Seeing the players every day, joking before and after games, made me realize that people in sports do not view the games the same way that fans do. When I was little, I woke up in a good mood if the Cardinals won the night before and was depressed if they lost. But to players, baseball was a job. They did their best, but they understood that sometimes they would have a bad day at the office. They could even laugh about it. I remember the great Cardinals closer Lee Smith giving up a game-winning home run one day. On the plane ride that night, he gathered some teammates together and said, “I
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