Sports Pet Peeve 1
Posted by Scott on June 4, 2008
A new, hopefully consistent, series of posts here at Sports & Stuff is the Pet Peeve section. This can be anything from sports media, to players, to sports themselves. Today’s inaugural edition begins now!
Pet Peeve 1: MLB Fans
Before you go ahead and blast me for this initial annoyance of mine let me assure you that I think baseball is a great sport. I like watching it from time to time. I will admit, however, that I am not an avid fan that will make time to watch a random game that does not affect me. My problem with MLB fans is that I feel that they think they know what is going on more than any other sport. Baseball, to me, is the most difficult sport to analyze. It is also the dumbest sport to argue about.
MLB fans insist that they know exactly what is wrong with their team or what the right move for that team is. Baseball is clear cut who is playing well and who isn’t right? Wrong. This all starts with pitching. A pitcher will be judged so quickly. The judgment will be based on what just happened and I do not find that to be fair. In basketball if a player misses a bunch of shots you can easily say that he is not playing well. The pitcher could put the ball exactly where everyone wanted it, but if the batter crushes it the pitcher will be said to have “missed” his spot. This type of judgment is fine by coaches or catchers, but, more than any other sport, the casual fan will be able to make a comment that has no real evidence behind it. Sure, the batter hit a home run, but that could have just as easily been just a great swing!
The amount of casual fans is what annoys me the most. Baseball is the easiest sport to go to a game and not care what is going on. Heck, I have found myself to just lose touch with the game while I am there, and I usually care more about the game itself than anyone at the arena. Still, people go to games to go to the ballpark, which is great. What is not great is the amount of people who go, have no idea what is going on, and then make comments that make it seem that they think they know what they are talking about. Just because you played T-ball does not mean you know the dynamics of a swing.
Finally, baseball fans annoy me because they get so wrapped up in the standings. It is now June. The MLB season ends in October. The regular season game in April and May does not mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Can we stop worrying about the Brewers being 5 games back in May? Nope, because fans insist on taking every moment to worry about the standings with 130 games to play. This does not seem to happen in other sports. You do not here panic or praise after being 4 games up in December of the NBA season.
All of these, and probably more, are reasons for why Baseball Fans are my first pet peeve.
