I have been playing baseball since I was three years old. I love the sport because of how difficult it is to be good at it. Sometimes I feel like people overlook baseball and say it is an easy sport, or I have even heard comments like, “It doesn’t take any skill to play baseball.” That's not true, and it is a very difficult sport to play and succeed in.
In my opinion, seven out of 10 times, the player fails when they're at bat. Baseball is a game of failure. Knowing this, imagine how hard it is to succeed in a game of failure. In order to play, you have to have a strong mind, because the head is the worst enemy in baseball.
You have a bat that is 2 5/8" in diameter and have to hit a round ball, not to mention the pitcher is trying to get you out. It is easy to hit a fastball sometimes, but the hardest part is trying to guess what pitch is coming, whether it be a fastball, curveball, slider, changeup, or something else.
Alex Rodriguez is known as one of the best guess hitters of all time, even though he strikes out a lot. Baseball is literally a "hit or miss" type of sport. Point being, the difficulty in baseball far surpasses the difficulty in any other sport. And baseball is so underrated for this.
People think that using a round bat to hit a round ball is easy. Baseball also has so much more of a mental aspect than any other sport. Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical.” Obviously that does not make complete sense, but hey, it is a Yogiism; the point is to keep a strong head and to not get down because you fail. Please give baseball players more credit as athletes.
