Surprise! Doing What You LOVE, Can Suck Sometimes

I love talking about sports. While sometimes I battle with how others talk sports (my family was very passionate and we openly told each other very bluntly when an idea was dumb) I enjoy interacting on Facebook or Twitter talking about the sport. As I got married, and as life sometimes does, I found less-and-less opportunities to talk sports. So I began writing about sports.

I began a small Chicago sports blog on Blogger.com, where I just gave thoughts and opinions on what was going on in Chicago sports. I was ecstatic if I got 100 people to read my thoughts. Just remembering back, and seeing Chicago media members like Johnathan Hood, Sarah Spain, and Dan Durkin would share my articles on Twitter was such a thrill!

I then started writing for other blogs, bigger blogs. On my first site the most hits any single article had was around 250. The first post I wrote for a bigger site I had well more than 2,500 hits. I was floored. Couldn’t believe anyone would want to read what I wrote, what I thought, and it was the craziest high I could imagine.

I was hooked, and writing 20-25 articles a week. Nearly everything I posted was well received, and I would have posts that would reach hundreds of thousands of views. On top of it all? I was getting paid to do this!

Now, of course it wasn’t a lot and I wasn’t going to quit my day job, but I felt better about the $200 I’d make blogging than I felt about my paycheck I earned from my 9-5. And I made a handsome salary.

Blogging is fun! Talking sports is fun! Creating is fun! Connecting with others in the industry, even making connections to teams and players is something I could have never imagined. This game is a hell of a lot of fun!

But is can be shitty and miserable and flat out suck.

When you write, you are putting yourself out there. Writing is a sincerely honest and personal activity. I write things on here I would never say aloud. What a lot of people don’t understand is, everytime you hit publish you feel great about the masterpiece of words you tossed together to tell a wonderful story. Most read and say nothing. Some will throw that like on the post, might even get an agreeable comment. But there is a small, but vocal minority that tear your heart out with every comment. These are comments that seem to hit home, hard. These comments sit with you and kill your mojo.

You post an article and you begin to fret the next day. You hate every notification that pops up. When you see a name that commented on your art, you already have a predetermined negative connotation of what it is based on someone’s previous behavior.

You revel in the idea that 70% of the jerks haven’t actually read your work. 20% of them have some deep rooted jealousy that you’re taking a chance and putting yourself out there, while they’ve been scared of ever taking a chance. But that’s only 90%, there’s another 10% out there that have read it, are fair, but give a negative comment that will cause you to rip your hair out.

Blogging isn’t the only thing that is like this. My brother is living his dream creating an incredible clothing line. He’s built an impressive client list which he does work for, and if you visit our armpit of Illinois you’ll see 30% of us covered head-to-toe in his gear.

He is living his dream and has built a successful company. A company that he is so incredibly proud of, his family is incredibly proud of him for building, and his friends support the hell out of as they too are proud of him. It’s great seeing him build this thing, have fun doing it, and loving every minute of it.

But when we have honest moments, he too talks about the problems. He talks about what keeps him up late. He loves what he does, but it isn’t always fun.

It isn’t fun when a printer goes down and he has 1,000 shirts to print. It isn’t fun when he has to work 48 hours straight, on nothing but coffee, then has to drive 150 miles to deliver the goods to a corporate client. It sucks when he has to drop a passion project for his site because he has a giant rush order that needs to be completed.

He would never change a single moment of it, but even when you’re living your dream, and your passion, parts of it just plain sucks.

I don’t know this for certain, but I believe this is what Kris Bryant was speaking to in the Barstool Red Line Radio interview.

Kris loves this game. Kris is thrilled hearing fans cheering him. He’s enamored when he hits a homer. He’s proud of every single moment he’s had in this game.

But it can suck.

From 2015 till the 2018 season, Bryant had been the National League leader in WAR. He was the NL Rookie of the Year, he was the NL MVP, he won a World Series. He had never spent a single day on the DL or IL up until that season. He’ll, during the 2018 season Bryant was having the best year he’s ever had.

Then he injured his shoulder in Cincinnati, and everything, changed.

Fans didn’t give Bryant the benefit of the doubt. When he played and didn’t perform up to his typical self, he was criticized. When he went on the IL, he was criticized. Here’s a guy that was trying to do everything he could to power the Cubs to the playoffs, knowing that their best chance was with him, and he was criticized.

Just after the 2018 season, there was an erroneous report from David Kaplan about Bryant turning down a contract “north of $200 million.” This never happened, and Bryant has yet to be officially offered a contract.

But that is what fans picked up on. Here’s a player that just had a down season and now there’s a report that he turned $200 million down. On top of it, Scott Boras is his agent. The optics, well, they don’t look good. The media ran with that story, the fans are it up. Soon, the handsome kid with soft eyes and a heart melting smile from Las Vegas was becoming a villain. And not on his own doing.

Bryant would have another great Kris Bryant season in 2019, yet fans continued with a narrative that he didn’t want to be in Chicago. However, all he has ever said, was that he wants to be here his entire career. He’s been quoted saying this in 2015, in 2016, again in 2017, then again in 2018, said it in 2019, and he said it numerous times before the 2020 season started.

And still, fans criticized him and said he doesn’t want to be in Chicago.

So yes, what kind of person can’t look at this and see that this series of events sucks? Regardless if you love what you’re doing, if you’re having fun doing it – all of that actually does, in fact, suck!

It isn’t fun seeing someone talk crappy towards something you’ve worked your ass off for since you were five. I’m sure he’s wanted to tell some of these people that they haven’t seen him busting his tail in a batting cage all off-season. They don’t see him and his dad breakdown his swings and approach and incorporate a new twist to improve. They don’t see the 20,000 swings he takes to make sure the change becomes habit. They don’t see him review that approach and make a change in top of that, and start the process over.

I don’t want to just point to the fans here, because most of them only feed off of what local media suggest to them. If you listen or watch or read to Kaplan, you likely have a poor opinion of Kris Bryant. So when you go to social media, you speak negatively about him. Then there’s someone that sees what you wrote, and they too post something negative. It becomes a cycle of negativity that attracts more to it. When one opens up, others attach and feel that their comment will be more accepted.

All because one bad season, one idiot on the radio, and the lemmings that followed him. So yes, Bryant is ok to admit that, that isn’t fun. It isn’t fun to be injured. It isn’t fun to try your hardest, even when you can’t lift your arm above your shoulder, and you get criticized for it. It isn’t fun to have a false story written about you and then have half the fanbase believe that story. That’s not fun.

That doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love what he does. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love playing here, for the Cubs. It just means that sometimes, people are shitty and do or say shitty things and athletes are human with feelings. No amount of money can erase the human from you.