Home of the Rant

It wasn’t that long ago we learned about Royals left-handed pitching prospect Danny Duffy and how he had decided it was best for him to leave the game of baseball for awhile to focus his attention on other things. Of course, there were a number of things said at the expense of a young man that had spent the majority of his young adult life bussing around the middle of nowhere, to pitch once a week, on limited funds, and what we can only imagine because he decided he’d had enough, limited fun.

That decision was met with some mixed emotions from the public, and on this website, with some of the more radical opinions of those speaking mostly out of their own jealousy, saying that Duffy would someday regret this decision to pass up chasing a “dream”. I took offense.

It isn’t our place to decide what is best for someone else. I looked at it more from the aspect of the kid had a job, no different than waiting tables or working the window at the local bank, and didn’t like it. Plain and simple. Sure the job was baseball and while those other occupations, and thousands others, can be done by just about anybody, the job of Baseball Player at the professional level can only be done by a certain few.

So because of that there seems to be a different qualifier put on decisions athletes make because everyone else wishes they could do what they do. Some even perhaps know they could do what they do but through injury, timing, or just not having the necessary drive to make it happen, they just didn’t make it, so there’s a sense of “how many people would love to be in your position” thinking. And that attitude isn’t fair to put on another person.

This story got me riled up a little bit. I felt it embarrassing that so many would snap to such quick judgments about the make-up of a person they didn’t even know. I didn’t think it was right to put some unrealistic standards on another person’s occupation just because that occupation is the envy of so many.

Baseball is a game. Players come. Players go. And to those that play it at a professional level, as much as it may pain the masses to think this way about a game they would “play for free”, it is a job. No different than what you, me, or anyone else does each day.

But that feeling I had when justifying the reasoning someone might have to walk away from being one of the top-10 prospects in a very, very good, farm system, was washed away when I had learned that Danny Duffy had decided to rejoin the Royals organization.

As a fan of the team since the day I was born, I’m happy. Another lefty, another good lefty, to go along with the litany of blue-chip talent throughout the minor leagues (hopefully all the reports are right), well, what fan wouldn’t be happy?

But as an adult I’m not sure how I feel. Were all those dissenting opinions to my own right? Did Duffy just regret life without baseball and realize that playing baseball everyday beats the hell out of whatever else he could be doing? Did he go home, see his family, get his fill, and say okay I’m ready to go again?

Perhaps, and most likely, we’ll never know what made Duffy leave the organization that drafted him and that he made The Futures Game with last year. We’ll never know the true circumstances that made the kid walk away from his job, only to return two months later.

We can now only be skeptical of the sincerity of his initial decision. And that saddens me.

Not because it makes what I wrote seem a little naïve, but because this whole coming back to the team process seems a little too easy. There wasn’t much word about it, and let’s be honest, if there were rumblings about his return we all would have learned about it somehow. It’s as if he woke up one day, went outside for a run, got back home, called the Royals, and that was that.

So while it may be unfair to jump to conclusions about the character of a person who chooses to walk away from something, it’s just as fair to be skeptical of the character that walks back into that something so soon.

Then again maybe that’s why we all love and hate baseball so much. We all wish we had the abilities to do such a thing for a living and baseball knows this. Baseball wishes we could too, otherwise, players like Duffy wouldn’t be allowed to leave and come back so easily.

‘Til next time.

A few days ago Top 10 Kansas City Royals prospect Danny Duffy decided he was going to leave professional baseball. After having an outside shot at being a part of this year’s pitching staff either to start the season or almost certainly during, an injury caused a delay to his big league dreams. Well, maybe they weren’t his dreams after all.

I’m sure in the next couple of weeks, and months, we’ll begin to hear about the circumstances that led to Duffy to leave pro baseball*. I’m sure in the next couple of days, and months, we’ll begin to hear, even though we’ve already started to hear some, about how he’s a quitter and how he’s throwing away a tremendous opportunity, or how he’s a myriad of derogatory adjectives. I’d like to caution all of us to not get caught up in the world of nonsense that is sports blogger rage.

*Since Duffy, there have been two other Royals minor leaguers have decided to leave the organization. They won’t be last. They won’t be the last in all of professional baseball this year.

All we know, all we need to know, is that a young man has decided that at this time in his life, baseball is not for him. For whatever reason. We can only begin to speculate why or what, but doing so would be irresponsible. We’ll find out soon enough. Someone will talk to someone, who will talk to someone, and we’ll have our “answers.” As if we needed some anyway. Unfortunately until then, Duffy is going to be chastised for somehow being less of a man.

I grew up in Kansas City and spent all of my adult life to this point living there and being saturated with all things Royals. I remember the day it came out that franchise savior Zack Greinke was taking his leave of absence from baseball and how everyone had their thoughts on the matter. There was the name calling, the questions of how tough he was – cause you know, the one thing Sport is good at is making a man less of one if for some reason his sport isn’t everything that matters to him – and the confusion over how someone could pass up this “opportunity.”

Sadly fans and journalists alike got lost in the fact that this wasn’t their life, it was Greinke’s. Well this isn’t our life either, it is Duffy’s. It’s all of these players’ lives.

The juvenile name calling, the questioning of his toughness, the calling him a “quitter” is irresponsible. The young man made a choice. Nothing more. He decided that at this point, baseball wasn’t for him, and that’s fine. Perfectly fine. That does not make him a quitter, that makes him just like everyone else who ever worked at a job they didn’t like and wanted to try something different. Just because it’s baseball, doesn’t mean it’s not a job.

Sometimes we lose touch with reality when it comes to professional athletes. We expect all of them to have this unshakable drive, this unrelenting desire, and this ultimate love for the game the way we do. Well, not all of them do.

Some pro athletes play because they can, and for no other reason. They don’t play because they love their sport, they play because they’re better at it than you or me, and well, they might as well. And that’s perfectly fine.

Bit when that fine line of admiration is crossed into the ugly world of jealous, it’s not fair. Just because Duffy – or any player choosing to leave the fame and do something different with their lives – has left doesn’t mean he quit. It just means it’s not want he wanted. It’s not his fault it may have been what others wanted.