BSN Exclusive: Finding joy in the game during a brutal season

 

The business of baseball can oftentimes be a very serious one. Still in the aftermath of the trade deadline, it can be easy for everyone from fans to media to the players and managers themselves to think of the game as a series of cold-blooded business decisions made with millions of dollars at stake.

It is a game built on failure living inside a culture that cannot tolerate it. On any given day, more than half the fan bases in baseball are irate at their manager, or closer, or that guy who is making way more money than he is worth.

And, of course, it can all get pretty ugly.

We spend so much time dissecting contracts and statistics and then using these tools to hold people “accountable” for their ideas and execution of those ideas inside a game where grown men hit a ball with a stick.

And we must.

Baseball is a multi-billion dollar industry and the fans who devote their passions, even the negative ones, are the people who have made it this way. If you let this game into your heart, it will break it. It is specifically designed to.

That is why players like Daniel Murphy are so important. He reminds us all that, at its very core, this is still a kids game that is best played having fun.

And that is exactly how he goes about his… business.

On a recent homestand, in a series win against the San Francisco Giants, Murphy found himself having fun on defense, an area where he has rarely managed to make the nightly highlight reels over the years.

But a pair of excellent jumping catches had him flashing his signature smile and hopping around in random directions in a way that has become a familiar sight for Rockies fans.

“I try to smile a lot,” Murphy told BSN Denver after the game. “You get a great play like that and it’s the end of the rally as opposed to having first and second, then the defense has to position itself accordingly. I think [Freeland] got an out on the next pitch if I’m not mistaken.”

A leaping swipe tag that could have made Neo proud if it were properly filmed by the Wachowski siblings went a long way toward restoring some confidence to a pitcher who desperately needs some.

When I asked Freeland about it after the game, for the first time in what felt like an entire season, he too flashed a smile.

“Those are huge,” he said, “you can take a big sigh of relief when your defense helps you out like that.”

But it wasn’t just the in-game importance of the play. “He makes us all smile,” Freeland added.

Later in the game, Murphy had one more chance to help out his pitcher with another catch that required him to leave his feet, turning it into an inning-ending double play.

“If it gets over my head, it’s probably first and third, maybe second and third. And it changes the complexion,” Murphy said. “So really happy to make those plays.”

And it shows.

After tagging the first base bag, his quirky mannerisms came out to play. In a motion best described as “playful child trying to catch fireflies” Murphy celebrated a moment where he may have surprised even himself.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this from him. Well, the defensive wizardry might have been new but the aftermath was not. He famously took a dive into home plate earlier this year that looked like a bashful six-year-old jumping into the shallow end of the pool.

And while all of this comes naturally to the clearly enigmatic player and person, it is also a purposeful decision that Murphy appears to have made a long time ago in order to tackle some of the toughest challenges the game of baseball presents.

“I’m just trying to enjoy myself,” he says. “There’s enough anxiety that goes in with trying to perform on a daily basis. And I’m trying to enjoy myself.”

It can be incredibly difficult to find joy in a season like the one the Colorado Rockies are currently having. It probably doesn’t help that the club said goodbye to a few other players who understood this dynamic well in Carlos Gonzalez and Gerardo Parra.

And there will almost certainly be people who are rubbed the wrong way by players laughing and galloping about on a last-place team.

But baseball is meant to be fun and nobody is going to take that away from Daniel Murphy.