Beyond The Game (7 Deadly Sins)

When I was first thinking about this paper my first thoughts were how to make this as creative as possible. I wanted to think of a story line that held the readers attention for the entire story. By adding in details and humor when necessary I think that I did accomplish my overall goal and made this fairly interesting. As I was writing the first draft I thought that it was actually an interesting topic to write about, there were so many different topics you could write about. Literally you could write about anything from sporting events to dining at a restaurant, anything at all, written well will hold a readers attention for the majority of the story. As interesting as this topic was to write about, I did have some problems The thing I struggled with most was actually thinking of a creative idea to write about. I really pressured myself to write about something interesting enough to hold the readers attention, so I was really focusing on thinking of something good which did take some time. After I figured out that I was going to write about a baseball game, the creative ideas started to come more easily. Like I said before my main struggle for me was to think of an idea but after that it was all generally simple and I started to write down ideas more quickly than I could think of them. That's when it was the easiest for me, the actual part of writing down my ideas. Throughout writing this I learned that exemplification was all about writing and explaining what exactly you were writing about. Its about giving details to make it clear for the reader what message you're trying to get across.

When I re read my draft over again, I realized that it wasn't that great. I spent some time rewriting it and making it better and more acceptable. I believe that my greatest strength in this paper were creative ideas. For example, for my gluttony example where I was talking about the man next to me with a ridiculous amount of food. Well, I think that is a very interesting topic and will grab the readers attention for at least that part of the story. I really tried to think of situations that were creative and ones that the reader would find interesting. My weaknesses would probably be lack of detail in some areas. I feel that in a couple of my examples I left them without some details. For example for some of my examples such as lust, my situation had potential but I feel like I just didn't have enough detail to really make it interesting enough to the reader. So, I feel like if some details were added the reader may be able to make a better connection to what I'm talking about. I feel like I need to work on just re-editing my paper and making it the best it can be.

Beyond the Game
Have you ever looked around during a baseball game and really admired what everyone was doing, often times questioning as to what exactly they’re doing. Well if your answer is no, go to a baseball game or any sporting event and take a look around at all the different types of people ranging from the athletes, officials, fan and even the coaches and take notice of what each of them are doing. In this particular example there was a rivalry baseball game between two professional teams. Being a rivalry game I wanted to be there to get a sense of the atmosphere and the mood amongst the stadium. However, after the baseball game ended I thought to myself and realized that the actual game itself may not have been the most interesting part.

As I sit down into my chair in the top of the first inning and about to get comfortable, I feel a rather disturbing feeling beneath my feet. Looking down I notice five uneaten hot dogs. Questioning as to what exactly they’re doing there I turn to my right and to my surprise I see a rather large man holding four cheeseburgers, three bags of popcorn, the biggest cup of soda I have ever seen, seven candy necklaces around his neck, a candy ring on each finger and to top that all off apparently I had just stepped on his five remaining hot dogs. Sensing an awkward situation coming on I turned the other way and prepared for the game to begin. Now I had a little predicament. Do I turn to him and apologize or just ignore the situation and pretend like nothing happened? Feeling bad that he may have been looking forward to those hot dogs, I turned to him and offered to buy him four more. He politely turned to me and asked me what I was talking about. So it turned out that those weren’t even his hot dogs. I was worrying over nothing and now I can just enjoy the game.

As I mentioned before I have these five hot dogs sitting below my feet, so of course I’m going to get hungry. I waited a half an inning and then go towards the concession stand. I stand at the end of the line and attempt to read the menu. The disturbing picture of stepped on hot dogs turned me in the exact opposite direction of anything that had to do with hot dogs and instead  decided to enjoy a nice bag of popcorn and a small soda. As I pay for my snack, I notice that behind me is a little stand that has the butter for my popcorn and a container that holds straws. As I approach the stand another excited fan cuts in front of me with a bag of popcorn about 5X the size of mine. He stepped up to the butter machine and stood there for seemingly an hour. After he finally stepped away it was my turn. I set my bag of popcorn underneath the machine and press the button. Of course there wasn’t any butter left, so I returned to my seat with butter less popcorn.

During many baseball games, in between innings there may be activities for children or performances by different groups to keep the fans interested in the game. Keep in mind that we are attending a rivalry baseball game so it is unbelievably loud so more or less I can’t even hear myself speak. As I sit in my seat enjoying my popcorn, the stadium goes completely silent. Immediately being a baseball player myself I think that someone must have gotten hurt because surly that is that only time that a baseball game or any sporting event is quiet. Turning towards the field I notice that a very attractive young woman is walking out on the field. When I say everyone’s eyes were on her, I’m not exaggerating. However to everyone’s disliking the young women walked off of the field as fast as she walked on. I would also bet that the majority of the crowd doesn’t even know what she did when she was on the field; they were too busy starring at her.

It’s now the fifth inning and the game is not all that it was expected to be. There is no score and aside from the pitching duel there isn’t that much going on. As I sit in my seat I notice a young man walking by with a game worn jersey on. You may ask why how I know that he is wearing a game worn jersey? Well the dirt stains from sliding gave it away. Anyways, I stand up to try and see whose jersey he is wearing, and as I get closer I notice that not only is it a game worn jersey which is cool in itself, but it is signed. Now I’m just about touching the guy I’m so close, when it comes to me that it’s my favorite player. I realize that I’m too close for comfort so I take a few steps back and return to my seat. I now sat in my seat for about ten minutes and didn’t say anything; I was at a loss for words.

Top of the seventh. It’s at the point of the game where everything counts and every little mistake is costly. The bases are loaded with two outs so needless to say they need to get out of the inning without letting up a run. The count goes to 2-2 and the next pitch is on the way. Everyone can tell that the ball is on a downward angle towards the dirt and sure enough it does. As the ball skips in the dirt the catcher tries to scoop it and it gets by him. When a catcher tries to scoop the ball rather than trying to actually block it, well that could be the worst thing that the catcher can do and every catcher knows it. Now if you have ever been to a baseball game you would know what a normal dugout looks like. Each player has a glove, several bats, batting gloves, there is catchers gear, hats, endless packages of gum, several buckets of baseballs, three or four coolers of water and that’s just the beginning. The point I’m trying to get at is that dugouts are crowded and full with equipment. Now I want you to think back to what just happened, the catcher tried to scoop the ball. Out of the corner of my eye I see cooler of water fly towards the plate, followed by a bucket of balls and a glove. Fearing that something is going to hit me I bend down beneath my seat for cover. When I thought it was safe to stand up I did so and noticed that the dugout was completely empty and the entire team was huddled together in the corner. Needless to say the coach was quite upset.

Unfortunately the ending of the baseball game is all kind of a blur to me. Actually to be honest I couldn’t even tell you what happened other then the fact that one team won. I’m sure you’re asking yourself how to do you possibly not know what happened. Well I’ll put it like this, the game went nearly 6X longer than anyone had ever expected and the game wasn’t won until the bottom of the fifty seventh inning so I was sound asleep by that point. However, when that winning run did score I can honestly say I was awaken by the loudest noise I have ever heard. As the crowd rushed the field, I remained in my seat as I wasn’t completely sure what was going on due to the fact that I was sound asleep a few seconds ago. Thousands of people were on the field and to sum it up I’ve never seen so much happiness before.

 When you go to a sporting event or more specifically a baseball game, you’re going to want watch the game and I understand that. But I ask you this, the next time you’re at a game and it’s not fulfilling all of your expectations then just take a look around see what’s going on, you may be pleasantly surprised that the game you’re at isn’t the most exciting thing going on.