Distractions?

There has been a lot of talk lately about Miguel Cabrera's situation being a possible distraction to not only his spring preparation but to the team's preparation as a whole.  It might be.  It might not be.  The world of professional athletics is much different than the world of athletics that most of us are used to.  In our world, we play sports with our friends, or even more likely people become our friends because we play sports together.  Professional sports is more akin to our professional lives.  In our workplaces we may work with people we like, we may make friends with some of those people, but at the same time most of us work with some people we don't like, don't respect, or don't understand.  Many of the people we work with we never see outside of work. We don't hang out on weekends, we don't go for drinks after work, we don't share our personal lives with the people at work we don't like.  But at the same time, we are able to go to work everyday, do our jobs well, and be successful.  And the people we don't like are able to come to work, do their jobs well, and be successful.  That is a much more accurate description of professional athletics.

Do you remember when Barry Bonds was going for the home run record?  Barry was having, arguably, one of the most successful seasons in baseball history.  Barry also had taken 3 lockers in the corner of the clubhouse, and created his own little nook in the locker room by blocking off access to press, coaches, teammates by putting a bigscreen tv across the corner and nice comfy chair so he could sit away from everyone else and watch TV and not interact with anyone else.  Thats is definitely not the action of a good teammate, but I guarantee everyone of them was able to come to work everyday and play at a high level.

So let me tell you about real distraction.  Real distraction is when you are shopping for a used guitar on ebay, knowing that there are many fake ones out there and trying to determine whether or not the one you are about to bid  on is genuine.  At the same time you are going through that process, your alma mater is trying to get into the NCAA tournament, your hometown hockey team is slumping, and you have a stack of new Xbox games that need some serious attention.  How in the world is one person supposed to do all of that, and work a full time corporate job, maintain a healthy relationship with your girlfriend, and write a baseball themed weblog?  Something has to fall by the wayside.  Something ends up slipping down the list.  Oh crap. I think this blog was that thing last week.  Sorry my few but sometime readers.  I will try harder to write more often.  Just a heads up.  When my new Les Paul gets here I might take a night or two off.