Monday, October 05, 2009
Thought for the Day
Bill James said something a while ago that I thought was about as good a thought about bad baseball teams as anything I’ve heard. He said, “The future is not a plan.” And I think that’s exactly right. Every baseball team has a future. Every one. Every team has “prospects” — Baseball America next year will list off 30 for each team. Every team is loaded down with players in Class A who, if things go well, can emerge as the next great superstar. Every team has pitchers who could, and hitters who might, and catchers who should, and base runners who conceivably can. Every team in baseball.
And because every team has a future, it’s easy to fool yourself. It’s easy to talk about how things will get better. This is not always a bad thing. This is what gives fans hope every spring training. This is what keeps players inspired. This is what keeps baseball people going forward. And sometimes, rarely, a team even might fool itself into believing that it is better than the apparent talent and play at that higher level, at least for a while.
But … more often than not, fooling yourself isn’t much of a plan for survival. And thus, The Hochevar Principle: The future comes to all teams. Some teams wait for it. Those teams finish in last place a lot.
-- Joe Posnanski, Kansas City Royals fan, today
# posted by Matt @ 10:12 pm 
Comments:
At first I thought Grabia said he had a Polanski-inspired post he's putting up tomorrow.
The way this team is going, you could probably do one...
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At first I thought Grabia said he had a Polanski-inspired post he's putting up tomorrow.
The way this team is going, you could probably do one...
Post a Comment
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