Add new comment

...they make it look easy!
We watch basketball, football, etc and see them as herculean struggles...football plays look incrediblty hard...the pros don't make their sports look easy...they also strut around a heck of a lot more and do more to get their names on posters witha spectacular looking acrobatic photo. Baseball players look like they're playing catch...or beerball...on the TV. Seriously...A-Rod diving for a ball to his left at third base just looks the same to the naked eye as a kid in little league doing it (except bigger and faster, of course).
This is the main problem with visual defensive analysis and scouting. The scouts are very good at what they do, but there are limits. Ken Griffey Jr. made spectacular looking plays in CF but was actually not a very good fielder compared to his CF peers, even in his prime. Franklin Gutierrez makes it look ridiculously easy, even when he's making an impossible play, and we just don't get the sense that what he just did was practically impossible.
Baseball players look casual and play a sport with a casual cadence. It throws off our perceptions.
But that's why I love baseball...it's the purest, fastest, most physically demanding, most difficult, and most specialized sport in existance.