Guess what?  Sports are political, especially pro sports.  Thing is, not everyone grasps this concept, and this conversation seems to be had by disgruntled players every other week.  Guess what?  I hate this conversation.  If you wanna talk about politics, go cry to someone else. I’ll be in the weight room, or outside running sprints, or out long-tossing.  Keep talking about how other guys get chances you won’t get; I’ll be out making my own path to the finish line.

Sure, we would all love to be that guy who hits .220 in college and gets 3 years to live the dream in the minors because our dad is the lawyer for the Yankees.  But you know what? That guy knows deep down that he didn’t earn it, and no matter how many chicks he gets under the pretense that he is a “pro,” deep down he knows his own athletic impotence.  I’ll know deep down that anything I obtained was earned.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it hurts that you’re an “honest” one, out there doing your best just to get beaten out of a spot by some guy who knows more influential people than you do.  Thing is, though, you don’t deserve it more than a lot of people, you know, people who work harder than you.  You just got lucky by having a good arm, or a good bat, one that you maybe didn’t deserve any more than the promotion that other guy got.

So let’s all stop crying.  I don’t cry about how I’m 5′11, right-handed, 24 years old and missed my last season because of surgery.  I don’t give a shit that I’m gonna get passed up by guys who won’t be as good, but who received more money than I, or who were granted a favor by an executive.  It’s gonna happen, I know it, but I can’t control it.  I control ME.  That’s it, and I make sure I’ve got everything in order.  Even then, whenever I start feeling entitled to something, I check myself, because I am naturally gifted compared to a lot of average joes and I’m pretty sure I didn’t earn my genetics.

You know who has this conversation the most?  The guys who work the least.  The guys who don’t do anything for the first 5 months of the offseason then jump on the bench press with a month to go.  These are also the guys who will quit and blame their loss of passion for the game on the politics.  But the guys who put their heads down, take care of themselves and just WORK,  they understand that they’re leaving it all out on the field or the weight room every day. Sure, they care that they get passed over, but hard work is honorable, and you just can’t hold people down who refuse the life of mediocrity, refuse to blame the world for their failures, and refuse to quit when faced with adversity.