I have met a wide variety of people in my 22 years of existence, and in that time I have met a few people who thought baseball was one of the most boring things to watch on the planet – comparable to watching grass grow or watching paint dry.

Not to me though.

I could watch any baseball game, all nine innings, any time of day, any day of the week and not be bored.

To quote the great Ted Williams, “The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely.”

Not only is the physical aspect of the game though, but also there’s the whole mental side of the game that players and coaches need to understand in order to succeed.

One thing that I have noticed about all professional sports, not just Major League Baseball, is that we can rely on them no matter what. (Granted in 1994- 95 there was a MLB strike where no games were played and the NHL has had two lockouts, one in 1994-95 which limited the regular season to 48 games and then in 2004- 05 where there were no NHL games played and the NBA lockout during the 2011-2012 season.)

Take for example; MLB didn’t stop play during World War II when many of the players were enlisting in the military draft.

Some of the greatest players in the game at that time enlisted in the war, giving them time off from the game they loved to fight for a country that they loved just as much.

Even though the NFL cancelled games the weekend after the 9/11 attacks and MLB postponed a weeks worth of games games during that time, it was done in the mindset of getting our priorities straight as nation.

The idea of professional sports was put on hold, but once the grieving got a little bit easier after such a horrific tragedy, professional sports helped the United States rally around something.

Even though professional sports don’t matter as much as life and death, the games gave us an outlet to focus our attention on instead of being wrapped up in the morbid stories on the news.

As a person, I remember where I was when 9/11 happened.

I was in 6th grade and immediately after it happened, our teacher brought a television in our classroom and we watched news coverage on the tragedy for the rest of the day.

As sports fan, I remember watching baseball after the attacks.

To this day, I still have one image in my head from the first games – New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza, a future Hall-of-Famer, with the letters ‘NYPD’ over the Mets’ logo on his batting helmet, showing that he doesn’t just play for the New York Mets, he plays for and supports the NYPD and the United States of America.

They say that sports sometimes saves people by giving them an outlet, something to keep them occupied with instead of getting into trouble.

I believe this to be true, but in the case of the attacks of 9/11, it didn’t just save a few select people, professional sports saved an entire nation by giving us something else to focus on and allowing us to finally to have something positive to cheer about.

Everyone remembers where he or she was on that fateful yet historical day 11 years ago and in my opinion, it was professional sports that brought us closer together as a nation and has helped us stay close over the years.