The Dog Days of Summer

Undervaluing the whole – where does it come from?  Does it spawn from a lack of intensity when attending to the smaller, yet salient details?

The popular belief of the casual tends to lean towards some sort of let-down during this current season within the season of Major League Baseball.  But do the wins and losses accumulated now count any more or less towards the eventual outcome when September rolls around? Of course not.

Most seem to dread a marathon as its mass, as the long monotonous trek that it is, rather than esteem the bare-bones assembly of its stock. Each step could be better or worse than the last one. Steps that keep improving result in a greater outcome, regardless of the length of the journey, right?

But is it as simple as that? Is this basic ideology the mindset that wins in baseball? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that true professionals always strive to improve every single day. And equally, no in the sense that always taking a step forward every single day in the tour that is the baseball season is an unrealistic premise.

The beauty of the game of baseball lies in its ying-yang balance as well as in its measured patience.  You can kick two ground balls today and always come back tomorrow and hit two home runs.  The worst day of your career could be followed by the best day of your career, without even a well-trained eye looking at it as any kind of relevant deviation.  The “every day is a new day,” clean-slate mindset is what drives a bat, a glove or an arm to get that next big hit, make that next diving catch or execute that next clutch pitch.

Detractors contend that there are too many games.  I hear it all the time.  “I mean, comon’, man. 162 of ’em?”  To appreciate baseball is to revel in those 162 contests.  The enjoyment and passion within the day-to-day struggle is the very essence that made baseball a trademark pastime.

Baseball was at its peak when Americans were striving overachievers.  They were grinding.  They were on the rise.  The fact that today’s society scoffs at the monotony of our great game only speaks to the lack of effort we, as Americans, are putting forth towards our common cause as an encompassing gross, a gross that has seemingly lost the gravity of the overall net result.

A valid taste for the game comes with a simple understanding.  To acknowledge great players and great teams is not to bandwagon on simply the home run they hit on a particular time at bat, but it is to admire the adversity they had to overcome over many attempts to get back to that place.

Baseball is inherently a game of failure.  Success lies in an unwavering consistency, the ability to bounce back, the aptitude to respond within the cycle after weathering the omnipresent struggle.

I marvel at the clubs that break the mold of popular belief. They are the ones who refuse to make excuses simply because on-lookers have a built-in evasion to describe mid-season failure.

A baseball valley does not live on an entire page of a calendar.  Both the peaks and the valleys live in the next game, the next inning, the next at-bat, the next pitch.

“The Dog Days of Summer?”  That’s the creed of so-called contending franchises who won’t ever see October.  Well, unless they happen to tune in on TV, wishing they were there, while hopelessly debating the baffle of why they aren’t.