Baseball

I haven't had all that much to do lately, which has translated to more blog posts, even if nobody really even reads them.

Everybody has a few distractions they are able to turn to when nothing else seems to be happening. These can be also be good for turning holding your attention when life seems to really suck. For me, one of these is baseball.

I've loved baseball since I was too young to understand it. Up until the family moved to Colorado when I was 7, my Dad would take me to watch San Francisco Giants games when we lived in California until I was about 7 years old. These weren't always my favorite times, but I did like to be at the ball park, if only for the fun environment. Watching fireworks at the games was one of my favorite things to do on the 4th of July. My Grandpa Sager also loved it and would sometimes offer me baseball cards from his years of collecting them. After spending a lot of time watching baseball, I began to really enjoy it.

When we moved to Colorado, I played baseball for a season on the school team. However, I didn't really enjoy it as much as I thought I would, and would sometimes skip practice solely because I didn't really feel like getting up to go. After that short round, I didn't play for a while, but continued to follow the Giants and my old favorite player, Barry Bonds, which was something that kept me occupied sometimes during the Summer when I was really bored. I remember being really frustrated when they finally made it to the World Series and lost by blowing a 5-0 lead in Game 6 and then losing Game 7. I had also started to like the Rockies after moving to Colorado, though it was more indifferent since they seemed to always lose.

At about 12, I tried playing baseball again. I wished I had never quit and wanted to have a fun time playing the game. Being on a baseball team was great. It was fun goofing around with the boys, sitting in the dugout during games talking and spitting sunflower seeds while waiting for your turn to bat and just having a good time. Just being a baseball player was pretty cool, too. However, I still wasn't all that great at playing, and was really only good for stealing bases since I was one of the faster guys on the team. I never played on another baseball team.

Since playing baseball, I've still followed more than a lot of people probably do, though not as much for a few years. In 2007, I went to the National League Wild Card Tiebreaker game, in which the Rockies won after a dramatic comeback in extra innings and eventually went on to the World Series. They were swept in the World Series, but that run got me interested in baseball again, and I have followed the Colorado Rockies ever since.

Last Summer, I was working in Grand Junction while not attending school, so baseball really became something that kept me going while not all that motivated. Almost everyday, there is another game to look forward to, which meant there was something to get up for. It was also a time when I was a bit discouraged about things, and the games were really a distraction that could occupy my attention for a time.

Baseball is just one thing that I find enjoyable and, although I was never a great player, it is an interesting distraction for me.

Going Against Our Own Selves

Tonight, I was going on a run and using frustrations towards other people to fuel myself onward. When tired, I can sometimes gain strength when I think about almost any person who I have a sort of rivalry with, and imagine myself racing against this person. It makes runs more meaningful when you have a purpose.

At one point while I was running down the street, I thought I noticed another person running down the sidewalk a little ahead of me, which gave me a short boost of speed to see if I could keep pace. About a second or two after, I realized that there was nobody ahead of me, and what I saw was my own shadow ahead. This made me wonder what it would be like to race against myself, and the person I began competing with in my head was my more competitive side. After thinking about it for a little while, I realized that trying to beat myself would be more difficult than going against another person, since I know my weaknesses and strengths better than anybody else. I eventually stopped this game of imaginary racing and began to think more about this idea of me against myself, a more contemplative theme, and developed something of a philosophical inquiry into the subject.

First off, I think most all of us have this difficulty of trying to beat our own selves harder than we try to beat anyone or anything else. We are our own harshest critics. When we are low in confidence, it is often our own thoughts that could drag us down and blow up the issues we're facing.

For example, I would guess that everybody has been made fun of before. What we often do in such a situation is somewhat illogical. I don't know what anybody else thinks, so I'll just refer to myself. When I am degraded or rejected, I will sometimes contemplate what the person said and put myself down because it may seem true. I'll then go over all the things that I need to do or could have done to be better, essentially admitting that the other person is right. In this situation, I really am not competing against anybody else. That person doesn't know me and does not have enough knowledge of who I am to really say anything. I have decided I'm not good enough and competing against myself, my own expectations and how good I think I should be. It's really counterproductive, since I know myself so well that there's always traits I could find be improved on.

I don't think we should stop trying to be our best selves. However, when we continue to be harsh on ourselves and look to find ways in which we are inadequate, it only serves to lower self-confidence and create frustration. My opinion is that we should try our best to be our best selves for those that matter and, after that, we need to realize that only so much can be done with our own capacities.

Scrabble

I think I've always enjoyed playing the game Scrabble. I'm a fairly competitive person, and that particular game seems fun to me because it actually requires a reasonable amount of skill to win at. However, that doesn't mean I'm too great at it.

A few months ago, our apartment began playing Scrabble more often. I had suggested it earlier since I thought that I might have been able to beat a few people at it. That wasn't the case. Since I've started playing it more often, I have not legitimately won a single game. The first game I played was against my roommate, Scott, where we didn't play by the rules very well and both ended up with ridiculously high scores because of reusing the bonus spaces. For the second game, I played against a different roommate named Mark, an English major and published author who beat me fairly convincingly.

After a couple of practice games down, I thought I was ready and good enough to impress somebody. So, I invited over a girl, who I liked, to play Scrabble on what may have been considered a date. She beat me by a large margin both times we played, although it didn't matter too much for me because I was mainly trying to provide a good time.

There wasn't another opportunity to play before my roommate who was leaving packed the game away. A few weeks later, though, I borrowed it from a friend to play with that same girl. This time, I tried harder to actually win a game and redeem myself. It didn't happen. We played two games and I badly lost both again. I had then lost four times in a row just to her. I wasn't really too angry, though I would have liked to have at least beat her once.

That started a string of games when I didn't lose, but also couldn't seem to win one. I left during the middle of one game against a girl who stopped trying to win. That was still using the game I borrowed. I got Scrabble as a birthday present in June. Since then, I've played three games that were never finished. One I was losing at, anyway, the next I may have been able to win but had the game board messed up near the end when my friend declared himself the winner, and the most recent was this past Friday when the game was close before we had to move it for dinner and it ended up getting messed up again.

So, I've played Scrabble all these times since moving to Utah, and couldn't even win one game. I think I should be able to cut a break one of these days and take one. Hopefully, I can do that soon, since it's kind of a problem that I love Scrabble but hate losing. `