last season.

Excuse me?

How do you lose your hunger by losing the big game? That's like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and having a bowl of soup. If anything they should be more hungry. The winners of the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis Colts, still seem hungry as they are 6-0.

As a fan I live vicariously through my sports figures. I believe had I not been disabled I would have played football and baseball. It hurts to see talented athletes waste or not appreciate the talents God has given them. I wonder if any of those athletes live vicariously through bloggers?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You missed the rest of his comment, "losing the Super Bowl in a sense demoralizes you and you feel like you're not that good but winning gives the feeling of this our trophy and were not giving it up."
Don't start spinning stories like Moronatti.

Mark Ploch said...

I did not see that part of the quote. Still, what the hell are you doing in competition at its highest level if you can't handle losing?
To draw on the famous '85 Bears team. It was their loss in '84 NFC Championship that made them the hungriest team ever.
To paraphrase Hawk. Show me a team that's afraid to lose, and I'll show you a losing team.

Anonymous said...

In 84 that was not the Super Bowl that was different.
Imagine you fight to climb Mt. Everest but don't make the top you more than likely won't want to try again.
Other than Buffalo four times in a row, super Bowl losers don't return the next year. They're still humans.
Like when I destroyed in our 84 or 85 baseball season, you never came back.

Mark Ploch said...

I think your memory is slightly faded. I was the dominant force in baseball every year.

Still, athletes that run away from failure will never win.

While they may be human, they are wired to compete. As were we. From Tiddly Winks to the Stockmarket game(MTP Enterprises) we never wanted to lose.

Anonymous said...

Apparently you have forgotten as I have the magazine articles I wrote.
We had to compete because that was our nature and we did make the millions these guys do.
Also, the Bears as a whole thought going back was a given.
The 84 Bears were not like today's prima donnas, until they won the big one.

Mark Ploch said...

I would beg to differ.