Rotten Apples Make Sour Grapes

Baseball, America's favorite pastime. Whether you love or hate sports, the thought of a full ball park on a sunny day, full of people eating hot dogs and peanuts and the sound of the crack of the bat just makes you think red, white and blue. It's competition, it's tradition, it's all-American. So what happened in Arizona during game 1 of the NLCS last night? I played sports growing up, and as a both a fan and player, I can certainly understand the frustration and angst one can feel during a tough loss, but to intentionally try to take out another player by playing dirty is just sad. Then for some fans to start throwing objects onto the field just punctuated an already pitiful situation. When I see something like this, it tends to instantly turn me into a sour grape. I lose hope for society in general and the pessimism sets in. After a few moments of watching, however, I noticed a few things that gave me hope. Many of the fans started pointing out the offenders to stadium officials and/or indicated their disapproval of the unruly fans' behavior. And relatively few objects were thrown for such a large crowd. It was really just a few rotten apples ruining the whole bunch, so maybe things aren't as bad as I initially thought? Could it be that everything else is that way too? It's so easy to turn on the TV at night and see all the worst the world has to offer, brought to us by the ratings-seeking and frequently inaccurate media, but are things really as bad as they seem? As Anne Frank said, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart." She's right. I believe we are all good at heart, but some of us let our situations and our surroundings jade us and change us for the worst. We begin making bad assumptions about everyone and everything. Instead, we should always remember what's really valuable to us and keep in mind that our fellow man is probably not evil as we thought he was. Maybe someone is just having a bad day, maybe someone just lost a loved one, maybe they're just lonely and discouraged with the world and need a friend? Maybe they're just a sour grape? Granted, there are psychos and crazies out there that will always try to ruin it for the rest of us, but we have to keep that in perspective and know that they are just a few rotten apples in a whole bushel of beautiful, red, delicious apples. So what's the moral to this tale? Don't let bad apples turn you into a sour grape. GO ROCKIES!