Musing on Anger After Watching Baseball Game

During Sunday's season-opening game between baseball's Tampa Bay and Toronto, Rays first baseman Logan Morrison was up at bat against Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman.  Morrison hit himself out, and was running back to his team's dugout when he heard Stroman yelling some not very kind words.  Thinking that the Toronto pitcher was aiming his epithets at him, Morrison became very angry and began to yell back.  Then Stroman, realizing what had happened, walked off the mound in Morrison's direction with his arms held wide in an expression of innocence.  You see, Marcus Stroman, who by all accounts is a pretty decent guy...including being a good friend of Tampa Bay ace pitcher Chris Archer (against whom he was pitching Sunday), nevertheless has this habit of angrily and loudly talking to himself when on the pitcher's mound.  Evidently he was unhappy with the pitch he had delivered to Morrison, even though it eventually resulted in a putout.  That having been said...

It is human, very human, to get angry...and with that anger often comes an unpleasant public expression thereof.  The problem with this is twofold: one, as in the case with Stroman and Morrison, the focus of that anger can be misinterpreted, leading to unintended consequences.  Two, experiencing another's anger, even when one intellectually knows that it isn't directed at them, can cause unconscious internal turmoil and reactions.  I experienced this recently during a meeting where the speaker went on and on angrily railing and cursing at a group of people.  Although I was not one of the "targets" of his wrath, I came away from that meeting feeling resentful at that speaker anyway, as if he had been speaking directly to me...

I'm not immune from displaying anger at times...maybe you're better at holding it in than me.  But I also believe that occasional anger can be a symptom of a greater virtue: caring, and such anger is a natural reaction to the times when the people (including myself) or things about which I care disappoint me.  The trick is in anger's expression: it should either remain unheard and unseen by others or appropriately worded and intoned toward the intended party.  Easier said than done, though...