Friday, September 23, 2005

Man Attempting To Burn Son Out On Baseball

A man was complaining to his friend in coffee shop yesterday about how much he hated baseball and how he was anxiously awaiting the day that his son wised up and joined him. He said that he was taking the boy to practices four nights a week and sitting through at least two games on the weekends. Beyond that, his son had talked him into buying partial season tickets for the local major league club and together they'd suffered through eleven games which he described as 'professional paint drying contests.'
His friend suggested that perhaps he should lessen his exposure if he hated it so much.
The man said that exposure was the key, as it was only with exposure that his son would grow to realize what an awful game it was. At some point he'd see that it was mostly standing around and failing to hit things. Then he'd watch the coach's son throw a tantrum for the hundredth time when he was removed from the pitcher's mound and suddenly he'd get it - it's a horrible game played by horrible people, and he'd never want anything to do with it again. And if allowing his son to wallow in the game almost non-stop could help him learn this lesson sooner, then all the suffering would be worth it.
His friend said he doubted very much that such an approach would be successful.
It worked for my dad, the man said.

5 comments:

Wyrfu said...

It's a well known principle: familiarity breeds contempt. :D

Anonymous said...

But Pro Baseball breeds large salaries. There are worse things than making millions of dollars for chewing tobacco, spitting and scratching yourself on TV.

Wyrfu said...

I tried scratching myself on TV but kept falling off...

sean b said...

shocking... simply shocking. that anyone would purposely attempt to dissuade someone from a love as harmless as that of baseball... nevermind the merits of baseball as a sport (of which it rates a firm #1 in my book, no contest).

what kind of person do you have to be to actively steer your son away from something they love by attempting to turn it into disdain? assuming that this affinity is essentially harmless (which most sports affinities are), this is a highly sinister and manipulative act at best and simply bastardly at worst.

Anonymous said...

If you fall off the TV while the baseball game is on, does that count as a sports injury?

If you want to know the truth of it, hockey is the only real sport and they took the fun out of that when they started wearing helmets.