An open letter from a nervous baseball fan the week before the trade deadline

To whom it may concern, We’re days away from the trade deadline and my favorite baseball team the Detroit Tigers are likely to be selling.

Now you may not be a baseball fan, so I’d like to explain why I might suddenly erupt in fits of rage and sadness over the next few days.

Baseball is a sport unlike any other. We watch these players for 162 games a year. That’s about double the amount of regular season games that the NBA and NHL play and more than 10 times that of the NFL.

We spend a lot of time with these players. They become, for some of us, members of our family. No other sport allows fans to get to know the players like we do in baseball. We watch them grow up in the minors. We see them get better game after game. We see slow declines. We see how some players gel with some teams and not others. We hear their walk up music. Sometimes games go long or are boring, so we make up nicknames and stories about them.

So when players get traded, it can be shocking. Even when we know its coming and that is’s probably for the best of the team, it still hurts. We won’t see them in that uniform again. It may be part of a long term strategy and we know that, but it will take time.

So my friend, co-worker, neighbor, stranger on the street, if sometime this week I jump out of my chair screaming, sobbing, or a mixture of both, this is why. I’ll be ok, but just need to let it out. I’ll try and wear Tigers gear as a potential warning. Hopefully I won’t need to act this way... or hopefully I do. Hard to tell what Al is up to...

-Fritz