However, put nine players on the field with Tim Tebow's heart, energy and enthusiasm and your team will be a World Series contender year after year.
Baseball is the most individual of the team sports. In the sense that any time something goes wrong it is normally manifest who gets the error. Exceptions exist, but in basketball or football the assignments are usually not as clear cut.In baseball, if you drop a fly ball you get the error. All by your lonesome.
So much of baseball is the confrontation between pitcher and batter. In neither softball nor baseball can you be competitive without a good pitcher. If your pitcher “blows up” and can’t get the ball over, the game is just no fun. I pitched windmill softball back in the day, and I remember on one occasion standing behind the rubber and reflecting to myself, “Gee, it’s nice of all these guys (my teammates) to come here so I can have a game.”
On one occasion guys from the neighborhood organized a pickup game against another neighborhood, and recruited me to pitch. Altho I wasn’t playing in the very best circles, I was easily able to get on an organized team. Against that level of pitching expertise the opposition pick-up team never got a ball out of the infield, and wouldn’t have ever reached first base except for one passed ball on a strikeout.
At the pitching position, certainly, an individual can dominate.