Man, hearing the name John Rocker pop up again really sent me down a rabbit hole today. It wasn’t even about the guy specifically, you know? It just kicked off this whole cascade of thoughts about back then.
Way Back When
I remember that whole era, late 90s, early 2000s. Baseball felt different. Maybe it’s just me getting older, but things seemed simpler, even when they were loud. We’d get the news from the TV or the newspaper the next day. You’d argue with your buddies about players based on what you saw in the game or read in the sports section.
I distinctly recall sitting in my buddy Dave’s basement. We had the game on this chunky CRT television, fuzzy picture and all. We were probably drinking cheap beer and yelling at the screen. Didn’t have smartphones buzzing every two seconds with hot takes from strangers. You just experienced the game, the controversies, whatever, kinda in real-time with the people you were actually with. It felt more… contained? Yeah, contained.
Fast Forward to Now
Thinking about that, and then thinking about “today”… wow. Everything’s instant. Someone says something dumb, or great, or whatever, and boom. It’s everywhere. Analyzed to death, memes flying, arguments breaking out across the globe in seconds. It’s just a firehose of information and opinions, all the time.
It reminds me a bit of my old job, actually. Not the sports part, but the communication change. We used to walk over to someone’s desk or have a quick team huddle. Now? It’s Slack messages, emails flying back and forth, video calls for things that could’ve been a two-minute chat. Everything feels amplified, sometimes unnecessarily complicated. You spend more time managing the noise than doing the actual work, feels like.
It’s funny how a name from way back can just trigger all that stuff. Makes you realize how much the world spins, and how you’re spinning right along with it, whether you like it or not. Just gotta roll with it, I guess. Anyway, that was my little trip down memory lane for the day.
