The psychology of playing through injury and the relentless drive to be great are intertwined much closer than a lot of fans want to admit. Excellent piece, groug. At some basic level, pushing yourself past reasonable levels of endurance is the raison d’etre of competition to begin with, and it’s fascinating and, imo, admirable and inspiring to watch. I’ve always thought that the basic divide between athletes and fans is that they experience the sport physically and we experience it imaginatively and there’s no more diametrically opposed viewpoints available to humans which will always lead to these sorts of disagreements. http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2015/9/8/9274935/the-psychology-of-baseball-players#325673308 http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2015/9/1/9236321/in-appreciation-of-ryan-vogelsong#324432688