Throughout my life, I have always been looking forward to holidays. Not because I want to spend time with friends and family. They're great and all, but my main reason for liking holidays has been mostly due to me wanting a day off from school or work. That’s all I cared about, a free day off. One of my favorite things to do during the holidays while my family makes small talk with each other, is to watch whatever sports are on television at the time. Currently with the Fourth of July coming up, I will be watching baseball.

Over the last few years, however, I can’t help but wonder how athletes feel about these games. As much as I like getting to stay home and relax instead of working, I figure there are athletes with the same mindset. Sure, they are playing a game they love for more money than I will ever see (until I win the lottery), but they must get tired of it at least a little bit. Between practices, workouts and games, there isn’t as much free time as you would think, especially in baseball where you play just about every day. All I can do is speculate this, however, because my searching through the internet has yielded little results. So most of this is my assumption. Wouldn’t you be upset to be working on a holiday?

These athletes don’t get to spend time with their families during the holidays. Some of them do, but there are some teams that just never get a break. For instance, if you are a member of the Detroit Lions or Dallas Cowboys, you better not make any plans for Thanksgiving, because you will be playing a football game. It’s become a tradition that those two teams, as well as four other random teams, play a game on Thanksgiving. That’s got to suck. As much as I want to believe some players don’t mind playing these games, I assume the majority of players are a little bitter about it. Imagine if you worked a full-time job and your boss said, “Hey, don’t make any plans for Christmas this year, because we're open.”

For some people, that is a reality, though. There are certain businesses that just can’t close no matter what. That being said, a football game can definitely be left off of TV for Thanksgiving. The problem is that now sports on holidays have become such a big tradition that I don’t know if it can be pulled. People look forward to the Thanksgiving football game more than they look forward to actual Thanksgiving. Baseball on the Fourth of July isn’t quite Thanksgiving football, but you can bet there will be a group of people watching it and avoiding conversation with people at the parties. And as much as we are grateful to have something to watch on the holidays, I’m sure the athletes playing in those games wish they were at home with their own families.