I hate this vs I don’t want to be here

How do you know when you are burnout and had enough with baseball?

It doesn’t matter whether you are a player or a coach, there are some days that will drive you to say “What am I doing?”  I think Crash Davis put it best when he said “F— this F-ing game.  I quit.” after he was sent back to Single-A to babysit Nuk LaLoosh in the movie Bull Durham.  And like many of us after difficult games, Crash turned around and immediately asked the manager “What time is batting practice tomorrow?“

There are periods of time in everyone’s baseball life that they may feel inclined to utter similar words and storm away from the game.  An 0-25 hitting slump.  A last place season.  Difficult players/teammates/parents.  What brings us back is that even though we can be enormously frustrated and even hate the game at times, we still want to be on the field.

My most difficult season ever was in Double-A in 1991 when I was hitting under .200 with only a few weeks left in the season.  Trust me, when you are hitting around .200 over the course of an entire pro season the game is easy to hate.  But I never once – not a single day – didn’t want to go to the park and play ball.  That season was miserable but there was no place I would have rather been than on those fields.

I think the key to knowing when your time is up is  understanding the difference between “I hate this” and “I don’t want to be here.”  There are a lot of things in life and in the game that you can hate and still move forward.  When you start saying “I don’t want to be here,” that’s when it may be time to call it a day or even a career.

Tomorrow’s post:  Are you an Infantry player or Special Ops?