Some people may think baseball is not a sport. Some people may even think that baseball is beyond easy, but to tell you the truth, baseball is one of the most difficult sports out there. You have to have amazing hand-eye coordination in order to hit a fastball in the 90s from a major league pitcher. You have to have bat speed beyond belief. Baseball is not just fun and games, nor a piece of cake. It takes hard work and dedication just like any other sport. The chances of becoming a major league or minor league baseball player are 1 in every 30,000. That is a slim chance.

Numerous amounts of times when I am on the mound pitching, I hear just throw strikes, or just do that. Actually, it is not as easy as it looks to throw strikes when you are on a MLB regulation field with runners on base and you have fans or parents screaming at you; just to top it off you are 15 years old. Not many kids can handle that kind of pressure, if any. It is just unheard of. When you are on the mound you have to take in account how many balls and strikes there are, the weather, whose is on base, amount of outs, what pitches to throw and many other situations. All of this is going through a pitcher’s head between pitches, it just makes it that much more difficult.

Coming from a pitcher, it honestly annoys me when parents scream at me just throw strikes, like I said before it really is not that easy. You have to have the correct mechanics every pitch and throughout the game so you do not hurt yourself and so you do not do terrible when you are pitching. Baseball can be seen as one of the most absurd games. But you have to stick with it if you have a passion and a love for the game. From a pitcher’s standpoint the game is on your own shoulders. If you are a guy in the field and you have a bad day at the plate, it won’t affect whether you win or lose, but if you are a pitcher if you have one bad day or game you can put your team in a very bad position to lose the game and in some cases cost them the season.

Some say baseball is a game of inches. To tell you the truth: they are right, it is. There are 90 feet between bases; if you are on first base and want to steal second you need to get as big of a lead as you can without getting picked off so you can steal second safely. When you take your lead off of first base, it should be length of one step and a dive back to first base. That is about a 8-10 foot lead, instead of running 90 feet to second base, you cut down the distance to 80-82 feet. So you have fewer feet to run and the same amount of time to get safe at second. It just makes your chances bigger of being safe.

What also makes baseball difficult is the fact that you have to be able to read off the bat where the ball is going as soon as it is hit. If you make a mistake you could get out, or maybe even cost your team the game, no pressure. In my opinion baseball is one of the most difficult sports out there. Like any other sport you have to be smart and athletic, but what makes baseball different is the fact of all the things that you have take into consideration. You also have to know what to do before the ball is hit, every play. Baseball is a great and fun sport, so enjoy it!