Youth Sports/Why I'm not so into baseball Part I

I might have finally figured out why I'm not so into baseball anymore...... ice hockey/roller hockey. This is part one, so there's no real point here yet, just background info. Hopefully I wander into something of a thesis in part 2, or part 3 if I can't do it in part 2. We'll see what I vomit onto this screen through my keyboard.

As a kid, baseball was my sport. Sure I played in basketball and soccer leagues, even kept playing in a travel soccer league one year after I stopped playing travel baseball. Remember when playing a sport in a "travel" league made you feel like a big shot? And I sucked at baseball, and I still made the travel team. I couldn't pull the ball at all, but still managed to get on base all the time thanks to good hand eye coordination and poking it to the opposite field. Basically, I bailed out all the time like a bitch but put my bat in the right spot while bailing. Looking back, this makes me feel like less of a man-child and makes me realize that really, I was just a nerd who enjoyed sports. It's like looking back on your family's old house that you remember as being amazing, then just realizing when your mom shows you where you used to live, it was a fucking trailer. And I thought I was an athlete growing up, pussy little m8r bailing out playing baseball. If I was in the stands 11 years ago watching my little self play, I'd be yelling "What're you scared of, the balls coming 43 miles an hour" and "Jesus, don't bail out, they put in the special needs kid to pitch and he's throwing the ball with a claw that's attached to his crutch!"

But I digress

All those sports ceased to matter once I found the amazing sport of roller hockey around my 12th year of existence. It's like realizing you've been playing Civilization your whole life when there's Warcraft 2 out there. Lets make that analogy work somehow. Civilization (Baseball I realized organized basketball sucked at all levels about age 8 and soccer, well, we're in America, nobody cares about it) is a fine game. I've played it a few times and enjoyed it while I was playing it. There's one problem, it's so fucking slow. Turn based gets old, especially if you're playing against someone who has to make the perfect move, every move, even if it's just where to put his first fucking building for optimal movement later in the game. Warcraft 2 however (hockey) was amazing. You mean, I build up my land at the same time the other people are building theirs? The game doesn't take 7 hours? There's action every few minutes? Fuck Civilization, I'm never playing you again, Warcraft 2 forever!!!

Just like baseball vs. hockey.
Playing roller hockey, there were several realizations.

First, it's a sport I could play with just a couple other people, you needed a goalie, and 2 others. Baseball, you need a lot of people otherwise it's just one guy hitting, and a bunch of assholes chasing down his flies. And yes, chasing mine down were easy, cause I even bailed on in batting practice. This is a major selling point when you don't have any transportation other than your own 2 feet or your roller blades/bike after school on a weekday after school. We almost always, every day Monday-Friday had a game of roller hockey somewhere. This is why I'm comparing roller hockey in the street and organized to just organized baseball. The only time you play baseball is organized, hence THE major selling point of roller hockey being able to play it and actually have fun everyday as a kid.

Second, I'm never standing around unless I'm a goalie, and in roller hockey, since we struggled to get enough people/equipment for 2 goalies, the one goalie almost never stood around anyway. Baseball you're always standing around. Batting as a kid, everybody had to hit, so there were 13 or so people in the lineup, not just 9. This means you got 2-5 PA's a game (I had an excellent K/PA ratio as a child) depending on how many automatic outs there were with hitters 6-13 on your team. Those parents of the automatic outs were so cruel, when your kid hasn't gotten on base unless the other team said "Hey, lets let this guy hit off the tee now, sure he's 13, who cares?" or the other team brought in their girl pitcher to face the bottom half of your lineup, wouldn't you realize you're just scarring your kid for life?

And third, physical contact/physical exertion. I know now that I was a pussy for bailing out at the plate, but I figured it out at age 12 that I was a pussy for playing baseball, period. Jesus fucking christ, hockey's a real sport, especially if there's no ref and you're playing on blacktop with no helmets or pads (except the goalie, we weren't stupid). Sure, we wore the pads our parents bought us while we learned to skate, stop, etc. But soon as we could get around out there, the pads were collecting dust more than Liza Minelli's vagina. Roller hockey made you skate, hustle, and hit. Baseball made you stand, swat gnats, and wish you were dead some games. Hockey I sweated when playing, baseball I sweated while standing in the sun. Hockey I came home with bruises and scrapes and blacktop burns, baseball I came home with a shitty tan and bug bites on any exposed part of my body.

There's more to come, this post is long enough already, this is what happens when I get a full day off that's not a weekend, and I wake up at 8:30 am.