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Good Morning, and welcome to Thursday Morning Baseball. If you live anywhere on the west coast you will probably not be able to watch today's game. After all today is a day that, through millenia of social progress and a few decades of negotiated unionized labor, we have come to consensus as a day we "work".
There is much to be done at our place of business. Thus our morning will begin like most others: we'll scurry off to our cars, maybe after a dash of coffee and, if we're lucky, a bite to eat. Then we'll plug ourselves into the role that our employer and we, the employee, have mutually agreed tenable, for now. Over time the job and we have mutually eroded away at each other, until, though we admit it begrudgingly, it has become a place of comfort for us.
I know that major league baseball players live a life very different from the average person. The money, the travel, the intense pressure to perform in front of millions. It's a hard thing to imagine oneself doing if you haven't done it. But I imagine that after time it can be easy to view as a job, similar to most others. The routines we feel in the sameness of our surroundings are instead felt for baseball players in the constant rhythm of change. Another day, another hotel, another city, another pitcher, another day of video, another joke in the clubhouse to learn, etc.
So it is that we and the Mariners will go to work today, each of us seeking small personal victories we hope are adding up to something larger and more worthwhile. The Mariners have split the first two games with the Orioles, and are going through their most challenging stretch of play in over a month. They will attempt to regain some of the momentum and good vibes that so permeated the team prior to the series against the Angels.
Win or lose though, tomorrow is Friday, and another day we'll meet the Mariners at work, as we both attempt to find meaning, purpose, and achievement, together.
Game info
- Mariners @ Orioles, 9:35 AM PDT, Oriole Park at Camden Yards
- TV: ROOT, Radio: 710 ESPN, Online: MLB.TV