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Angels, Athletes Unlimited, baseball, basketball, college, Dodgers, football, Gymnastics, Major League Baseball, MLB, professional sports, salary, scholarship, softball, sports, UCLA, USC, Women's Professional Fastpitch
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AND WHY THEY ARE CONSEQUENTLY THE MOST DIFFICULT, WHICH IS A PERTINENT REASON WHY IN MY OPINION THEY ARE THE BEST SPORTS
BEFORE I START…
I should clarify that when I say softball, I mean fast pitch softball and not the pick-up kind that I play on Saturdays…
The reason why baseball and (fast pitch) softball are the most difficult sports in my view is a straight-forward one…
If you’re a wide receiver in football and drop seven out of ten passes thrown at you,
Or a basketball player who misses seven out of ten shots, particularly from the free throw line,
Or a gymnast who falls off the uneven parallel bars or the balance beam seven out of ten times,
You would universally be seen as a pretty bad football or basketball player or a gymnast.
And you would not be playing those sports for long as even Shaquille O’Neal, who was notoriously bad at making free throws, made over half of his charity shots – 52% – in his career.
However…
If you’re a fast pitch softball player who only succeeds at hitting the ball three or four out of the ten times you’re at the plate,
You’re getting a full ride division one college softball scholarship to UCLA or some other elite program.
And you will most likely get to play professionally in leagues like Women’s Professional Fastpitch or Athletes Unlimited, or overseas as Japan has a well-established pro softball league,
Meaning that you can fail to get a base hit six or seven out of ten times and be considered a studly star.
Meanwhile,
If you’re a baseball player who fails to hit the ball safely seven out of ten times at bat,
If you strike out, pop up, or hit a weak ground ball that a five-year old in a T-Ball league can make a play on 70% of the time,
The Dodgers and Angels, plus any of the other 28 franchises in Major League Baseball, will be paying you…
- A minimum wage of $740,000 a year
- An average wage of $4.5 million a year
and more likely,
- A yearly salary of anywhere between $20 million and $50 million
Putting it another way…
Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average of .366 is the highest in Major League Baseball history,
Meaning that he failed to hit the ball safely – struck out, popped out, and grounded out – six and a half out of ten times during his career.
And he was the very first player to get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ted Williams’ .406 average in 1941 – meaning that he failed at the plate over half the time – was the last time any Major League player has hit so well;
It hasn’t been repeated in 83 years, and counting, with the San Diego Padres’ Tony Gwynn coming the closest with his .394 average in 1994.
And countless people, me included, see Williams as a genius in hitting.
I hope all of this illustrates why I see baseball and fast pitch softball as the most challenging and downright hardest sports to master.
Which is a significant reason why they are my favorite sports and – in my view,
The best sports around.
Just something to think about as the Major League Baseball season has officially started.
OH, BY THE WAY…
I’m fully aware that as I type this, the women’s basketball team at USC has their biggest game in nearly forty years tonight as they play the ultimate elite power and eleven-time national champion Connecticut for the right to go to their first Final Four since 1986.
If those Trojans do win the national championship, I’ll write a congratulatory post for them on this blog.
I’ll have an update on how things are going for So Cal’s winter sports teams – the Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Ducks – as well as something on So Cal’s soccer teams as the Galaxy, LAFC and Angel City FC have started their seasons,
Soon.
So be sure to watch for those posts!
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