Chicago Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant joined the Barstool Chicago guys on Red Line Radio today for his second appearance. They talked about Kris’ multiple Christmas Trees around the holidays, how close he thought Bryce was to joining the Cubs, playing day baseball at Wrigley and much more. It’s a great chat for Cubs fans and baseball fans alike. But there was one specific moment from the interview that every sports fan should listen to. A moment where Bryant truly opens up and gives a genuine answer that I feel like fans around all of sports need to take a moment and reflect on.
Shout out to Eddie for asking a great question here, and for the timing and way he presents it. He asks it from a caring place, not a judging place. Which I imagine is refreshing for athletes to hear. You can tell from Bryants reaction in the video, and then from his answer, the question really resonates with him.
“At times no. At times it really got to me sometimes. The stuff I was hearing, I think I talked about this before, in 2018, the first trade rumors that popped up really got to me. I found myself ‘Man is this fun anymore. Like, why did i start playing this game?’ You know, because it was fun. Obviously theres other stuff involved. You make a ton of money, and theres fame, and theres all this. But, you gotta get yourself back to why you’re playing”
Bryant goes on to reminisce about his first ever home run and reaction of his father and getting back to that kind of joy on the field. This answer really hit me as a sports fan. When you take a step back, as fans, we ask ALOT of the players we root for. We want passion. We want perfection. We so badly want our team to win that we almost convince ourselves we want it more than the guys on the field. We absolutely love players when they are performing, when they are delivering. But we are so quick to the turn the tables and bail on guys when things get rough.
There is no worse time than now for players to go through rough patches. Media, fans and haters alike all have avenues to rip players who are underperforming, and it’s almost impossible to these players to avoid. Slow start, mid season slump, struggling in the closing months. For baseball specifically, a 162 game season, where literally every game is under a microscope. And the struggles are magnified wayyyy more than the success because we expect and demand the success.
Kris Bryant is a 29 year old former MVP with a World Series ring on his finger for a city who lived out a hundred year curse. When you are fan of a team who hasn’t won a single thing over the years you would KILL for a player like that (Im a Met fan and David Wright didn even win me a world series and ill never say a bad thing about him) to bring you to the promised land. But then once you reach that peak, it now, despite the years and years of failure, becomes the bar, and anything less becomes failure. And when theres failure, now the guys we would have killed for just a few seasons ago, we want to acutally kill. Sure Kris has had a drop in production since, no fuckin duh. You know how hard it is too replicate a season like that? By the way, the guy was an All-Star in 2019, not bad.
But because Bryant isn’t producing at the highest of the high we deem it as a problem, like he doesn’t have another potential MVP season in his future as an under 30 superstar. Because of the mixture of struggles on the field, the invasive coverage in sports today, and social media, Bryant actually has got to a point where he questions whether he loves the game, and that makes me sad. We need to stop looking at these players as dollar figures and stats and start to understand that they are people like us who love the game more than anything. They unequivocally love the game more than we do. They are so talented and so in love with something that they dedicate their lives to trying to be successful at it. So next time you are mad at a player who is struggling, maybe that a step back and think about how much it’s bothering them. It’s bothering them so much that they’re thinking about how much its bothering you, a fan. There are certainly moments when athletes are deserving of criticisms, but overall, I think the leash for athletes has become way too short. We need to appreciate what these guys are doing out there. You know how hard it is to hit a curveball? To block an Aaron Donald who’s only goal is to get by you? To guard a 7 foot Kevin Durant who can beat you off the dribble or sink a 3 right in your eye? That shit is HARD. Go back to appreciating the sport, having fun rooting for your team. Stop expecting perfection.
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