Baseball Bigger Than Rays Slump

This 2014 baseball season has reached the point when it is beginning to become a drag to follow my favorite team on its own radio or television network.  That team, the Tampa Bay Rays, is mired in a terrible slump and stands at 24-42 with the worst record in either league.  The main culprit in their slide has been a complete team collapse in hitting.  This is especially true when runners are in scoring position, with the Rays as a whole batting around .100 under those conditions during this time. This is essentially the same team that last year made a great late-season run to make the playoffs and then get to the American League Championship Series against eventual World Series winner Boston.  I commiserate with them about their troubles...but only up to a point.  In this game, you can't have winners without there being losers, and, well, it's well-nigh impossible to go on forever without having a dip every now and then.  I expect Tampa Bay to eventually get back on track, although probably the best they should be able to shoot for this season would be to get back to having a winning season...a formidable task at this point, to say the least.  But the main problem I have with their woes is the tendency of their play-by-play announcers and analysts to continually dwell on them instead of focusing on the game as it is being played.  I can handle the losses...what I don't want is this constant psychology of losing!

Lately I haven't had as much of an opportunity as earlier to just sit back and enjoy watching the games, half-inning by half-inning.  And that is more to how I like to approach baseball: up close, pitch-by-pitch.  It matters little whether it's a close game, a rout, the first inning, fifth, or in the twelfth, or whether the teams playing are winners or losers.  Sure, I recognize that those factors play a role in the strategy and "flavor" of the game as it is unwinding, but the main pleasure I get is observing the developing strategies employed by the pitching/fielding team and the batting team against each other within an inning as one tries to get the third out before the other can score...