Baseball gets a lot of derision from people who claim it isn't much of a sport, that all these guys are doing is a lot of standing around and occasionally sprinting short distances. But football? Now that is a sport. A real man's sport. So let us use the curious case of top UW safety recruit Shaquille Green-Thompson to examine this argument.
Shaq Green-Thompson is the highest rated safety prospect in the nation and signed a letter of intent in February to play for the Washington Huskies. Thompson is a pretty solid athlete who also played varsity baseball his senior season. He got signed in the 18th round by the Boston Red Sox and has spent part of the summer playing minor league ball for the BoSox.
He will probably only ever play minor league ball. Lets take a gander why.
Here are Green-Thompson's stats, and this of course is a very small sample size to completely decry someone's ability to play baseball. But look at those 10 games. There are a couple of things that stand out.
Number One: From June 20th to July 4th, Green-Thompson had 16 at-bats. He also had 16 strikeouts. It wasn't all bad though - during this time he also drew three walks and got a run.
Number Two: On July 6th, Green-Thompson broke his dubious streak, only to pick up right where he left off. After not striking out for once, he has struck out again in 10 straight at-bats.
Now, Green-Thompson is definitely a young guy, and that is a small sample size. It is probably safe to say that football is his number one sport. But the next time someone points out how baseball isn't a sport - maybe take the curious case of Shaquille Green-Thompson, a very athletic man, who can't quite cut it in the lower echelons of the minor league farm system.