Paul,
I don’t deny what you say about baseball. I agree with what you wrote. However, I don’t believe, at least from my own experience, that baseball is the only individual/team sport out there. There can be a lot that can be said of freestyle wrestling on the high school and college levels in the duel meet and tournament formats.
When you wrestle, it’s obviously a one-on-one match between you and your opponent. However, the outcome of your match can greatly impact the strategies that others down the line may have to use in their matches. For instance, when I wrestled, my match was always the last one in a duel since I was the heavyweight. They have since changed the rule to where the first weight class is drawn by random. In wrestling, the team is awarded points based on what you do on the mat – 6 points for a pin, 4 for a major decision, 3 for a decision, etc. If the person wrestling before me fails to score a lot of team points and the match is seperated by 5 points then I know I have to go for a pin if the team is to win. Now, I may win the match without the win and it helps me as an individual as far as seeding in tournaments, but it does nothing for the team.
Wrestling is really a thinking man’s sport that doesn’t get a lot of respect because of the WWE and other “pro” wrestling groups. I just wish I had really appreciated the sport like I do now when I wrestled. Maybe I wouldn’t have stopped when I did.
