The Reality of Professional Sports

Moses Nyirakomini

Professor Yates

Reading and Writing Sports

10 November 2016

        The Reality of Professional Sports

        Anyone who has ever played sports growing up has probably nursed the fantasy of playing at the professional level at least once. Unfortunately, dreams far outweigh the reality and the odds of making it into the highest level of any professional sport are low. Competition has increased to the point where even athletes who exceed at a remarkably skilled level have a difficult time at succeeding and multiple factors contribute to this. This is either due to pressure or most likely the failure to adapt to a team’s culture and complex adjustments that are required as the sport evolves. These problems are applicable to Jeff Stone’s story as he was an elite athlete who had the quintessential physical aspects of a professional baseball player but could never grasp the intellectual side. Jeff Stone could not face the reality of professional sports, his release from major league teams was a result of his failure to adjust to a new manager along with a completely different culture of baseball that required both physical and intellectual ability.

        After years of detachment from the sport, the first statement made from Jeff Stone outlining his enragement and disdain for baseball explicitly captures his personal experience with the reality of the professional world of baseball. From the beginning, one of the problems he faced which would soon come back to haunt him was adjustment. Jeffrey Stone struggled with adjusting to many things as a young man, and this eventually ventured into his life as he got older, affecting his psyche immensely. Jeff couldn’t adjust from the town where “Everybody likes everybody,” (Miller 142) to a city where the civilians are rude, the traffic is horrendous and the obnoxious noises are putrid. He couldn’t adjust to losing Phillies manager Paul Owen, a man who Stone connected with due to his minimalistic approach to baseball but was soon replaced by the vapid John Felske who’s bearish attitude wasn’t something Stone was accustomed to. A brand new culture was in the head managerial position; the culture of strategic, analytical, and precise planning that was becoming a necessity for the sport of baseball moving forward. Unfortunately Jeff couldn’t keep up and it’s one of those kinds of situations where his naivety and unwillingness to change wasn’t necessarily his fault. Growing up, no one truly challenged him to shift his style of play or even the way he viewed the game, so as a player he never developed. Jeff was so fixated in his ways that he couldn’t face the reality of sports and what it would eventually become. Nowadays we live in a fast paced generation of sports, where flexibility and versatility are promoted, players are encouraged to not only be physically capable of playing but to be intellectually capable is highly emboldened. Athletes are becoming students of the game; learning, studying and adjusting to different styles of play to become successful. However, this can be very difficult for some to conquer, as it requires discipline and the ability to be open minded and for Jeff, it came down to his unwillingness to adjust.