Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Slams Baseball as ‘Too Easy’

This season, after winning the World Series for the first time in over one hundred years, the Chicago Cubs are struggling to play .500 ball.

The mediocre season coming on the heels of such a bright one has driven one Chicago sports columnist to wonder in print why baseball players need rest. After all, he says, baseball is an easy sport to play, so what do they need to rest from?

For the Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Rick Morrissey is dubious about Cubs manager Joe Maddon’s practice of giving his players time to rest up, especially earlier in the season. Maddon apparently feels that having some rest early in the season will help spare his players some fatigue further down the line into the season.

But the breaks obviously make no sense to the Times’ Morrissey who insists that playing Major League baseball is such a cinch that no rest is required.

“Baseball isn’t exactly taxing, so why do Cubs players need rest?” the columnist pointedly asked in a July 5 column.

“Rest from what? Running to first base?” he wrote.

Morrissey does go on to admit that MLB’s schedule isn’t exactly leisurely.

“Big-league teams have six weeks of spring training and then play 162 games, more if they make the playoffs,” he wrote. “There aren’t many days off in between. It’s a grind, as players like to say.”

All this traveling is not easy, to be sure. Even businessmen who spend their lives traveling across the nation from one office to another and one client to another will attest to how tiring it all is. And businessmen don’t have to play four and five-hour baseball games at the end of each flight.

But, apparently that is all a mere piffle to tough guy, Morrissey.

“But once the season is over, most have 4½ months off. I’ll bet many of you would take that trade-off, given the opportunity,” he insisted.

Morrissey goes on to point out that the physical requirements for football, basketball, hockey and even soccer is often greater than for baseball. That is all granted, of course.

But the fact is, if playing pro baseball was so “easy,” everyone would be playing pro-level ball. Clearly that isn’t the case.

Oddly, Morrissey goes on to ask the question no one is really asking by acting as if everyone is running around pitying baseball players. He seemed incensed when adding that no one is worried about the tedium of a regular American’s job.

No one worries about the tedium of your job, do they? No one says: ‘‘Wiggins, you’ve got to be tired from licking all those envelopes. Give yourself a four-day weekend.’’ What the boss usually says is: ‘‘There’s no such thing as a strained tongue muscle. Get back to work.’’ Then you walk back to your work station, dreaming of the stamp collection awaiting you at home.

But who was really worrying about the tedium of baseball players’ jobs until Morrissey started the ball rolling? It’s a question that isn’t answered by the column, that’s for sure.

In fact, the whole column seems like little else but sour grapes. One has to wonder who peed in Morrissey’s Wheaties that morning? Is it all just his pique over the mediocre season the Cubs are having?

He ends his sour piece with another point that no one seems to be raising.

“There’s no doubt baseball can be tiring mentally. But let’s not mistake it for the rigors of a real job,” he said.

That coda only causes one to ask: “OK. And?”

It isn’t clear exactly who was saying baseball is the hardest job in the world, nor is it clear who was saying they don’t need rest between games. Or even that they do need rest between games, for that matter. Morrissey’s entire column seems to be a dialogue with the prickly voices inside his own head.

It maybe was a column he should have left at home on his computer instead of sending it in to his editor. Finally, if Morrissey is this dismissive of his sports beat, maybe he should take up writing about pets or become a food critic.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.